Harry Pace saw that there was profit to be made by Black people producing and distributing music for Black people. —Willie Ruff, musician and professor emeritus, Yale University Preamble: In 2020, I ...

In 2020, I published A Map of Jazz: Crossroads of Music and Human Rights (WS Publishing), a book that looks at the culture of jazz on a timeline with cultures of the world. At more than 500 pages, the ...

Early American banjo music is Black music. The banjo was created by enslaved African Americans, and according to the Smithsonian Institute, up until the 1830s, the banjo was exclusively an African ...

Black American music is music of the spirit, a profound diversity of lessons to be enjoyed. Never duplicated but often imitated, its drumbeats are heartbeats of the inner person that ignites American ...

Duke Ellington rejected it, Charles Mingus was ambivalent about it, and Wynton Marsalis is okay with it. For many African American musicians the word “jazz” is a double-edged term, sometimes ...

Editor’s note: UPMC Washington Teen Outreach recently held its 15th Black History Month Essay Contest. Here is one of the winning essays. 4.3% of America’s population consists of thriving Black ...