Growing up as a Black man in the South, I was always innately aware of the significance music played not only in my own life but in the lives of my family, friends, community and culture.
I grew up and saw the power music had to connect people from different walks of life, bring families together, let loose what had gone unsaid and unlock emotions from those with the most guarded exteriors. Going to any Black household as a kid, music would be playing in the kitchen, on the radio, at the cookout and — my favorite — the car. I grew up on Jill Scott, Kirk Franklin, Mariah Carey, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston and Prince filling our home with emotion and movement.
Music was integral to our daily lives.
June is African American Music Month, a time to celebrate the profound cultural and historical impact of Black musicians in the U.S. As a lover and performer of music, I find myself thinking back to the significance of song and why it is so ingrained in the identity of Black people.
Music has always had the power to tell stories. In many ways, Black music continues a tradition that stretches back generations to the griots of West Africa — storytellers, historians and keepers of collective memory who preserved culture through spoken words and song.
This was especially important when, not so long ago, Black people weren’t given the option to write down our histories, our family trees, our struggles, our victories, our heartbreaks or our love stories like others were able to do.
Song became more than entertainment. It became a means of preserving memory, carrying stories forward and ensuring our voices could endure beyond the limitations placed upon us.
Through segregation and beyond, song remained a vital tool when there was no representation of Black and Brown people on the movie or television screens. The world didn’t include us enough, but we were able to shape our own world through song.
Music was able to break barriers for the Black community and integrate spaces before the laws fully caught up. Even when institutions limited who was allowed to study music formally or whose musical traditions were treated as intellectually serious, Black musicians continued creating a work of extraordinary complexity, feeling and imagination. What would later become known as jazz did not emerge from lack of musical knowledge; it came from a different way of knowing. Through improvisation, storytelling, call and response, rhythm and collective expression, Black musicians reshaped how music could hold emotion, memory and experience.
The influence of those innovations did not end with jazz; the musical traditions Black artists cultivated continued to evolve, giving rise to many of the genres that shape our lives today.
From jazz and blues to R&B and rock to country to disco and hip hop and beyond, Black musicians have continually reimagined how stories, emotions and human experiences can be expressed through sound.
The impact of those contributions reaches far beyond any one community; Black music has helped shape not only what the world listens to but how the world listens.
Because of that influence, Black music has long resonated across lines of race, gender and sexuality. And as a gay Black man, music holds a special place in my heart. For the LGBTQIA+ community, there has been a long history of not being able to express ourselves wholly or publicly. Music could allow us to escape through song and be free from society’s expectations. It didn’t matter the singer’s gender or their object of desire’s gender in the song, we could escape into the sound.
This month, we also celebrate Juneteenth, marking the day when Union soldiers arrived in Galveston to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation. This day’s significance dawned on me when I moved to Texas. Standing on the land where freedom had been withheld for two years for the Black people of Texas, I find myself reflecting on what it means to truly feel liberated.
Texas has come a long way since 1865. The state ranks No. 1 in total Black population among all U.S. states. There is a thriving community who has made the state a cultural phenomenon. From Erykah Badu to Tevin Campbell, from Kelly Rowland to Letoya Luckett, and from Beyoncé to Megan Thee Stallion, all eyes are on Texas.
But from a political standpoint, Texas still has a ways to go until it fully embraces liberation. The state is constantly in the news for its redlining, gerrymandering, discrimination and anti-LGBTQIA+ policies. And yet, despite these attacks on our personal freedoms, we ain’t going nowhere.
I found a way to turn my passion for music into activism. I began working for the Normal Anomaly Initiative, a nonprofit dedicated to the liberation of Black and queer communities, based in Houston. This June, we are hosting the Black Like That community festival. It is a celebration of Black artistry and excellence, with shakedowns, rap cyphers, drag performances and an original ballad dedicated to being “Black like THAT!”
The festival hosts an all-Black and -queer lineup of performers, including Grammy winner Durand Bernarr, Texas’ Erica Banks and R&B singer and actress Amari Noelle. Unlike anything else in this country, this festival allows for Black and queer Texans to celebrate our shared culture through music.
It is a reminder that while music can be a tool for resistance and survival, it is also a record of who we have been and who we are becoming. Every generation leaves traces of itself through song. For Black and queer communities, music has often preserved stories that might otherwise have been forgotten. Beyond anything, most importantly, music is memory. Music is testimony. Music is liberation.
Jeffrey “Duke” Rainge Jr. is a Houston-based writer, vocalist, digital artist and cultural strategist. His work is rooted in the belief that art is a record of human experience, cultural memory and collective imagination. Through his creative and research-based work, he explores how communities preserve stories, identity, and knowledge through artistic traditions. He is a member of the Normal Anomaly Initiative.