Celebrating African-American Music

In June of 1979, Jimmy Carter designated June as Black Music Month. However, Black Music Month, was not fully recognized until President Bill Clinton signed The African-American Music Bill in 2000, which officially declared June as Black Music Month: a time for us to remember, acknowledge, and celebrate African American music's contribution to and integral influence on American life and culture (source). President Barack Obama gave the commemorative month its current name, African-American Music Appreciation Month.  In his 2009 proclamation, President Obama noted, "During African-American Music Appreciation Month, we recall the known and unknown musicians who helped create this musical history. Their contributions help illuminate the human experience and spirit, and they help us reflect on our Nation's ongoing narrative." (source)

Mercer County Library System offers numerous resources that provide access to information about African-American music, help discover the impact it's made on our ever-evolving American experience, and allow us to learn how it's influenced (and continues to influence) music genres, our culture, and musicians.  If you're looking for something to listen to, something to watch, or something to read, MCLS has you covered.

Whether you're in the mood for Lead Belly, Marvin Gaye, Nas, Diana Ross, Ella Fitzgerald or Beyonce, patrons can use our online catalog to locate music CDs located throughout our nine branches.  Our streaming service Freegal allows patrons to easily access and listen to music.  Check out the featured playlist, "African-American Music Month Essentials" or the playlist, "Raise Up Black Voices". hoopla, another of our digital resources, provides a "genre catalog" for you to browse, making it easy to locate the music from the genre of your choice -- R&B/Soul, Jazz, Hip Hop/Rap, etc.

Our collection -- physical and digital -- includes documentary films and television series to enrich your knowledge of African-American musicians.  Ken Burns' Jazz, a 10-episode documentary miniseries, is available for streaming through our hoopla service, or you can request the DVDs, using our online catalog.  Also available on DVD is Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever (2014), celebrating Motown Record Corporation's first twenty-five years; Monochrome: Black, White & Blue (2018), bringing the story of the blues to life; and Hip Hop: The Songs that Shook America (2019), chronicling the evolution of a genre that gave a generation a voice.

And the books we have -- I'd be remiss if I didn't share just a few of the so many fabulous books available for circulation through our physical and digital collections.  Below I've listed five titles to get you started in your celebration of African-American Music Appreciation Month.  You just may learn something new along the way:

The Power of Black Music: Interpreting Its History from Africa to the United States (1995)

by Samuel A. Floyd

The Power of Black Music offers a new way of listening to the music of black America, and appreciating its profound contribution to all American music. Striving to break down the barriers that remain between high art and low art, it brilliantly illuminates the centuries-old linkage between the music, myths and rituals of Africa and the continuing evolution and enduring vitality of African-American music.

When Sunday Comes: Gospel Music in the Soul and Hip-hop Eras (2020)

by Claudrena Harold

Gospel music evolved in often surprising directions during the post-Civil Rights era. Claudrena N. Harold's in-depth look at late-century gospel focuses on musicians like Yolanda Adams, Andraé Crouch, the Clark Sisters, Al Green, Take 6, and the Winans, and on the network of black record shops, churches, and businesses that nurtured the music. Harold details the creative shifts, sonic innovations, theological tensions, and political assertions that transformed the music, and revisits the debates within the community over groundbreaking recordings and gospel's incorporation of rhythm and blues, funk, hip-hop, and other popular forms. At the same time, she details how sociopolitical and cultural developments like the Black Power Movement and the emergence of the Christian Right shaped both the art and attitudes of African American performers. Weaving insightful analysis into a collective biography of gospel icons, When Sunday Comes explores the music's essential place as an outlet for African Americans to express their spiritual and cultural selves.

Black Music in America: A History through Its People (1987)

by James Haskins

Surveys the history of black music in America, from early slave songs through jazz and the blues to soul, classical music, and current trends.

The Music of Black Americans: A History (1997)

by Eileen Southern

This text provides comprehensive coverage of black American music, from the arrival of the first Africans in the English colonies to contemporary developments in African-American history. The book draws on authentic documents, from colonial times to the present, to illuminate the history of black music.

No Man Can Hinder Me: The Journey from Slavery to Emancipation through Song (2001)

by Velma Maia Thomas

In an extraordinary book and CD package, the talented, charismatic author of Lest We Forget chronicles the harsh realities of slavery and brilliantly brings to life the spirit of a people determined to be free. A vibrant legacy of the past and an expression of hope for the future, African-American songs and spirituals formed an oral history during the perilous era of slavery. Illustrated with photographs, drawings, and reproductions of original documents, No Man Can Hinder Me traces the spiritual from its arrival in America to its importance as a mode of secret communication and its role after Emancipation. Celebrated author and lecturer Velma Maia Thomas not only tells the story of these songs, she presents more than a dozen glorious examples-many of them never-before-recorded arrangements on a CD specially created for this book. With performances by Thomas and other well-known vocalists, including members of the Morehouse College Glee Club as well some of Atlanta's foremost gospel singers, the CD evokes a sense of community and the dream of earthly and spiritual freedom that sustained African-Americans through the ordeal of slavery.

- Anna, Hopewell Branch