During Black Music Month, Herb Spivak, co-owner of two of Philadelphia’s legendary jazz clubs, the Showboat and Bijou Café, and I lamented how the annual celebration is increasingly focusing on today’s popular music while ignoring the roots. Like all Black music genres, hip-hop flows from a tree with very deep roots.

I’m a doer so I suggested that we write an opinion piece. We did. Our op-ed was published online and in the print edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Here’s an excerpt:

There was a place outside in Washington Square known as Congo Square, where free and enslaved Black people would gather to sing and dance to the music of West African cultures. Bandleader, composer, and Philly native Francis Johnson performed across the United States and was the first Black musician to tour Europe with a band in the 1800s. Soon after, he was followed by singer Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, who also lived in Philadelphia.

The flood of Black music out of Philadelphia continued into the 1900s, as Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker improvised bebop at the Down Beat on South 11th Street, Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff founded Philadelphia International Records, and the Roots played hip-hop on South Street.

[…]

Black music history matters. As Marcus Garvey, founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, said, “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.” Black music has always been more than entertainment. From the “sorrow songs” of the enslaved to the protest songs of the Black Lives Matter movement, Black music is a first draft of history.

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