Today is the fifteenth day of Black History Month. I tend to use this time as a way to remind readers – and everyone else of a couple of important facts:
- You can’t love Black artists and their work, and not see them as people
- Black lives — and Black art matters
- Black culture is American culture
So as we go through the month, I’m going to talk about a collection of Black artists. It’ll be fairly comprehensive and eclectic list — although it won’t be a complete list.
So far I’ve mentioned the following artists:
- Patti LaBelle
- Rick James
- John Lee Hooker
- Janet Jackson
- Aretha Franklin
- Chaka Khan
- Sister Rosetta Tharpe
- Curtis Mayfield
- Bob Marley
- J. Dilla
- De La Soul
- Ella Fitzgerald
- Dionne Warwick
- Grace Jones
- Whitney Houston
- Louis Armstrong
- A Tribe Called Quest
- Maceo Parker
Nina Simone is arguably one of the most uncompromising, unique and defiantly Black artists to have ever lived or created. Much of her work talked about the Black experience in America with an unvarnished honesty, frequently calling out the country’s hypocrisy, inequality, inequity and cruelty.
The 90th anniversary of her birth is next week. So let’s wish the grand priestess of soul a happy birthday while we’re at it.