Black History Month Resources - Music

Summaries/Overviews/Places to Start

• Interactive Timeline of African American Music - Extremely detailed and interactive timeline with snippets built in from Apple Music.  To best use this resource, hover over a genre.  Once you’ve opened that page, scroll down a few inches to begin playing a song sample from the black bar with photographs.  You can then further read the article to learn about that genre + its influences and impacts.

• Black Music Project - Fantastic online exhibits with embedded visuals and music.  Consider browsing exhibits by artist, genre, or era. 

• Reverb Music History is Black History - Great summaries of some of the most iconic figures in Black music history. 

• Smithsonian Roots of African American Music - Great summary of the beginnings of African American music and some of the museum’s related artifacts. 

• National Museum of African American History and Culture - Great short list of genres that were created or heavily influenced by Black Americans.

• https://www.bestcolleges.com/blog/black-history-month-playlist/ 

Music Genres

• Black Music Project - Same link as above, sorted by genre.  Great online exhibits with music + visuals.

• Music That Would Not Exist Without Black People

• Top-Selling Black Musicians in Every Decade (From Bessie Smith to Beyonce) | History By the Decade

Spirituals

• Black Music Project - Spirituals

• PBS Learning Media - Hidden Messages in Spirituals on the Underground Railroad

• Black History in Two Minutes - The Fisk Jubilee Singers Perform the Spirituals and Save Their University

Country and Folk

• Why this instrument explains Black American folk music

• African American Roots and Influences in Country Music - Four video series on African American history and roots in country music.

• Black Music Project - Country and Folk

• Music Rising at Tulane - Country

• Smithsonian Folkways - Click on each person or group to read a little about them and listen to samples of their music.  For a sample, hover to the left of the track name and click the circle with an arrow in it. 

Hip Hop & Rap

• Rap and Hip Hop: Crash Course Black American History #47

• Black History in Two Minutes - The Birth of Hip Hop

• PBS -  Music as a Tool for Empowerment: How Hip Hop Changed the World

• PBS - Hip Hop, Social Justice, and Grandmaster Flash

• Black Music Project - Hip Hop and Rap

Funk

• Black Music Project - Funk

• PBS  - How James Brown Invented Funk

Blues

• Is Blues the Mother of All Modern Music?

• Black Music Project - Blues

Gospel and Soul

• PBS - What Makes Gospel Musicians So Skilled?

• Black Music Project - Gospel

• Black Music Project - Soul

• Music Rising at Tulane - Gospel

• James Brown: Godfather of Soul

• Chicago Sound (The Birth of Modern Gospel)

Jazz

• Black History in Two Minutes - The Birth of Jazz

• Black Music Project - Jazz

• Rhapsody in blue- Classical and Jazz combined

Pop/Top 40

• Apple Music BHM Playlist