The Music That Remembers Us
WRITTEN BY Brooklyn White
PHOTO CREDITS:
Courtesy of Spelman College Archives; 2C2K Photography; Samira Rashid; Courtesy of Shaw University Archives and Special Collections; 2C2K Photography. William H. Kelly/University Communications; University Archives & Special Collections J. F. Drake Memorial Learning Resources Center, Alabama A & M University; Courtesy of the David Campbell Photographic Collection, Alabama State University Archives, LeviWatkins Learning Center; Courtesy of Mario Germanye Smith; Ezekiel Best/Fayetteville State University/Office of Strategic Communication; Kai Tsehay (@official_kaikai). Tyana Talley/@heytyanasimone; Midori Rainford; Morris Brown College Photographs, Archives Research Center, Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library; Courtesy of Mahalia Jessup; Anthony Fitzpatrick/Fitz Frames Photography (@fitzframesphotos); The Waheed Photo Archive/NAAMHC.
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ENTERTAINMENT OCT 22, 2022
Never Too Much? A Look At Sexually Explicit R&B Lyrics
By Jaelani Turner-Williams
ESSENCE tapped Black women music journalists to report on the "R&B is dead" debate.
ENTERTAINMENT OCT 27, 2022
How Did Hip-Hop And R&B Become One Genre?
By Rivea Ruff
Part 2
ENTERTAINMENT OCT 28 2022
R&B Isn't Dead, It's Just Different Now
By Imani Mixon
ENTERTAINMENT OCT 26, 2022
How Much Money Do R&B Artists *Really* Make?
By Jasmine Browley and Brooklyn White
Part 1
Part 3
Part 4
Long before language could hold our full humanity, rhythm carried it. The hum of breath, the stomp of feet, the hands against skin and drum—Black music was both refuge and release. We didn’t wait to be heard. We sang ourselves into existence.
This music is more than sound—it is memory, inheritance, revolution. It lives in the hush between church pews and the crackle of vinyl, in the verse of a freedom song and the bassline of a block party. It is the call and the response. The offering and the answer.
This space is a tribute to that power. To the brilliance of artists who turned struggle into symphony and everyday moments into eternal grooves. To the sounds that shaped a people and reshaped the world. Gospel, jazz, house, hip hop, go-go, trap, soul—Black music is a galaxy, not just a genre.
Here, we gather in reverence. We honor the foremothers, the beatmakers, the poets, the prophets. We celebrate the frequencies that remind us who we are, and who we’ve always been.
This isn’t just history. This is the now. This is the rhythm that raised us, the sound that still saves us.
Let this be a return. A resonance. A praise song.
Welcome home.
Black Music Month
Rhythm
Raised Us
month
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