June is Black Music Month.
I first heard this tagline during my years as editor of black music at "music industry bible" Billboard in the late 1980s; heretofore I was unaware of any such celebration.
I was raised in New York City and blessed or cursed with the cynicism of natives of the metropolis; after a few years in the music biz I was quickly learning the warp and woof of the rather slick fabric undergirding the frothy array of the music industry. So I quickly attributed the proclamation of black music ascendancy for the month of June as an invention of the record industry itself – much as Valentine’s Day, Secretary’s Day, Mother’s Day and other heart and hearth holidays were inventions of the greeting card biz. I thought, Hey -- the kiddies were out of school for a glorious stretch of "hot fun in the summertime," and the season offered endless opportunities for music-infused vacation activities of all kinds. The record labels and their distribution companies – which in the '80s and '90s had only recently established freestanding and now lucrative black music divisions – were only too happy to funnel money into elaborate Black Music Month advertising campaigns that easily compelled music fans into record stores (remember those?) to snap up the latest discs from their stables of soul, funk, and R&B stars. It was a sales scheme disguised as a moral imperative. It was only later that I learned the history of the designation, how a hard-fought Congressional Proclamation by music industry stalwarts and a star-studded White House Lawn celebration in 1979 compelled the country to acknowledge one of its most profound artistic treasures.
Black Music Month at its core is a celebration of the genius and prodigious musical output of people of African heritage in the Americas. It marks righteous pride in our ingenuity and beauty. It taps into the same cultural pride and unimpeachable ascendancy that brought Black History Month into the common lexicon, offering as it did the open invitation to all and sundry – but especially to African Americans – to luxuriate in the pride and power of our indigenous aural soul sauce. Tasty! But like most celebrations, it also became a commercial vehicle, a boon to music retailers and radio programmers alike. Black Music Month was one of “our” holidays, one that generated not just abundant good will but cold hard cash, sponsored by the biggest corporations. (I garnered enough Black Music Month T-shirts, umbrellas, wall posters, baseball caps, CD samplers, calendars and jackets to supply a small village over the years.) But today many of the record companies, music retailers, radio programmers, and music executive jobs that were the beating heart of the black music business are no more.
As with Black History Month, the argument persists that every month of any year is in fact a celebration of black cultural expression. If one considers the broad array of musical styles that the term Black Music encompasses under its red black and green umbrella – hip-hop, neo soul (if in fact this term is still acceptable), R&B, funk, jazz, and blues – then the Black Music celebration carries on unabated January to December, for the music is still being made and purchased and enjoyed by legions around the world.
But if we consider the ways in which Black Music has been co-opted, contaminated, controverted, synthesized, dumbed down and ignored, today’s Black Music Month celebration could be seen as a sad mockery of a once-noble cultural pursuit. Is this opinion the sour grapes of those who once labored near the center of a thriving music industry that is no more? Is it the expression of an embittered elder shaking a finger at the young’uns over a bygone golden age? Perhaps. But I remember when Black Music was truly Black Music.
Is the celebration itself a shadow of its heyday? Is there still something to celebrate in today's musical output?
What do you think?
