Black Lives Matter Movement, Part 2

 Black History Month

Black Lives Matter Movement, Pt 2

With History comes Music, the two are correlative. It can be seen in the French Revolution when aristocrats lost their fortune and could no longer afford musicians, the concert hall began to rise in popularity creating a new atmosphere for composers where they could be as patriotic as they wished. It can be seen with technology. As the world developed their technology, music developed alongside it, using the different available technology to create and change their sound.

Like all of these moments in time, the Black Lives Matter movement changed and developed music. A range of artists are at the forefront of this development with musicians like Beyonce and Kendrick Lamar centering some of their songs on the issue of race and injustice. Another word for it is protest music. Beyonce’s performance during the Super Bowl interval can be argued as the starting point of this new type of music. Her performance was a pro-capitalist, black is beautiful anthem expressing black pleasure and joy in the face of black life under duress. A week later, Kendrick Lamar furthered protest music at the Grammys in LA. He took to the stage in a prison blues chain gang for ‘The Blacker the Berry and Alright’. Throughout the whole performance, Lamar clearly expressed the idea that black music was the resistance needed to the systemic mass incarceration of black folk. 

This style of music has been around for years with Billie Holiday, Curtis Mayfield, Nina simone and Jimi Hendrix but with the new age of injustice, a new generation of political artists were heard. 

Songs function as a political chorus where people are able to understand the situation more clearly and have help to express their own emotions. Since the death of George Floyd, many artists have released songs or updated songs so that they address the numerous protests across the world. For example, ‘The Bigger Picture’ (Lil Baby) was released with the music video using footage from the various protests and The Killers added new lyrics to their song ‘Land of the Free’ which clearly addresses George Floyd’s death:

“Eight measured minutes and 46 seconds

Another Boy in the bag

Another Stain on the flag”

I give you a challenge in that next time you listen to a song, take a moment to reflect on the lyrics deeply. What do you think they mean? Are they talking about a certain event, a certain person? Actually try to understand what the artist is trying to tell you through the music because you never know they might be trying to tell you something really important, that needs to be heard, that needs to be listened to.