Photo courtesy of NBC/Peter Kramer
The sounds Black people make are the brick and mortar of the United States. Literally. The enslaved African’s singing was a driving force for the free labor that built a young nation and put it at the forefront of empires. Historically, Black Americans have been amongst the primary influencers of music culture. The genres that were born of Black misery, triumph, endurance, protest, and expression have changed the way the entire world sounds. But it’s undeniable that many of these songs were and still are shaped by the fatigue of the constant protest that comes with Black existence.
As the son of a Black Southern Pentecostal minister, I’ve had the privilege of sitting among the serene sounds of praise that birthed a nation of noir notes. Just about every genre that has risen to popularity is from the offspring of the Black church. If you listen closely enough, you can hear Black American beginnings on this continent in our cultural songs: one part culture, one part community, one part family, one part fear of fire and brimstone. The tears that beg to line my face when I hear Mary Pickney’s "Down on Me", Janie Hunters’ "Jonah", or Mahalia Jackson’s "How I Got Over" retrace Fredrick Douglass’ words:
"I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those songs would do more to impress some minds with the horrible character of slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the subject could do….The mere recurrence to those songs, even now, afflicts me; and while I am writing these lines, an expression of feeling has already found its way down my cheek. To those songs I trace my first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery."
It’s important to note that the act of this singing was more than entertainment for plantation overseers or solely expressions of sadness. In its purest form, the slave’s singing was an act of protest. Its beauty and expression transcends the pervasive hell that was the environment that allowed them to be enslaved.
Black existence is an act of rebellion in and of itself, most especially in art. Black people have sung songs amid the persistent onslaught of struggle in the United States, though not exclusively. Enslaved Africans pioneered music like Cumbia, tango, and rumba across the Americas and integrated self-defense and music in Brazil with capoeira. Here in North America, all of the elements of our African diasporic kin’s musical instincts are present in our musical traditions, too.
Since the days of chattel slavery, we’ve heard as our songs have taken different shapes, changed. Jazz’s earliest beginnings in the Congo Square of New Orleans were moments of sanctification, through the allowance of Whites for them to congregate there, to evoke their traditions and make music. Jazz has been consistent in this way over decades. Artists like Nina Simone and Charles Mingus made outspokenness a part of their reputation over the years with songs like "Mississippi Goddam" and "Fables of Faubus". Miles Davis became the embodiment of Black protest to many through his unwillingness to bend to White standards, insistence that Black women grace his album covers, and even making a tribute to "Black Jack Johnson". Other imaginative artists like Sun Ra created other, better worlds for Black people through their music. Some artists like Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln infused what they could into Black protests through their art. In the song "Triptych: Prayer/Protest/Peace", from the classic Black resistance jazz album We Insist, you can hear the waves of emotion Lincoln pours into her vocals. At one point in the song, she arguably sets a shrieking standard for punk rock before the genre officially existed, but not before evoking the symbolic moans of gospel and the blues. The revolutionary nature of Black music always comes back to that starting point.
The blues are Black survival music. While many songs deal with the everyday issues, others from blues’ earliest beginnings up to contemporary times are blatantly political. Three songs about my infamous home state of Alabama come to mind: J.B. Lenoir’s "Alabama", Lead Belly’s "Scottsboro Boys", and John Lee Hooker’s "Birmingham Blues". You can find countless songs about Alabama because it was one of the starting points of the "great migration" Blacks made when they left the South fleeing oppressive violence. Furthermore, it was once the cradle of the civil rights movement and Black activism itself.
Much of the music that defines what most know as Black protest songs are civil rights era protest music. Songs like "We Shall Overcome", "A Change Is Going to Come", "We Shall Not Be Moved", and "Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round" set the stage for what many millennials like myself would come to know as the movement songs. Documentaries like Eyes on the Prize were filled with these songs as soundtrack to the brutality of White supremacist violence against Black people.
I must admit that seeing these images of Black people singing while being beaten ruthlessly felt self-defeating and depressing as a child. The eternal words of Malcolm X, "stop singing and start swinging," come to mind. Though there should not be any diminishing of the importance of any particular type of protest music, the current Black generation has moved toward a more confrontational approach.
The Black children who grew up around "What’s Goin On", "Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud", "Little Ghetto Boy", and "(Don’t Worry) If There Is a Hell Below, We Are All Going to Go" would go on to create hip-hop, rap, and contemporary R&B music. Black music has always been gradually becoming more and more blunt. But through the decade leading up to Reaganomics, the the bold lyrics of acts like Sly and the Family Stone ("Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey"), the Last Poets ("Wake Up, Niggers"), Camille Yarbrough ("Little Sally the Super Sex Star (Taking Care of Business)"), and Gil-Scott Heron ("The Revolution Will Not Be Televised") influenced the generation that would influence us.
I was a toddler during the L.A. riots and I grew up through the '90s. A lot of my younger peers barely even remember 9/11. They were coming of age during a time a time when Nas said that hip-hop is dead and sparked a debate about consciousness within the culture. Therefore it’s not surprising to see what’s happening musically at Black protests around the country.
This generation of Black protesters singing Lil Boosie's "Fuck the Police" and Archie Eversole's "We Ready" in Ferguson is a reflection of what we’re accustomed to. This is the inherited defiance of Black power infused with a lack of concern about respectability politics. Some people among us have come to realize that those who hate our Blackness do not care if our pants are sagging or if we’re wearing a suit like Dr. King—we can be killed either way. Despite this revelation for some, it still doesn’t sit well with some older Black folks. Barbara Reynolds recently lamented hearing Kendrick Lamar’s "Alright" among young Black activists in the Washington Post, writing:
"I listened to the song, expecting it would be as uplifting as 'We Shall Overcome.' I was terribly disappointed. The beat was too harsh; the lyrics were nasty and misogynistic.
'Let me tell you about my life / Painkillers only put me in the twilight / Where pretty pussy and Benjamin is the highlight.'
Instead of imparting understanding, the song was a staunch reminder of the generation gap that afflicts civil rights activism, and the struggle it is going to take to overcome it."
Some things will never be understood or sit well with those who came before us, just like saying 'Black and proud' didn’t sit well with my Grandmother. She despised the term 'Black.' But the condescending tone with which some elders dismiss the sounds of Black protest today would have you think we invented profanity, misogyny, and nastiness, all of which are present in the aforementioned genres and many artists I’ve named. Ironically, the song she laments (and the entire album it’s on) is filled with jazz, soul, and spoken word.
Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, D’Angelo’s Black Messiah, and Janelle Monáe’s "Hell You Talmbout" are just a few recent musical examples of a rejuvenated young Black movement. These albums and other songs younger Black folks identify with feed protest and rebellion. When I stood watching Monáe perform "Hell You Talmbout" in Chicago, I thought again about how she was taking it back to the starting point, the essence of Black protest music. I could hear the civil rights era, I could hear the blues, and I could hear gospel.
Despite anyone’s feelings about our music, White supremacy is the problem and not how we choose to sing about life as we deal with it daily. This generation is going to sing, rap, and play just like every generation that came before it. I’m proud to see a resurgence of many of the elements of our beautiful Black culture always moving toward a Black future. We always change it up while others lag behind, still trying to imitate what we were doing yesterday.
From Africa, all throughout the diaspora, and to this very day we’re still making music. Despite everything that’s happened we still sound transcendental. I have learned to take pride in knowing my ancestors would be happy we’ve survived and we’re still pushing, unsubdued. That always sounds good.