Black entertainers have had a massive impact throughout history. They have written, directed, acted, sang, and entertained the world since before they were treated equally. We have artists from Nina Simone and Hazel Scot to more recently Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole. The artists have extensive power over culture and history.
From the early days of entertainment Black people have wanted a piece of the action. Many Black people in the early day found their way into entertainment to make a better life for themselves. Jobs were far and few between, especially for black people. Black women especially got into entertainment. Many roles were being a mammy or housemaid which often had these women degraded. I imagine that most of these women were happy to make their own money so they were not concerned by the status of their role.
Later we had talent like Hazel Scott who demanded respect and stuck close to her values and began to use her star power to make studios do what she wanted them to do. She would force studios to change her costumes and the costumes of others that she deemed racist. She had it written in her contract that she had full control over her songs and her outfits. She was black listed from Hollywood for her actions. Hazel Scott only marks the beginning of black artist gaining power
Hazel Scott also had an impressive music career along with other black artists like Sam Cooke and Nina Simone. Many different methods were used to try to stop these stars but nothing could really hold them down. They had too much passion for their craft and the will to inspire generations. They paved the way for artist like Aretha Franklin and Otis redding. Aretha Franklin is widely considered one of history's great singers.
Comparing the black artist then and now is incredible because we have seen the rise of another age of Black music. Many artists that we consider to be the best in our generation are black and have lots of power over their own destiny. We have black art forms like rap taking over the mainstream. In the 90s yes people listened to rap. In 2020 rap is considered nearly parallel in popularity to “pop” artist. Rap has become a lot larger than itself expanding into multiple art forms in and of itself.
The road to this particular music era is a combination of black and some white artists inspiring generations. Art has great power and builds role models for future generations.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10486801.2016.1118827
https://www.proquest.com/docview/230115151?pq-origsite=gscholar&fromopenview=true
No comments:
Post a Comment