For the Love of Music

Independence and Love

Music.

It comforts me. It calms me. It helps me access feelings I didn’t know I needed to process. That dear reader is the power of art.

And the art of my life is music.

My love affair with music began at a young age in a Baptist church in Baltimore, MD. It was there that I first understood the power of a voice and how instruments can evoke a wide range of emotions.

I wanted to learn how to wield that power from the day I found out I could sing. I wanted to be a part of that elite group of people who could move others, and honestly, I thought it was impossible to get into.

I mean who am I to think that I could even begin to sing with enough dexterity to become as well known and influential as Whitney Houston, Jill Scott, or Mariah Carey?

A question I’m sure that thousands of indie artists have asked themselves at least once.

Nevertheless, I am thankful for the artists that are insanely popular that have come before me. Many of them have led us through a plethora of seminal moments in history. For example:

Nina Simone - “Mississippi Goddam” (Inspired by the 1963 protests and bombings in the southeastern U.S.)

Ray Charles - “Georgia on My Mind” (His rendition was more popular than the original song as it was being sung from the perspective of a black man reminiscing on life in the segregationist state.)

Michael Jackson - “They Don’t Care About Us” (Written as a protest against all forms of injustice. The subsequent short films directed by Spike Lee, led to the improvement of housing in a well known shantytown in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. Known by the locals as favelas.)

The list of black artists making positive long-lasting change is obscenely long.

And they were able to get these messages out to the general public because of their backing and powerful relationships.

Michael Jackson and Spike Lee for example.

But what about the small towns? The places these big artists don’t get the chance to go to because their label doesn’t deem it profitable. Once you get signed to a company, there are other people in the mix with their own agendas. And sometimes messages get watered down and small places don’t get exposed to the power they need to incite change in their area. Those towns still need the same potent seasoning that black musicians bring to the table. As someone who grew up in a small town, I can tell you from experience they are more likely to listen to their own people than outsiders.

Therefore, I think it’s time we gave some shine to the artists who had messages that were just as potent as someone like Chaka Khan or Ella Fitzgerald. Potency and volume in the culture don’t always see eye to eye but in my opinion, the content is and always will be the king of the expressive arts.

So welcome to Melanated Melodies, the corner of the internet dedicated to the not-well-known musicians both absent from this plane of existence and those currently moving through life.

As one of those independent artists I look forward to having a lot of deep discussions about lyrics. Honestly that’s the whole point of doing this blog, to foster a community of people that enjoy discussing the things that we might not get to discuss in regular conversations. I hope to watch the discourse in morph into actions we can take to uplift black people. Because we don’t have to be signed to a label to cultivate the resources and relationships necessary to make positive change a reality.