Black History Month

Black History Month: the time when lots of outlets dig out their versions of the best albums by black artists or whatever. I started into a project like that but there’s no good way to systematize it. It’s a numbers game; I get 28 spots, and there are probably hundreds of records that one could argue for.

The more I thought about it, the more I thought that concentrating on the top tiers of impact does black music in general a disservice. It’s kind of a weird, essentialist viewpoint to say that a particular set of black artists “represent” black music, or that Bob Marley or Prince make black music great in some different way than lesser-loved artists. Trotting out lists of canon albums that are basically “white-people-approved” is its own subtle bigotry. Sure, celebrate great black artists and great achievements, but also, let’s don’t forget about the middle: black artists who didn’t climb to the top of their craft but still made lots of music people love, or never even got noticed but paved the way for someone else.

So there’s no real or rational reason I can give you for why Nina Simone and Miles Davis stayed on the list (or why the Miles album I picked is a lesser known one) but I left off Coltrane and Marvyn Gaye. That’s just how it went. But famous, successful, or obscure, I tried to include some of the wide range of black artists who have largely built the modern music world.

(image borrowed from a nice write-up on Afro-Futurism from Red Bull, of all places)