Today is the seventeenth 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 Hooke
- 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
- Marvin Gaye
Led by their equally legendary frontman George Clinton, Parliament Funkadelic is a collective of rotating musicians that created a distinctive take on funk that drew on psychedelic culture, sci-fi, surrealist humor and outlandish fashion. The outfit’s 1970s output would have a towering influence on the funk, post-punk, hip-hop and techno artists of the ’80s and ’90s. (Parliament Funkadelic’s influence on early hip-hop is massive — especially on West Coast hip-hop.)
1971’s Maggot Brain, 1975’s Mothership Connection, 1978’s One Nation Under a Groove were among a list of their critically applauded and commercially successful material: Between 1967-1983, the outfit had 13 Top 10 hits on the American R&B music charts, including six #1 hits. The band’s collective mythology — along with that of Sun Ra — would help pioneer the Afrofuturisim movement.
And I can’t possibly forget that the world famous Mothership is in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History & Culture.
Yes, they’re that important. And we can’t talk about Black History and Black art without mentioning them.
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