It’s the fifth 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:
I’ve tweeted about this but I must talk about this here: Rock ‘n’ roll was created by Black people — in particular, Little Richard and this woman right here, Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Elvis, Johnny Cash, and Little Richard, and you can hear it directly in their sound. Without Tharpe there isn’t rock as we know it. Plain and simple.