The church was a crucial part of my upbringing, as it has been for so many others in the Black community. The church I grew up in gave me my progressive and affirming faith and also provided me with my biggest cultural connection to the Black experience. It also gave me the part of our culture that has had the biggest impact on me: music.

I have been a singer and a musician my entire life. It’s what I got my bachelor’s degree in, and it’s something I shared with my dad growing up. He was a musician who grew up in Clarksdale, Mississippi in the forties, and his connection to music is something I’ve always appreciated, especially as I’ve gotten older. I remember how certain songs by his favorite artists like Sam Cooke, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles and Gladys Knight made him feel a certain way. Whether it was their rhythms, stories or the way they carried their voices, there was always something different about the way Black artists conveyed a message through their music.

Music has always been an essential part of Black Culture. And the music that our culture has created is something that is consistently emulated around the world.

The musical offerings of the Black community were initially from enslaved people singing in the fields—what we know as negro spirituals. It was a way to get through and endure their suffering. Songs like “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” were sung in churches and in fields. At times they were even used as ways to deliver messages and signals on the Underground Railroad. But more often than not, spirituals were used as a way to stay in good spirits and overcome adversity.

Our ability as a people to find joy even in the hardest times goes back to slavery. But over time we evolved from singing in the fields as a coping mechanism, to being able to express the full scope of our emotions through our music. This started with the transition from spirituals to gospel and then to jazz, which played a pivotal part in Black history when Black voices were often silenced. Jazz was the language of liberation.

From our pain to our joy, the Black community also cultivated rock and roll, hip hop and of course rhythm and blues. Our contributions to the music industry and to broader culture are immeasurable, and the list of Black artists in each genre that we have been blessed with is endless. Yet the biggest impact from our music is its very existence—our words, our sounds, our collective experience in this country—shared among us and increasingly shared around the world.

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