The OJays said it best in their famous song I Love Music. Music is the healing force of the world and it is so true. Nothing can bring all kinds of people together like music can. I say it is the great unifier. In the bible it soothed kings, it delivered people out of depression, it made a wedding go viral, and it was a great way to celebrate a victory. When you look back in the past music defined many moments in our time, during the good times and the bad times. Most of us can hear a song and it will take us back to when we were young and it brings us back to those times. Music is the best nostalgia that affects everyone, no matter what age, color, male or female. The only thing is it’s generational. The music our parents listened to and what we listen to and what are kids listen to is completely different, but there are some distinguishing traits to it. They call it remix, but I say its getting some of the best music of our time and adding their style to it. The roots of the music is still the same. The music still talks about love, and relationships and they even have took some of the best love music from one of our best musician/singers ever and that is Barry White. The maestro of love. A lot of babies have been made listening to him and they still are today with his hooks in their rap music.
Mary J blige used a lot of his hooks in her music in her early years and they became hits, because of his orchestra music and his deep baritone voice. His song: Just The Way You Are, Your Sweetness Is My Weakness, and Me and Those Baby Blue Panties still bring a smile to many of our husbands faces. He actually was just a musician with an orchestra until they heard him singing and the rest is history.
We had another great musician/writer they called him the hardest working man in entertainment; however we called him the King of Soul: James Brown. He was my favorite artist of all time because I loved dancing and he made the best funk music of all times. His music is still used all over the world for commercials and especially in the hip hop game. There are so many artists that use his music, his beats, and his style of dancing. Michael Jackson once said he got a lot of his moves from James Brown. Prince said he did too. The new generation is a woman who prides herself on all of his moves and that is Janelle Monae. She said James Brown was one of her biggest influences growing up. James brown songs was during a time when black morale was very low and then he made a song called Say It Loud I’m Black And I’m Proud. He even stopped black people from rioting in the streets in Harlem.
You know wherever there is a king there is also a queen and that queen was Aretha Franklin: The Queen of Soul.
Aretha Franklin was by far the greatest soul singers of her time. Her song Respect is in the Rock and Roll hall of fame as the greatest songs ever. Her music is still being used on commercials and movies. She also was very much involved in the civil rights activities through her fathers church and she sang at the President Barack Obama’s inauguration and she replaced a famous opera singer at the last minute and it was one of her greatest accomplishments by far. These days there is a young girl named Demetria Champ who sounds so much like her people mistake her for Aretha Franklin all the time.
Music also was a defining moment in the civil rights movement for many artists through their songs which carried some powerful messages of peace, love, unity and justice for an oppressed people. The OJays song Got To Give The People What They Want, and Message In Our Music, was just a couple songs about civil rights, but they had many. The OJays song Family Reunion has been covered and sung at every black family reunion and on commercials about families sitting together eating. Another artists whose songs have generated more covers than anybody else is Donny Hathaway. His songs about love has been copied extensively for years as well as his peace, and justice songs. He is still famous for the song This Christmas. It is a staple in the black neighborhood and even on the radio station at Christmastime.
His song The Ghetto made living in he ghetto something we could be proud of. It conjures up images of a black family living in the ghetto and dealing with being treated as menial people, but still happy and thankful just being together. A song for you is another one of his most covered song these days by the younger generation one of the best covers is by a white soul brother named Jarrod Lawson. Donny Hathaway is one of his favorites artists and you can tell because he sounds just like him with all that passion and emotion Donny sings with; and the fact that he has covered so many of his songs like; A song for you, I love you more than you’ll ever know. Donny also had sang music during the civil rights riots too Like; To Be Young Gifted and Black, and Someday We’ll All Be Free, but nobody was as heavily involved and affected by the times we were living through than Curtis Mayfield.
Curtis started with the impressions but wanted to sing about more pertinent songs about the things we as black people were facing on a daily basis. His music has influenced this generation more than any other artist of that time, because we still fighting to be seen, be heard, and be human; unfortunately we still fighting that fight trying to get in good trouble and holding on to our faith that one day, they will accept us as human beings wanting the same things that they take for granted like great schools, a clean and safe neighborhood, affordable, decent and good housing, healthy food to eat and job to take care our families. That’s all we want. You would think they acting like we want our 40 acres and a mule and reparations.
Curtis sang about what he saw in the hood and how it affected us. The Pusherman is a prime example of what was going on in the black community during the heroin years. Kind of like it is now in these meth days only difference we didn’t get treated like it was a sickness or get intervention programs to help us. Instead it destroyed generations of black people in every ghetto across the country. There was no interventions for us just prison, death, disease and destruction. Communities were gentrified and many of our black men were trained to become pimps and have hoes and that’s where the song Superfly comes from.
Superfly, Pusherman, and Freddies Dead was the true epitome of ghetto living during those civil rights years and every artist was singing about it in some form or fashion. As my grandfather used to say; the world is going to hell in a handbasket and it was. However; Curtis also sang about being in love too. His songs were the soundtracks of our lives. The Makings of You from the Claudine movie was one of the greatest songs he ever produced, wrote, and sang, as well as: So In Love, For Your Precious Love. His songs about what we need to do as a black people like Move On Up, It’s all Right, and We’re A winner brought us through some of the greatest tragedies of our lives or so we thought. Fortunately he never let us forget that we would find solace in Our God when he made the song People Get Ready. His music has had a profound effect on the younger generation fighting for the same rights that we been fighting for over a 100 years. There have been quite a few artists that have remixed some of his hooks and words to their style of music, so his music and his message will never die as long as we still have injustice, poverty, and hate.
The music of today has enveloped some of these messages just in a different way, it’s generational. One such artist is Ludacris. His music is loved by people all over the world, because his music relates to what they are going through in their everyday life. I love Ludacris we call him Luda. his music is good dancing music. It’s music I can even understand, with a message for anybody listening. Although he sometimes does it as comedically it still is relevant for today, that’s why he still performs at venues everywhere.
Luda will be performing at the Menominee Nation Arena December 4, 2021 7pm. Tickets are on sale now $50 and up. Songs like Move Bitch, and albums called Disturbing The Peace are examples of what this generation feels like. Music has a way of expressing how we feel. His albums Word of Mouf, Chicken and Beer, and the Red Light District exemplifies the ghetto life of the young bucks today.
Another artist/rapper talking about the struggles of living life in the ghetto is Nelly. His rap style has crossed over to the new rappers of today like T.I, Drake and others, but he started the style of rap music flowing with good beats and dance music. I know that my generation don’t understand this music, but it is still telling a message just not to us, because we are not living the life they are, but I still like it and I even see some of what he is talking about too.
Nelly will be performing at the Menominee Nation Arena December 17, 2021 at 7pm. Tickets are $79 and up. His Album Country Grammer had the hit Ride Wit Me it went gold, so a lot of somebody’s could relate to what he was talking about. His album Nellyville is quite telling about the neighborhood he grew up in and how the summer was spent there; so when he came out with his hit, Hot In Herre told the story. His style of talking is what we call country, because you don’t say things the way other people do. Growing up they would always think if you talked country then you were dumb and that is far from the truth unfortunately people still think that way.
So music is going to have to be what changes us in the long run. Jarrod Lawson Album be the change is a prime example of how this generation feels and this is him expressing it thru music. I’m going to be the change that I want to see and not just talk about it, because anybody can talk about it . It’s crazy how we can all be together at a concert and dance, talk, and laugh together, but as soon as it’s over we act like strangers.
LORD HELP US