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Today is the 21st 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
- George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic
- John Coltrane
- Miles Davis
- Erykah Badu
Tonight, I wanted to celebrate The Supremes, one of the biggest selling and most popular acts of their day — hell, of almost any day. During the 60s, they had 12 #1 singles on the Billboard Top 100.
Sure they were glamorous — and perhaps the most glamorous act of their day. But goodness, those voices!