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The volume on the TV was jacked up and he’d been talking back at it even louder. About all the sacrifices, all the marches and all the PTSD he’d suffered under the weight of those experiences. I’d never actually had a real conversation with my dad about what it was like to find himself, as a then 18-year-old native of Selma, thrust onto the national stage trying to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge one Bloody Sunday in 1965. But no time like the present. So I pulled out my recording equipment to get some of his recollections on tape. Recollections about the past and whether the recent decision by the Supreme Court could effectively make that past a reality again.
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The "Dude" still abides ... (but in New York)
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| Which brings me to the reason for this week’s newsletter. Black Music Month is often thought of as little more than an annual bookmarker for celebrating Black music. But it’s worth remembering that its inception would have never been possible without the gains of the Civil Rights Movement. Yet sometimes the celebration can look like a distraction — even to the ones who struggled for it. |
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| As a former fist-pumping freedom fighter, dear old dad has not always regarded my pursuit of music journalism — or passion for (and criticism of) hip-hop — as an extension of the righteous cause. Mind you, this is coming from a man who counts among his bragging rights attending Tuskegee University with The Commodores back when Lionel Richie still had an afro and who, even as a longstanding deacon in the Full Gospel Baptist Church, still pays his respects to the gospel according to Johnnie Taylor. What was all that freedom fighting for, anyway, if not to guarantee Black folk the right to lift every voice — be it pitch-perfect or AutoTuned — and overindulge in the uniquely American pursuit of happiness? |
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Back when Philadelphia International Records co-founder Kenny Gamble and music industry figures Dyana Williams and Ed Wright conceived of BMM in the 1970s, they were intent on flexing the power and political economy of Black music. The initial slogan was “Black music is green.”
“Initially, Black Music Month started as an economic program more than anything else. We picked June as the time when we could concentrate on recognizing and celebrating the economic and cultural power of Black music as well as those who made and promoted it,” Gamble told Billboard’s executive director of R&B and hip-hop, Gail Mitchell, in 2015. To make it official, they got the leader of the free world to co-sign.
In 1979, then-President Jimmy Carter and his family hosted a concert on the White House lawn featuring Billy Eckstine, Chuck Berry and Evelyn “Champagne” King. The President’s speech, officially declaring June as Black Music Month, sounded like a page borrowed from King’s “Dream,” as he conjured a version of America reimagined with founding fathers baptized in the funk: If “Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and George Washington could have just heard some of this music at the very beginning, our country could have avoided a lot of trouble and a lot of heartache and a lot of struggle and a lot of suffering and a lot of division, and would be even greater than it is now.”
By 1979, my dad was living his best life as an insurance salesman by day and doing the bump to The Commodores’ “Brick House” by night. While that band sang and danced its way up the Billboard 100 chart, he kept chasing his version of the American Dream. So even though he said what he said during our impromptu interview last month, I didn’t take it as a personal dig. Because I’ve seen him hit the dance floor enough to know he, more than anyone, appreciates the significance of being able to shake that load off.
I never wished anyone a Happy Black Music Month. But in a time when all things once guaranteed to Black folk are no longer promised or protected, I want to pay homage to my dad — and all the forefathers, foremothers and essential others — who fought, marched, bled and died so I could make singing and dancing and journaling about all of the above my livelihood and natural right as a living, breathing Black American.
Happy Black Music Month, my dude.
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