Reflections on the Black History Month Playlist

REFLECTIONS ON THE BLACK HISTORY MONTH PLAYLIST

by Mr. Jordan Taylor

Perhaps many more can be pointed out, but I find two central ironies as I reflect on the playlist for the 2022 Black History Month that has been ringing through the center hall (speaker/ echo chamber) of Randolph Hall for the past month.

The first is what I think about the relationship between African-American music and specifically American musical history. The central irony remains that every month is Black History Month, when it comes to appreciating the shaping forces and influences on that American sound. From field hollers, to House music, African-Americans have pioneered innovations, while encoding the deep oral tradition that unites the African diaspora. Diaspora has its root in the word “to spread,” and it is, maybe, most fruitful to imagine the world as a place pollinated by African musical polyrhythms. So, this year, we might have tacked more toward Bob Marley, Lee Scratch Perry, Miriam Makeba, Fela, or Oumou Sangare to appreciate the fertile productions in the West Indies and Africa that continue today.

The second irony really stems from, of course, it is the middle-aged bald white dude (me) who is making the selections. The story of African-American music is one of appropriation and as Bill Duke (famed black filmmaker,) said in Flying Bird High of basketball: “We played the game better than them. They invented a game, on top of a game.” That dynamic is certainly true in musical history, too. The teams and league rules pale in comparison to the musical industry’s appropriation and profiting from black musical excellence. We don’t have to look farther than the center square of any jazz history, Duke Ellington. All of Ellington’s early work is attributed to Ellington-Mills, referring to Irving Mills– Ellington’s manager who never wrote a note of classics like “Black and Tan Fantasy” or “The Mooche.”

That visual irony aside, the selection and arrangement of this year’s playlist reflected a number of student choices from planning meetings, but the bulk of choices were made to reflect the rich musical heritage of Black History. The genres and periods reflect so much of the struggle for equal social and cultural citizenship. he recent emphasis on Hard Bop, the coded messages of Blues Music, the wry sexuality of rock and roll of the early sexual revolution, even the braggadocio of hip-hop has the feeling of internet celebrity hype. Still, tracks like “I’m Black and I’m Proud” or “Young, Gifted and Black” reflect the beautiful efflorescence of Black power, an era where the music provided the tag lines as well as the beats. But the familiars are there, the historically recovered like Lead Belly, and the megastars of their time, whether it is Bessie Smith Whitney Houston, or Drake. The playlist was arranged in clusters, where periods of free jazz or hard bop intermingle with early R&B and soul. These clusters give a sense of a great tradition influencing each other and singing from one “Talking Book,” as Stevie Wonder would have it.

The collaboration and ongoing nature of this playlist opens up the possibility for how we build canons of black excellence. The idea of a canon or cultural idea is drawn from the church, but the 16-17 hours of the playlist is just a gateway into a world of Black excellence. It’s the steady beat that has enlivened and redeemed more than a little human misery, and it’s a tradition worth listening to, curating, and passing onto future generations. Happy to be the weird old guy who asks if you have considered Sun Ra, Missy Elliott, or Mdou Moctar in that process.