June is Black Music Month?

note:

This was written and posted last year for Brig Feltus' blog, but I'm bringing it out again for thought and commentary. I think it's ridiculous that we're pacified with Black Music Month.




June is Black Music Month?

It's kind of amazing that there's a black music month, when we revisit the fact that music has its direct origins in the Motherland, and its peoples, regardless of their more recent cultural names. Perhaps a great deal has been forgotten, or we've been distracted by and large by the trappings of modern remix culture, forgetting the contribution Kemetian/African culture has made in the reality we enjoy so fleetingly today.
Maybe fewer of us then we realize see reality, let alone appreciate what it tells us.
It would be a mistake not to bring the truth to light so we can all have another look.

Do we embrace the entirety of the black music experience beyond the 'beats'?
Do we respect the historical legacy of what this 'honorary' month calls 'Black Music'
enough to stand for its root significance or are we just living in a politically correct culture that has yet to adequately answer the real questions a month commemorating 'Black Music' signifies?

What is Black Music if not the origin of all music?
Soul has its roots in the motherland. Rock has its roots in the blues.
Chuck Berry is in those roots.
Muddy Waters is in those roots.
Lady Day is in the roots.
All of the Ancestors have lent their spirit to the amalgam that has come into development.
Would our time be better spent during this American government sanctioned month remembering the music as a 'Black Genre', or would it be better spent remembering the passion of a people and the light of a people struck in times of abject darkness from whose passions popular artists gain their framework, as shamans would gather ancestral bones for presentation to their inheritors?

Shall we remember the struggles of our forebears, and the tears that went into their musical poetry? The ache that bound the strands of genius tonal tapestries that so many are still sampling and using to reinvent?
Shall we even endeavor to remember beyond the month of June?
When we turn on the radio will we remember where that sample came from? Will we go to the library and take out some vintage cd's to get in touch with Charlie Parker, and Thelonious Monk? Will we allow John Coltrane to soothe our souls when we're restless?
Will we still be able to feel them? Are we connected enough to what's happening in world society to feel on the level that they felt in worlds that were not padded, or even afforded distractions to a quarter the degree we have available to us now?

More importantly will we remember that music used to be sacred, or will we commence to shaking our 'moneymakers' and 'pimpin those hoes' 'juss like those black bucks was 'spected to' when they were driven from plantation to plantation with a feather in their caps to mount their female counterparts and produce, produce, produce for those good ol' plantation owners?

Pimpin' ain't easy right?

Kind of sounds like what's happening now, doesn't it?
I mean... are any of these hiphop labels still owned by people of color? What about Black Entertainment Television, or Essence magazine? Do we care about our wealth any more, or are we so depressed we don't try for fear of loss?

Too heavy?
Really?
Or has it just been awhile since reality has been reintroduced?
When do the divisions and the commemorative labels start becoming helpful and stop seeming like charity for those of brown skin? Charity instead of reparations for the people whose resources are the origins of the wealth world society has enjoyed?
I could be wrong but I don't think I am.

I'd like a little reality in my holidays and commemorative months...
So for the ancestors, I'll leave you with this, because I am sure this would be the best way to commemorate them.
Take back your culture. Feel your art.
Remember but don't be chained by memory.
Do something with your wisdom.
Be the profound creations that you are.

You ain't nobody's nigguh, and you ain't nobody's hoe, unless you buy into that concept and wear those mental chains willingfully on account of those impressive beats... The beats that are so hot, the message of the words that essentially tell you, that you're nothing, can't hurt right? They certainly can't hurt your children...can they? I mean...the kids don't really know what they're listening to right? The beats are just soooo hot. You gotta move a little somethin' to it...give it some of your spirit in appreciation.

What's consciousness anyway when you can get them dollars?
Isn't that the message hidden in the beats (of your heart)?
I'd say get with the program, but which programming are you gettin' with?

Happy Black Music Month.

-
Your sister Dazjae