From the Spirituals to Hip Hop

A Lecture on the Socio-Political Importance of Black Music in American Society By Hasan Salaam

Purpose:
To help those who attend gain a better understanding of how Black Music in America has been a weapon in the fight for freedom, justice, and equality. To show how the social and political climate gave birth to each generation and form of the music from the Spirituals to Jazz to Rock & Roll to Hip Hop.
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Overview:
The lecture builds on how Black Music is/was born as a response and tool to deal with and combat the oppression we face in everyday life. There is a connection and a common thread that weaves the mathematical compositions of Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk to the science of Rakim and The Wu-Tang Clan. That same spirit of resistance and retaliation against Jim Crow shown by Ray Charles, or the attack on Governor Faubus by Charles Mingus also lived in N.W.A. when they took on the L.A.P.D. We have seen the genius of Charlie Parker with the flatted 5th and ingenuity of Grand Wizard Theodore with the scratch, it is all in our music and it is all in this lecture.