I love all good music, but I just realized that the music industry has nearly abandoned R&B because they have come to see that it is the only form of music they cannot tear apart, break down, portion out, and appropriate.
The Blues, Jazz, Gospel, and Rhythm & Blues are the life's blood of the African American experience.
You cannot take us out of what we gave birth to. Through the pangs of slavery and degradation, beatings, chains, lynchings, murders, shackles, and rapes gave birth to a form of communication in which we could express rage and sorrow over these maltreatments. Who we are and what we felt about our condition was channeled through our voices and allowed to trickle down into every other performative art that has been influenced over the centuries by black folks music.
So many different forms of expression have been created as offshoots of such a torturous existence. As a result of us crying, scatting, and wailing in the Blues, Jazz, Gospel, as well as Rhythm & Blues songs of the past, so many other forms of music were breathed into life from the struggles of the Black Man, Black Woman, and Black Child.
Why isn't more being done to preserve our lamentations of joy, sadness, love, hate, and sheer terror?
Our music is our soul.
How can we sit back and allow this form of storytelling to be whitewashed and die out with the legends who lived it and utilized it as a tool to rattle the social consciousness of the world?
It brings tears to my eyes, my heart, and my very being to know that I grew up listening to the most profound voices of the past, only to see their art, ideas, works, and vision die out and roll away like tumbleweeds in the ghost towns of the American subconscious.
WE NEED A MUSIC REVOLUTION ACROSS THE WORLD TO RECLAIM & REJUVENATE THE BLACK MUSICAL SOUL.
SOMEBODY... ANYBODY... REVIVE US PLEASE!!!!
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Musings In B Minor
PoetryMusings in B-minor is a collection of poetry expressing life's experiences through the eyes of the author, Andrea Tumblin aka Ilianna Binoche.
