9 Black Artists Who Reshaped Music
Listen to the audio version of this essay on the podcast.To celebrate Black History Month, here’s a list of some of the more unsung highlights in the iconic legacies of nine black music artists — one for each decade of the last 90 years. (Please note that this is by no means an exhaustive list.)
1930s — Robert Johnson
If we were to sketch out the evolutionary tree of modern music, Robert Johnson would probably be at the root, representing the common ancestor of all contemporary music genres. The 29 songs Johnson recorded in just two different recording sessions in 1936 and 1937 became the blueprint for all things blues. The mastery of his finger-work is evident in these songs that are both country and ragtime in nature. Fast forward to the 1960s, these songs were rediscovered and became a major epiphany for rock n’ roll artists, serving as a retroactive influence for music acts such as The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton. Less of a highlight and more of an epitaph, Robert Johnson is also the very first inductee into the infamous 27 Club (i.e. the ominous group of musical greats who have all passed at age 27, like Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse). He’s also most likely the first rock star to have a prominent conspiracy theory surrounding his legacy, as legend has it his musical abilities were given to him by the Devil when he met him on a street corner one day.
1940s — Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday is most known for pioneering improvisational vocal delivery and phrasing in jazz music, and her 1939 song “Strange Fruit” will forever be known as the ultimate protest song. But what’s rarely talked about is the song’s importance in following decades as the Civil Rights Movement began to gain traction. Billie Holiday was afraid to record and perform the song, which had lyrics directly addressing the lynchings of African-Americans. The song wasn’t just a poetic lament, but a deafening protest song, something that didn’t exist at the time. It’s credited as being "the first unmuted cry against racism, pivotal in bringing issues of racism to the consciousness of white people." To give you perspective, Holiday first sang the song sixteen years before Rosa Parks took her stand on that infamous bus ride, leading legendary record producer Ahmet Ertegun to call the song "a declaration of war…the beginning of the civil rights movement.”
1950s — Miles Davis
Miles Davis has been called the most revered jazz trumpeter of all time for making key contributions to the evolution of the genre by laying and building on the foundation for bebop, cool jazz, and jazz fusion, to name a few. His album Kind of Blue (1959) is credited for a more ubiquitous kind of influence, however, as his popularization of freeform jazz pushed his influence past solely jazz. Rock artists have a huge debt to pay him for things we take for granted, like jam sessions, 10 minute guitar solos and live improvisation, which can all trace its roots to freeform jazz.
1960s — Isaac Hayes
Isaac Hayes has been credited for not only changing the sound of soul but also its reach, as his contributions to the founding of psychedelic soul paved the way for black experimentation at the end of the 60s and for decades to come. Hayes’s opulent marrying of chamber pop and funk, employment of backup singers, mounting orchestras, and interpolation of his fuzzy guitar, foreshadowed the prominent sound of black music in the 70s eventually spearheaded by Marvin Gaye, who would make this sound mainstream and political.
1970s — Donna Summer
Donna Summer became a figurehead for gay club life in the 1970s, serving as the prototype for future female icons of the LGBT community such as Grace Jones, Madonna, and Lady Gaga. By introducing mainstream audiences to a prominently black sound that was then ratified by the queer community, she further solidified herself as the Queen of Disco. Her songs with Giorgio Moroder predicted the rise of techno and house music, with David Guetta apparently going so far as to say her song “I Feel Love” is the reason he’s an EDM producer today.
1980s — Janet Jackson
To successfully step out of the shadow of her family name, Janet Jackson worked with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis to create Control (1986) which was the catalyst for the New Jack Swing sub-genre, i.e. the prevailing sound of R&B from the mid 80s to the early 90s. Influencing the likes of Bobby Brown, Boyz II Men and even her big brother on Michael Jackson’s Dangerous (1991), Janet revitalized R&B by staking its claim in hip hop. The seismic combo of these two genres found in new jack swing introduced the possibility of having a rapper feature on an R&B song, a format that would later be popularized by Mariah Carey and is ubiquitous in almost all major pop songs today.
1990s — Mary J. Blige
As new jack swing ran its course, the shape of R&B was changed once again, this time by Mary J. Blige in the 90s. Where new jack swing utilized the rapid fire, staccato hip hop beats of the 80s, hip hop soul was created by singing R&B and soul melodies over the dense production of 90s East Coast hip hop tracks, influencing the works of TLC, Aaliyah and Mariah Carey. To further emphasize the dichotomy of the genre, Mary J. Blige sang songs expressing hurt and raw emotion at a time when being cute and soft was the more popular route for a female R&B singer.
2000s — D’Angelo
At the very start of the 2000s, D’Angelo’s Voodoo pushed R&B and black music even further past its limits by defying convention and blowing it all out of the water. Being inspired by rock, funk, jazz and everything in between, he took the neo-soul genre he helped create to the next level by doing all of these genres at once. He simultaneously brought mainstream R&B out of its fascination with hip hop and paved the way for black experimentation in the 21st century, which would influence the likes of OutKast, Kanye West and many more.
2010s — Frank Ocean
Frank Ocean kicked-started a movement in the 2010s that saw artists take ownership of the creative vision and production of their music. Due to lack of resources from his label, Ocean’s mixtape Nostalgia, Ultra (2011) was self-funded, self-produced and distributed via the internet. Artists like Chance the Rapper and Billie Eilish would soon follow similar paths. Despite the unconventional means, the acclaim of his work caught the attention of major artists like Beyoncé and Kanye West, who would employ Frank Ocean to co-write their songs and feature in them. Today, Frank Ocean drops music with admirable lax, choosing to release a song or two as often or as infrequently as he chooses. Being the master of his own artistic journey as a gay black man in R&B sets him aside as both an anomaly and a beacon of aspiration.
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