Nina Simone - Mississippi Goddamn 1964

This was written by Nina in response to to the murder of Medgar Evers in Mississippi; and the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four black children. Ironically it sounds like a silly Broadway show tune until you hear the lyrics. This video includes famous shots of actual racial injustices.

Charles Mingus - Fables of Faubus (abridged )

Charles Mingus was a jazz artist however, this taunting track in reaction to Orvil Faubus' anti-integration stances is a gem. The attitude of the music conveys a strong enough message without the shouted out vocals.

Orval Eugene Faubus, Governor of Arkansas, is best known for defying a unanimous decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1957 by ordering the Arkansas National Guard to stop black students from attending Little Rock Central High School.

Billie Holiday - Strange Fruit

Strange Fruit was a protest song that depicted the ugliness of the Lynchings that were still going on in, but not exclusively in, the Jim Crow South at the time of its writing. The lyrics were written by Abel Meerpol, an English Teacher from New York City. His lyrics were put to music by Billie Holiday and first performed at the progressive "Cafe Society" in Greenwich Village. Cafe Society, was the first integrated club in NYC. Reception for the tune was first shock... and then applause.

Topics: Jim Crow, Lunchings, Ku Klux Klan

Funk

James Brown - Cold Sweat

In 1959, the legendary jazz trumpeter, Miles Davis came out with an album called 'Kind of Blue" it spawned a new style of jazz composition that incorporated true use of improvising over one chord as opposed to many. This allowed for a greater emphasis on rhythm and brought jazz music even closer to its African roots. James was deeply influenced by this recording and began to utilize this stripped down, compositional style in his own music. He also discovered that if you emphasized a hard down beat (the One), meaning the first beat of a measure of 4/4/ music that the rhythm became more intense. You can hear this in "Papa's Got Brand New Bag" and even more obviously in "Cold Sweat." Also notice how each instrument, including the lead vocal occupies its own rhythmic space. Each part fits together like a puzzle.

This is followed by "I'm Black and I'm Proud which represents James' on-going Martin Luther Kingesque message of self pride and existence. This track spawned a whole new trend in Black Pride lyrics from multiple funk bands to follow. It also marked the end James' good relationship with mainstream radio. Not only did stations refuse to play this song, but many were reluctant to play anything from him after the release of this track regardless of the lyrical content.

George Clinton's Mothership Connection

The Isley Brothers - It's Your Thing, Fight the Power

Here are a couple of examples of existing soul groups that went with the concept of James Brown's funk and with stronger lyrics about African American pride. This was epidemic in the late '60s and early '70s.

The Other Motown

Motown was formed on the idea of providing light hearted "party pop music" that appealed to all demographics. By the late 60s and early 70s, the labels most popular stars began to take their music in the directions of more social commentary. Motown's president and founder Berry Gordy was not particularly pleased with this direction, He was given no choice when he was presented with the public demand for this music.

Marvin Gaye - What's Goin' On

The lyrics of this song are timeless, unfortunately, which is why it can serve as a wonderful starting point to develop a lesson or assignment on the social conditions addressed here then, vs now.

Topics: 60s 70s Civil Rights, Viet Nam, 60s protest

Cutting Edge Musical Commentators

After a number of controversial shootings involving African Americans and police officers in numerous American cities, the eclectic and innovative, D'Angelo found it important to rush the release date of his first new album in 16 years "Black Messiah." This album, in the tradition of artists like Sly Stone, contains socially conscious material as well as love songs and songs with personal meaning. The track featured here addresses the above mentioned shootings. This review outlines the whole album in detail.

Topics: Current issues in Civil rights