Development of black musik

During the Black Arts movement music played a very important role. Since blacks were now able to express themselves, they also started to create and publish their own music. The most popular kinds of music during this time were Soul music in the 1960’s and later in the 1970’s Hip Hop. Famous singers of soul music were for example James Brown and Jimi Hendrix. Hip Hop started in the the South Bronx in the 70’s and was at first known as rapping, a half sung and half spoken kind of music that only later developed into Hip Hop. Most of the people that performed Hip Hop were men such as Ice-T, N.W.A. and Public Enemy. But later in the 80’s also female groups and singers like Salt-N-Pepa (see block entry: Salt-N-Pepa) and Queen Latifah started to enter the scene.

Songs during this time were almost always very political and addressed social issues like police brutality and poverty amongst the black society. To release their opinion and their anger about injustice against them and their suppression by whites, blacks used their music. Therefore the lyrics of songs during this time included harsh language and were almost always against whites and how they tried to keep black people down.

Sources:

- wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_music

- aalbc.com: http://aalbc.com/authors/blackartsmovement.htm