01x03 - Music

[bunniefuu]

This is The 1619 Project.

When it comes to good company,
drinking bourbon, and talking music,

there is no one I would
rather sit down with

than my dear friend,

the Pulitzer Prize-winning
cultural critic,

Wesley Morris.

I used to love to study
all the album covers.

Well, that's what you would do.

- You would lay on the
floor. - Yep.

- Surrounded by albums.
- That's right.

Like many Black households,

where music was literally your soundtrack, right?
- Yes.

It's like every experience.

When you're cleaning on Saturday,
you have your music playing.

Before you go to church,
you have your music playing.

And in my household, when
my parents were arguing,

The Big Payback was playing.

Wait, Nikole...

your parents had an argument
soundtrack? - Well, my dad did.

My mom really wasn't into
the argument soundtrack,

but when The Big
Payback was playing,

we knew, "Don't go downstairs
'cause they're arguing right now."

That's when we would
just go to the floor vent

and pop the floor vent open

and put our ears to
it so we could listen

- and see what they were arguing about.
- That's deep.

Right?

When we lost my father,
Milton Hannah, in 2007,

he had little of material value
that he could pass on to me,

except his records.

They span the entire
spectrum of Black music:

gospel, blues, jazz, R&B, funk,
and even a rap album or two.

Probably my most
prized possession.

I... I don't know how much they
are valued in terms of monetarily,

but what I know
when I play them,

it transports me back to
a moment with my father,

but also to a moment for our people
and the history of our people.

I feel, clearly, all cultures
have a connection to music,

but for Black Americans, it
just always felt different.

How would you describe Black
America's relationship with music?

Ugh.

Deep,

um, like marrow deep.

You know, I think that one of the
things that... that makes us us

is... is the music.

Black Americans make
up 13% of the population,

yet account for an immeasurable amount
of what moves us and how we move.

Despite the centuries-long
efforts by white Americans

to warp, appropriate,
and steal our music,

and despite this country's
obsession with racial categorization

that has tried to box
our creativity in,

Black Americans have continued to create,
reshape, and transform American music.

Decades of billboard
charts teem with soul music

and hip-hop innovations.

Black choreography often starts
the dance crazes that sweep TikTok.

Decades of jams written, produced,
and performed by Black artists

sustain parties in places
with no Black people at all.

And this unceasing eruption of ingenuity,
invention, intuition, and improvisation

constitutes the very
core of American culture.

American music is Black music.

- We're saluting the Motown
Record Corporation, Hitsville, USA

and the wonderful artists

that have made it the greatest
company that it is today.

And The Marvelous Marvelettes!

♪ Please Mr. Postman by
The Marvelettes playing ♪

When we think about
Black music as American music,

we have to talk about Motown.

♪ Ooh, Baby, Baby by
Smokey Robinson playing ♪

Founded by Berry Gordy in
1959, in Detroit, Michigan,

Motown became one of the most successful
record companies in American history.

And as a young man
in Waterloo, Iowa,

my father fell in love
with the Motown sound.

♪ Just My Imagination (Running Away
with Me) by The Temptations playing ♪

It takes you to a place.

I would sing it, but
I will sound bad.

Okay. So
what is it about this song?

What's it about Just My Imagination
that is doing it for you?

- Right. 'Cause it's...
One, it's just so sweet.

- Uh-huh.
- Right? Like the harmony

- and, like, the wistfulness.
- Uh-huh.

And it's like,
even as a young girl,

and you don't even know
these grown-up feelings,

but you have your crush
in school. WESLEY: Uh-huh.

But it's also just beautiful
and it feels so good.

- This song is so soft
to me. - Yes.

Do you know what I mean?

And I mean, like, I mean that in
the most luscious, cashmere way.

- That's why I like talking to you
because I'm like, "It's beautiful,"

and you're like, "It's like
wearing cashmere in verse."

And what's crazy, like,
my dad had every...

every single, uh, Temptations
album that came out,

even... even the ones that
no one has ever heard of.

Why The Temptations for him?

He loved The Temptations.

- Um, he loved the
harmony. - Mm-hmm.

Uh, I think he loved
the storytelling,

which is why people
loved The Temptations.

The Temptations'
baritone, Otis Williams,

is the last surviving
original member of the group.

So, first, I just have to say,

uh, Mr. Williams, it's such an
honor to be interviewing you.

I wanna go back and just talk a little
bit about your relationship with music.

When did you go from being
just a regular person

who thought it might
be cool to sing,

to actually saying, "I'm gonna
pursue this for my career"?

When I saw the Cadillacs...

♪ My real name is Mr. Earl ♪

Frankie
Lymon and The Teenagers...

- ♪ Ooh-wah, ooh-wah, ooh
Do the things that's right ♪

The Royal Jokers.

They had a big rock-and-roll
show come to the Fox Theater.

At 14 years old,

I'm watching 5,000
people go crazy

over what five guys
were doing on the stage.

So I said, "I got to
do what they're doing."

- So I'm just imagining
14-year-old Otis in this crowd.

I don't even know if your... Your
parents knew you were there or not...

- They came looking for me.
- I figure.

One of the first groups
launched by Otis Williams

was Otis and the Distants,

and they were spotted performing
at a recreation center in Detroit

by a young Berry Gordy.

Smokey Robinson wrote The Way
You Do the Things You Do for us.

So he started playing,
dam-ta-dam-ta-dan-ta,

and we're looking at him.

"You got a smile so bright.
Holding you so tight.

"You could have been a..."

"What? Oh, man, this
is some hokey mess."

But we... we went
on and performed it.

And that was our
really first big hit.

♪ The Way You Do the Things You
Do by The Temptations playing ♪

It wasn't that Black
artists hadn't had success before.

But before Motown, no Black
company released records

that consistently equaled or
bettered the top white artists

on the pop music charts.

You've written a
lot about Motown.

Why was Motown so significant?

Well, first of all, it
was the first Black-owned company

that was making Black
music for America,

whose artists all of America
could see at the same time

because of television.

Having all of America
be able to hear a sound

that nobody had really
ever heard before,

this combination of, like, gospel
elements and the juke joint,

you know, a band...
a rock-and-roll band.

You know, you could hear the tambourine
and these vocal harmonies on the one hand,

but also, you know, these
banging drums and guitars.

And Motown was the
first company to do that

in a way that sort of
forced white people

to also have to look
at Black people.

To me, when you hear
that early Motown sound,

which is very, you
know, happy, joyful,

it's about love,
it's puppy love,

while, of course, really horrific
things are happening to Black people.

What was the... The
secret to producing music

that aesthetically
still sounded Black?

Um, it wasn't Black people up
there in white face, right?

- And it's important to
say that... - But...

- It's important to say that
it was unmistakably Black.

- We recognized it as Black music...
- Yes.

- and yet, it was also attracting
massive white audience.

- What... What was it?
- I mean...

- How... How did they manage to
do those two things at that time?

I mean, for Black
people, it's really important,

- but for white people, it was
eye-opening. - Mmm.

The idea that you
were watching Black people

comport themselves as human
beings went against so many things

that everybody in this
country was being told:

Black people, they were
incapable of loving,

they weren't worth being loved.

And here they were with, you
know, zero stress in their voices,

but, like, joy and pain, singing
about having their hearts broken

or wanting to give their
heart to somebody else.

I mean, there was no denying

that you were watching a people
sort of argue for their humanity.

♪ I'm wading
water to my knee ♪

♪ I'm gonna
pray, I'm gonna pray ♪

♪ Wadin'
water to my knee ♪

GROUP: ♪ I'm gonna
pray 'til I die... ♪

The stars of Motown were
the descendants of enslaved people,

women and men who made
music as they labored.

The basis of American popular
music began on the plantation

where our ancestors melded their
traditions and rituals with Christianity

and created the sorrow songs,
otherwise known as spirituals.

These would become the first
original American folk music.

So in folk
spirituals, you had call and response,

and verses could be
added and changed.

No one knew how long
a song was gonna last.

One person could stand up
and start raising a song,

and people would learn it as they went
and be able to participate in that way.

Generally, there was
also movement involved.

There was percussive sort of stomping
of feet, clapping of the hands,

and the expectation that there would
be some type of spiritual cl*max.

- ♪ Sometimes I feel like
a motherless child... ♪

Although the spirituals
were influenced by European hymns,

they were fundamentally
different.

And those differences can still
be heard in contemporary gospel.

- The first example that comes to
mind is A Charge to Keep I Have.

European hymnody, the melody
goes something like this:

♪ A charge to keep I have ♪

♪ A God to glorify ♪

♪ To serve this present age... ♪

Something like that, right?

Beautiful and lovely.

And so in a Baptist church,
you would not sing it that way,

you would line it out.

♪ A Charge to Keep I Have
by Troy Ramey playing ♪

I mean, the
music was beautiful.

It comes from this place of...
of great pain and uncertainty,

but also hope.

There's a whole
cultural experience

that is fascinating and
foreign to white people.

Lot of, like, people
writing in their diaries

about, like, experiencing

what these strange
enslaved people are doing.

But they're drawn to it.

Despite their alleged repulsion of
us, they are drawn to this music.

White fascination with Black
music during the era of sl*very

quickly translated to an
appropriation of our sound

and a gross distortion
of our image

that would repeat for decades.

- I now give you that
golden-throated meadowlark,

"Mr. Tambo" Rex Allen!

Rex Allen? That's me.

♪ Come where my love
lies dreaming... ♪

The origins of
blackface aren't really known,

but the myth goes that
a man named Thomas Rice

saw an older black man grooming a
horse while singing and dancing,

and a light bulb went off.

- He goes out on stage and performs
for a packed house of people.

- And what...
- In blackface?

- He paints his face
black and he sings a song

that is essentially mentioning
this new character that he invents

named Jim Crow.

The original appropriation.

- ♪ Weel about and turn
about and do jis so ♪

♪ Eb'ry time I weel
about I jump Jim Crow ♪

The original
appropriation

that isn't just responsible
for the appropriation

you and I are talking
about right now.

It is the... the...

It is the reason for the
fight that we are still having

about who can say what for whom,

who can speak on behalf of whom,

who can sing whose song.

This fight, this moral and ethical mess
that we are still in, in the 21st century,

starts in the 1830s.

Rice's
blackface performances

were a massive hit
with white audiences,

and by the mid-1800s,
blackface minstrelsy

had become ingrained
in American culture.

- There are people who think that this
is some act of appreciation, right?

Uh, because it's an acknowledgment
that Black people exist at all.

But it does matter who it's for,

who gets to craft it, and who
benefits financially from it.

In fact,
it was so popular,

that if Black artists,

who were rarely permitted to
perform in front of white audiences,

wanted the chance to
join the mainstream,

they had little choice but
to embody the grotesque.

They had to perform
in blackface.

- Be somebody. Follow in
the footsteps of great men.

- Men like Booker T. Washington.
- That's a great man.

That's a man...

I would say blackface
minstrelsy is the key to everything

with respect to American
popular culture,

with respect to the way that
white people understand,

or think they
understand Black people.

It is responsible for some of the
neuroses that we have as a people

in terms of how we think
we're being perceived.

But despite its
long-lasting impact,

Black artists of the era
continued to innovate.

And at the height of minstrelsy,

a group of students at the
historically Black Fisk University,

many of them newly emancipated,

reimagined the spiritual,
creating a new musical style.

- ♪ O, rise! Shine! For
thy light is a-coming ♪

♪ Rise! Shine! For thy
light is a-coming ♪

♪ O, rise! Shine! For
thy light is a-coming ♪

My
name is Jeffrey Casey.

I am 21 years old from
Nashville, Tennessee.

And I'm a senior business
administration major

here at Fisk University.

I've just had the blessing of
being a Fisk Jubilee Singer

all four years of my...
my collegiate career.

♪ Steal away ♪

♪ Steal away ♪

♪ To Jesus ♪

- Um... probably a bit
softer at the beginning?

Yeah.

♪ Steal away home ♪

♪ I ain't got long... ♪

In 2021, The
Fisk Jubilee Singers

celebrated their
150th anniversary.

The a cappella group performs
formal arrangements of spirituals.

- They would call it American
folk music at one time,

and the Jubilee Singers were
able to completely incorporate

into a more, I guess, European,
Western style of music.

So the n*gro spiritual then being infused
with European music and Western music,

uh, to create the
concert spiritual.

♪ The Gospel train is coming ♪

♪ I hear it just at hand ♪

♪ I hear those car
wheels moving ♪

♪ And rumbling
through the land ♪

♪ Get on board, children
Get on board, children ♪

♪ Get on board... ♪

The original nine-group
ensemble was formed in 1871

as a way of trying to raise
money for the young institution.

Ella Sheppard, who
was a young Black woman,

she starts arranging these songs

that they've been sort
of singing to themselves

and singing among themselves.

And it is with that canon of music
that they begin to find success.

Ella Sheppard collected
and arranged countless songs

for the group's repertoire.

During the starkly violent era
following the end of sl*very,

the Jubilee Singers toured the
country and even went overseas,

drawing audiences that
included Mark Twain,

President Ulysses S.
Grant, and Queen Victoria.

And it is the music
of the Fisk Jubilee Singers

that people hear in Europe

and start to say, "Okay, now America
has its own classical music."

The efforts
of the Jubilee Singers

ensured that the songs of the
enslaved would be firmly entrenched

in the musical fabric
of the country.

♪ Swing low, sweet chariot ♪

♪ Comin' for to
carry me home... ♪

Their version of
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,

a traditional spiritual,

has been recorded
scores of times,

in countless variations by
the likes of Etta James...

♪ Swing low... ♪

The Staple Singers...

♪ Sweet chariot... ♪

Johnny Cash...

♪ Comin' for to
carry me home... ♪

and Merle Haggard.

♪ Swing low ♪

♪ Sweet chariot ♪

♪ ...help me ♪

♪ Won't you help me in
the service of the Lord ♪

♪ I'm a-rollin', I'm a-rollin' ♪

♪ Through an unfriendly world ♪

The Fisk Jubilee
Singers share a legacy

with other a cappella
groups of the time.

But these concert spirituals only
tell a small part of the story

of Black music during that era.

And many other innovations
were taking place

outside of the concert hall.

♪ My man's got a heart ♪

♪ Like a rock cast
in the sea... ♪

T he blues derived from
spirituals and field hollers

used by Black men and
women picking cotton.

Songs about love, sex, and the
harsh realities of Black life

could be heard in juke
joints and cabarets,

first in the deep South,
then across the country.

And without the blues,
we wouldn't have jazz.

♪ West End Blues by
Louis Armstrong playing ♪

When I think about
jazz and how it comes to us,

I wanna say it's the sound
of collective liberation,

and I mean that in
a very musical sense

because the music that emerges
has collective improvisation.

So it is a structure

that allows for everybody to say
what they need to say musically.

Black Americans have always
utilized improvisation in our music,

and jazz provided the perfect
platform for that improvisation.

♪ Jazz music playing ♪

The unrestricted
expression of jazz

created music born of feeling,
of play, of exhaustion, of hope.

It was a space where singers
and musicians could be free.

Jazz was born in the heart
of Black New Orleans,

and quickly drew
international adoration.

But even as it was beloved
in London or Paris,

that didn't mean that love
translated to America.

- You have readings of it,
both fascination and repulsion.

White people, uh, were concerned
that jazz was a corruptive force

that would lead to race mixing.

There is this fear
and this understanding

that embracing the music can mean
literal embracing of the people,

or just a sort of humanistic
embracing of the people,

both of which America's not
interested in at the time.

And now Louis
Armstrong and the Duke!

Let's hear it for them!

Artists like Louis
Armstrong could be successful,

but that success was
limited and conditional.

- Very often, Black men
still have to find a way

to make white
audiences feel safe.

- ♪ I'll be glad when you
dead, you rascal, you... ♪

For Louis Armstrong,
he is incredibly talented,

and he's able to draw on
comedic chops to disarm.

And so, it makes Louis
Armstrong more vulnerable

to white audiences' projections
of these minstrel archetypes.

These depictions of one
of our country's finest artists

made him popular
with white America,

but his reputation with Black
America proved complicated.

By the civil rights era,

he was no longer seen as a hero
celebrated for breaking barriers.

Instead, a reputation as a sell-out
dogged him for the rest of his career.

- I'm not gonna claim that that is
how Louis Armstrong saw himself.

I don't believe it so.

But it makes him a canvas

onto which white audiences seamlessly
and easily see these archetypes

that are so rampant in
American society writ large.

♪ ...never, never go away ♪

♪ Dolly'll never go away again ♪

- And so you argue that Motown
was the antidote to minstrelsy.

Because it was.

Berry Gordy's timing was
perfect. NIKOLE: Mmm.

He started
this company

when there were cameras to put
these Black people in front of.

And so, the thing
about minstrelsy

was what it managed to
do to the Black image.

The idea that white people got to tell
this country who Black people were

before Black people even had the
right to perform in their own name

is what got us into this mess.

And even as Motown chipped
away at the legacy of minstrelsy

and white audiences seemingly
accepted Black performers,

those performers still
suffered the indignities

of the country's deeply
entrenched racial caste system.

- You being a Southern young man yourself...
- Right.

White people are
paying to hear you perform,

and yet, treating Black people
poorly outside of the arena.

- Did that... Did that bother you?
- It hurts. Oh, sure, it hurts.

Oh, yeah, no question.

- What was it like to be making
the type of music you were making

when the country was really in
a period, almost, of revolution?

- We were like a soothing
ointment to the troubled soul.

That music is powerful.

Even though all that
was happening around us,

we did not lose the faith and the ability
and the steadfastness to keep it going on.

But while some Motown
artists sang to soothe us,

others, both inside and outside
the machine that Berry Gordy built,

spoke directly to the
struggle of the times.

They simply couldn't ignore the
reality of the world around them.

There was a lot of
unrest in America.

There were college kids
being shot on campuses.

My brother was at w*r,

and I prayed a lot that he
would come through safely.

Just as the respectability
politics of the Civil Rights Movement

was giving way to
a new militancy,

by the early '70s,

the buttoned-up machine
that Berry Gordy created

was colliding with the
turmoil of the times.

There were artists who
didn't like being boxed in,

uh, and not being able
to speak to the time.

All hail the Mr. Gaye!

♪ Brother, brother, brother ♪

♪ There's far too
many of you dying... ♪

He was responding to the w*r.

He was responding

to what we would now call the
environmental consciousness movement.

And he was talking about racism
and poverty in the United States.

And nobody in... in... in
American popular music,

at his level, was doing
anything like that.

And it just changed everything.

Other Motown artists
would catch up to Marvin.

Stevie Wonder and The
Temptations both released records

that reflected the times.

But as those musicians worked
from inside the Motown machine,

artists like George Clinton...

♪ We Want the Funk by
George Clinton playing ♪

Sly & The Family Stone...

♪ Thank You by Sly
& The Family Stone ♪

James Brown...

♪ Papa's Got A Brand New
Bag by James Brown playing ♪

and Betty Davis...

♪ Steppin' In Her I. Miller
Shoes by Betty Davis playing ♪

sparked a revolution that spawned
a whole new style of music

that was sexy, rebellious,
and politically unafraid.

♪ Give Up the Funk by
Parliament playing ♪

My dad loved funk,

and his album collection is a
musical journey through the genre.

With its strong bass lines,
steady, infectious drum beats,

psychedelic guitar riffs,
and political critique,

funk is a groove, a
looseness, a freedom.

In many ways, funk
was a rebellion

against the broken promises
of the civil rights era.

There was all this hope

and then by '68, it was like, "Okay,
well, this... this... this is over.

"We're not doing this anymore.

Or we can't do it."

- Once again, Black music is reflecting
what is happening on the ground.

So the Black power movement
is also coming out of saying,

"We're going to abandon these
respectability politics.

"We're not going
to dress like that.

"We're not gonna try to
talk about integration

"and appeasing white folks

because that didn't
work." WESLEY: Mm-hmm.

- And that's also what's
happening musically.

To me, when I hear
funk, I hear freedom.

♪ Say it loud ♪

♪ I'm Black and I'm proud ♪

♪ Say it loud... ♪

Funk
was life-giving.

It was something
that I worshiped.

It allowed me to express myself.

It allowed me to feel
others express themselves

in a way that other
forms of R&B didn't.

Nile Rodgers...
Producer, songwriter, innovator.

Whether you know it or not,
there's a strong chance

Nile is the driving force
behind a song that you love.

I'm Coming Out...

♪ I'm coming out... ♪

We Are Family...

♪ We are family... ♪

Notorious...

- ♪ No-No-Notorious... ♪

- ♪ You can be all the things
you've always wanted to be ♪

♪ Just let it shine through... ♪

And yes, even Soul
Glo from Coming to America.

♪ Good times... ♪

His career
spans six decades

and countless genres of music.

But his earliest success

is due to the innovation he and
collaborator Bernard Edwards

brought to dance and disco
music through their band Chic.

♪ Good times... ♪

Thank you so much
for taking the time out.

It... It truly is an
honor to meet you.

So when I think about the
era of funk and disco,

it doesn't seem like you can
divorce the rebellion in the music

from the rebellion in the times.

What was it like to... To be in
that musical moment at that time?

So I was a subsection leader

in, uh, lower Manhattan section
of the Black Panther Party.

When I started to make disco
music, as we call it, dance music,

it was the first time that
I was able to organize

more effectively than I
could do in the Party.

Hmm.

I wrote this song,
Everybody Dance,

the first song I
ever wrote for Chic.

And I went to a club

and I saw all of these people
that were disparate people,

Black, Puerto Rican, g*y,
straight, the... the whole nine,

and they all seemed
to get along.

They were, like, tight.

And I was like, "Wait a minute.
Th... Th... This doesn't make sense."

I was a better organizer.

I could get people
on the dance floor

- from every walk of life.
- Wow.

- And I just write, "Everybody
dance, do-do-do-do, clap your hands."

- ♪ Everybody dance, do-do-do ♪

The Chic mystique
continued to grow,

and even caught the attention
of the one-and-only Grace Jones.

When she heard Everybody Dance,

she was eager to meet
Nile and Bernard,

so she invited them to see her at
the world-famous Studio 54 club

on New Year's Eve of 1977.

This was the first time a
superstar called us on the phone.

Grace Jones has a very
distinctive voice.

I always say this, and this is
with complete love and affection,

but when we first heard it,

she sounded like a cross
between Marlene Dietrich,

Bela Lugosi,

and Bob Marley to our ears,

'cause she goes...

"So,
darling, what I want you to do

is I want you to
come to the back."

I mean, that's what it
sounded like to me, you know?

"To the back door of Studio 54

and tell 'em you're personal
friends off Miss Grace Jones."

I thought we had to imitate her

because it was so hard
to get into Studio 54.

You couldn't just
walk up to the door

and say, "Yo, I'm..."
You know, whatever.

So we knocked on the
back door and we says...

"Hello, we are
personal friends of Miss Grace Jones."

And the guy slams
the door in our face

and goes, "Aw, f*ck
off!"

Deflated, Nile and Bernard
grabbed a bottle of champagne

and headed back to
his apartment nearby.

So I just
picked up my guitar

and started singing the last words
that I remember this guy saying.

So I started going...

♪ Ah, f*ck off ♪

♪ f*ck Studio 54 ♪

♪ f*ck off ♪

♪ Aw, f*ck off ♪

And Bernard, my partner
and bass player, said,

after we had been jamming on
this thing for 20, 30 minutes,

he says, "We gotta
make this work."

- this thing on the soul
train, it's called Le Freak.

And they made it
work and work and work.

♪ Ah, freak out! ♪

♪ Le freak, c'est chic ♪

♪ Freak out! ♪

- It's the biggest-selling single
in the history of Atlantic Records,

even to this day.

No one has sold more singles
than, "Ah, freak out."

♪ Ah, freak out! ♪

By 1979,

the freedom and togetherness that
disco and funky dance music created

had inspired a backlash.

And the growing fear of an
integrated America that disco evoked

revealed itself
one summer night.

Between games
of tonight's doubleheader,

a local disc jockey blew up
disco records in centerfield.

A white radio DJ

who felt his station had
been overtaken by disco

called on rock enthusiasts, more
than 40,000 predominantly white men,

to blow up disco records
on the White Sox field.

Steve Dahl, the self-proclaimed
leader of the so-called Anti-Disco Army,

proceeded with the featured
event: The Disco Demolition.

And this is how I do it.

And then, I just...

Oh, that felt good.

anti-disco
slogan followed. Soon...

When the whole "disco
sucks" thing happened,

we didn't quite understand it

because we actually just
thought it was some kind of joke

that would, you
know, just pass over.

What do you think
was at the heart of that?

Racism,

classism,

people who felt like

somehow their exalted position

had somehow been snatched
out from under them.

We had two number-one
pop records that year.

For a Black group that
wasn't The Jackson 5,

to have two number-one pop records in
the same calendar year was incredible.

But guess what?

We never had another
hit record ever again.

People didn't answer the phone.

Nobody, uh...

It was... It was horrible.

And I had six failures in a row

until I met this
guy, David Bowie.

♪ Let's Dance by
David Bowie playing ♪

I did this record
called Let's Dance,

wound up being David
Bowie's biggest album.

Changed his life forever.

Changed my life forever.

♪ Let's dance ♪

♪ Put on your red shoes
and dance the blues... ♪

- After that, every
record I did was a hit.

- Thompson Twins and Nile Rodgers,
the man who made my record...

I did Duran Duran.

I did INXS. I did Madonna.

I did another Duran Duran.

♪ You must be my lucky star ♪

The first time
I heard Lucky Star,

I thought it was a Black woman.

- It sounded like Black music to me.
- Yeah.

- The music you were
making with those artists,

like, do you consider
that sound to be Black?

Absolutely.

With all of
his post-disco success,

it's clear that the industry
and the American public

were still in love
with Nile's music,

but seemingly much more

when it was filtered
through white artists.

- It just reinforced
what I had always known,

that my life...

was not...

really... my own.

I couldn't really do...

what I naturally,

and that's an important word,

what I naturally wanted to do.

I wound up doing
what I like doing,

but if I had my choice,

hell, I'd make whatever
record I wanted to make.

- Your list of collaborators, musically,
don't have a lot in common except for you.

♪ I'm up all night to get some ♪

What do
you think that says

about the lasting influence
of funk and disco,

and its imprint even on music
that's being made today?

It's not that
disco is somehow

more special than anything else.

But I do think that
the one thing it did

is that it absolutely was a catalyst
for bringing people together.

And that's why you see
hip-hop being so strong,

because no matter
what people say,

the reason why hip-hop is so big is
because white people love it too.

You can't have a big hit record
unless everybody buys it.

It's hard to
imagine American music,

Black music, without hip-hop.

The culture and its music
has shifted, changed,

and remixed American pop
culture several times over.

At its essence, rap is an innovation
based on all that has come before.

And given his place
in American music,

it shouldn't be a surprise
that Nile Rodgers had a hand

in shaping the early
days of hip-hop.

We were producing Debbie Harry,

who was the lead singer
of the group Blondie.

So one day Debbie
Harry said to me,

"Hey, Nile, I wanna
take you to a hip-hop."

So she drives me
to this playground.

So there was a whole
line of MCs, right?

Just standing there to wait their turn
to spit their rhyme over Good Times.

So I was, like, going, "Oh,
I... I understand that. Okay."

I felt honored that they
felt Good Times was hip

and that everybody was...

They had a... a rhyme
worked out to Good Times.

A while later,
Nile found himself

at one of his favorite
New York clubs, Leviticus.

And when he once again heard
people rapping over Good Times,

he thought it was live, but he
soon discovered it was a recording.

I look at the record, I
don't see my name on it anywhere.

I'm like, "What? You can't do that!
That's copyright infringement.

You cannot do that."

Eventually,
Nile made an agreement

with Sugar Hill Records
to use the track,

and the rest is hip-hop history.

♪ Rapper's Delight by The
Sugarhill g*ng playing ♪

Rapper's Delight isn't
the first rap song,

but it's widely considered the
first big commercial release.

Since then, nearly
every era of hip-hop

has had a connection to the iterations
of Black music that came before it:

jazz, soul, R&B, but
especially funk and disco.

♪ She's a very kinky girl ♪

♪ The kind you don't
take home to mother ♪

♪ My, my, my, my ♪

♪ Music hits me so hard ♪

♪ Makes me say,
"Oh, my Lord"... ♪

I think part of
the reason disco and funk

are so instrumental
to creating hip-hop...

'Cause that was all dance music.

So hip-hop as a genre

is yet another iteration
of a Black social music,

a dance music.

Most parents
in the South Bronx

couldn't afford to get
their kids instruments,

but what those kids
did have were records.

Or more correctly, their
parents had records,

introducing them to funk, disco,
soul, jazz, and the blues.

And having the history of
American music at their fingertips

allowed them to
transform the past.

The opening piano
line from a ballad

on Stevie Wonder's
Songs in the Key of Life

was repurposed for
Ol' Dirty b*stard.

♪ Ooh, baby, I like it raw ♪

♪ Yeah, baby, I like it raw... ♪

♪ One Step Ahead by
Aretha Franklin playing ♪

The Queen of Soul's
take on pending heartbreak...

A few generations later,
becomes a Mos Def track.

♪ Ms. Fat Booty by
Mos Def playing ♪

♪ The Payback by
James Brown playing ♪

And the Godfather of Soul?

He shows up again...

♪ The Big Payback
by EPMD playing ♪

and again...

♪ Everything by Mary
J. Blige playing ♪

and again.

♪ King Kunta by
Kendrick Lamar playing ♪

So we grew up on these albums,

and then, as part of
the hip-hop generation,

we grew up on the
sampling of these albums.

Yes.

Hearing a track where
it was immediately familiar,

- but not the same.
- Right.

Or you couldn't put your finger
on why it was so familiar.

- That's right. Right?
- Yeah. Yeah.

- 'Cause sometimes, you didn't
even know it was an old song

or you couldn't name what
the original song was.

- That's the genius of the sampling!
- But you would hear it and you'd be like,

"This feels familiar to
me." WESLEY: Mm-hmm. Yes.

In spirit,
sampling is a continuation

of something we've
always done in our music.

You take a song like
Motherless Child,

it comes to us from
the Antebellum Era

and has all of these
different lives.

It's sung by soul singers
like O.V. Wright...

♪ Sometimes I feel ♪

♪ Like a motherless child ♪

Richie Havens at Woodstock,

which he combines with
his song Freedom...

- ♪ Sometimes I feel
like a motherless child ♪

His version is
particularly agitated.

That already gets us at
least a hundred years

after the song comes to us,

a hundred years
after emancipation.

But then, it shows up on
Ghostface's Ironman album,

Motherless Child, where he
samples the O.V. Wright version

on this song with Raekwon.

- ♪ Sometimes I feel like
a motherless child... ♪

And for many artists,

sampling is about honoring the
memory of those who came before us.

♪ Emit light, rap,
or Emmett Till ♪

♪ I drew a line without showing
my body That's a skill ♪

♪ Bad to the bone
and the grill ♪

♪ You'd be dead wrong
if looks k*lled ♪

♪ I'm still on my spill
In the spirit of L. Hill ♪

♪ Eye on the sparrow
Nose like a pharaoh ♪

♪ Our bloodline trill for
the young and all the lils ♪

♪ We all gon' get mils ♪

♪ Talk a lot of game but we
get paid to like Jemele ♪

♪ Was raised upon a hill The
valley's a sunken place ♪

♪ I'm just tryna build like I
came with some kettle weight ♪

♪ Know I'm a god emcee
I made the devil wait ♪

♪ 'Fore I brought hell You ain't
gotta tell me I'm hella great ♪

Possibly one of the most underrated
and fiercest artists in the game,

Rapsody's sound draws a throughline
from the emcees that inspired her

to the music she grew up with
in Snow Hill, North Carolina.

If I had to
give the soundtrack

to what it was like
growing up in Snow Hill,

it would be two things,
right? Soul and hip-hop.

'Cause you have the aunties,
like my mom and dad,

and they're listening to,
like, Luther Vandross...

♪ Never Too Much by
Luther Vandross playing ♪

and Al Green...

♪ Take Me to the River
by Al Green playing ♪

and The Isley Brothers, and The
Temptations and all of that.

My older brothers and
sisters and all my cousins,

it'd be like Mary J. Blige...

♪ Be Happy by Mary
J. Blige playing ♪

Nas and, you know, A Tribe
Called Quest, like, you know...

So I... I got the
best of both worlds.

Snow Hill is just a few
hours from Tryon, North Carolina,

where Nina Simone, the
Priestess of Soul, was born.

Lauryn Hill is probably
my greatest inspiration.

And Nina Simone is Lauryn's
greatest inspiration.

And it made me wanna
dive into who she was.

And then I learned she's
from North Carolina.

♪ Southern trees ♪

♪ Bearing strange fruit... ♪

She has so
much depth and pain

and emotion in her voice.

I thought it was only right
and beautiful to sample her.

♪ Nina by Rapsody playing ♪

We did that in a time

where Black Lives
Matter was super heavy.

That was important to me.

Just bringing her
spirit in today

and making sure that her
message lives on through me,

adding my message to it.

♪ You'd agree ♪

♪ Everybody should be free ♪

♪ 'Cause if we ain't,
we'd be murderers ♪

I always hear her voice in my
head whenever I'm going in the studio...

"Do not forget, as an
artist, what your purpose is:

to reflect the times,
whatever that time is."

♪ Birds flyin' high ♪

♪ You know how I feel ♪

♪ Sun up in the sky ♪

♪ You know how I feel ♪

♪ Breeze driftin' on by ♪

♪ You know how I feel ♪

♪ It's a new dawn ♪

♪ It's a new day ♪

♪ It's a new life ♪

♪ For me ♪

♪ And I'm feelin' good ♪

With Nina,

it had something to do with
how she processes pain.

She can turn it into
something so beautiful,

so bittersweet.

And you feel like, "Oh, she
understands what I'm going through,"

because it's so genuine.

♪ She takes ♪

♪ Just like a woman... ♪

And Nina's somebody
too, who I feel,

like, reached across a
lot of different genres.

She would pick from Bob Dylan...

♪ Just Like A Woman
by Bob Dylan playing ♪

Leonard Cohen, The
Rolling Stones,

and she would bring it all
together just to express herself.

Brittany Howard knows
something about reaching across genres.

Throughout her
award-winning career,

she's seemingly played everything
and anything that she's wanted.

Well, if you're an
Uber driver and you ask me

what kind of music I play,

uh, I would probably just
say, like, "Oh, you know,

it's like a little bit, like, soul
and R&B kind of stuff, you know?"

But as time has gone on, it's
a little bit more than that.

And, um, I... I... I kind of can't
find a genre to put my music in.

I just like to
say it's my music.

It is Black, fat, q*eer music.

Howard formed the group
The Alabama Shakes in 2009,

and their unique style that draws from
multiple genres of American music,

is, at its core, Black.

♪ Hold On by Alabama
Shakes playing ♪

It was kinda like a MC5...

♪ Kick Out of the
Jaws by MC5 playing ♪

meets, like, Sharon Jones.

♪ If You Call by Sharon Jones
& The Dap-Kings playing ♪

And, um, grew up on
all that Motown stuff.

So we were kinda marrying,
like, this old Motown stuff

that we could all agree
upon, also with, like...

We loved Sabbath, we loved Pink Floyd,
we loved Zeppelin, we loved AC/DC,

and we kinda put it together

and the genre lines got
kinda blurred and confusing

'cause there wasn't like a
little box for us to go into.

♪ You Ain't Alone by
Alabama Shakes playing ♪

The music
industry decided

The Alabama Shakes should
be in rock and alternative,

but when Howard went solo,

she still managed to forge
her own lane and defy genre.

Wanting to make a solo record
was a very personal decision for me

because everything
was going great.

But to me, it was like,
"Okay, I've come this far.

"How do I make something that
is... Really feels like me?

"That also includes, like,
these hip-hop elements

and stuff that I grew up with."

♪ Goat Head by Brittany
Howard playing ♪

I love '90s R&B.

I wanna put that in my music,

and then I wanna
sing about who I am.

And the Grammy goes
to Brittany Howard.

Howard's
solo album, Jaime ,

was nominated in the
rock, alternative,

R&B, and roots categories
at the 63rd Grammys,

a rarity in an industry that
has long cornered Black artists

into "Black genres."

- So when the recording industry
starts in the early 20th century,

it basically has three buckets.

It has a Country
and Western bucket,

which is for rural and
Southern white folks.

You have the pop bucket,

which is, you know,
middle-class white audiences.

And then you have the
race music category,

which is any music
that Black people make.

And so race music is
this act of segregation

that puts all Black
music off to the side

and says, "Okay, we're only going to
market you to other Black audiences."

Black artists rarely
had the opportunity

to even be promoted and
introduced to white audiences.

♪ Tutti Frutti by
Little Richard playing ♪

Every now and then, songs
that topped the Black charts

would crossover to the pop
charts and become a hit.

♪ Tutti Frutti by
Pat Boone playing ♪

But more often than not, the
song or melody, or the "sound"...

♪ Sweet Little Sixteen
by Chuck Berry playing ♪

♪ Surfin' USA by
Beach Boys playing ♪

would be appropriated
by a white artist.

This appropriation often deprived
Black artists who created the music

from any real financial success.

The actual name of the chart
has changed over the years,

but the segregation created
by the music industry

continues to deny Black influence
in genres considered to be white.

♪ My Old School by
Steely Dan playing ♪

- Yacht rock is Black as hell.
It's Black. It's just Black, right?

It's R&B, you know.

♪ My Old School by
Steely Dan playing ♪

And even with that, like, a lot
of that had Black audiences.

Black people love Steely
Dan, love Hall & Oates.

♪ She's Gone by Hall
& Oates playing ♪

- I think that, you know, one of
the amazing things about music

is that, you know, despite all
the fighting that we have done

to achieve a kind of what...
Whatever we think equality is,

there are these moments
in American music

where equality and integration
have actually been achieved.

It's aberrant in a
history of exploitation,

taking our ideas,
our actual music,

making money from it and
never giving it back to us.

Um, so those... Those
moments of integration,

those moments of consensual
collaboration are rare

and all the more precious when they
also... When they also sound good,

um, when they also feel good.

But, again, the minstrel urge
in this country is strong,

and it is still
with us to this day.

Every time the Grammy
nominations come out,

I'm always like, "Oh, God, please
don't let it be another year where...

We can't even
win in our own category?

where X person
is going to take over,

you know, this... this ghetto
category that they invented

to keep us out of
the major categories.

You let the white people in,

and they, you know, they go
home with their arms full.

It's... It's a strong urge, and it
is... it is with us to this day.

But despite the historical
struggles that still exist in the industry,

Black artists have continued to
expand America's musical landscape,

tapping into a depth of feeling

that the field songs and spirituals
instilled in us from the very beginning.

Freedom for me is... is... is
something I'm always trying to experience.

Freedom from my own mind,

freedom in my body,
freedom to be.

And I believe from the very,
very youngest, youngest age

of experiencing music,

I... I saw that
freedom was there.

Freedom. This is
my next maturation.

Like, what does a completely
free Rapsody look like?

You know, where I'm not concerned about
I gotta tell this story, do so, like...

No, this is how
I'm feeling today.

And I could be human today.

This, I think, is what I've
been working at, that freedom.

When you have left something
so profoundly wonderful, strong,

you can't help but feel good.

The impression that our
music has made on people.

You know, so I'm just glad

to be a part of something that
is really, really powerful.

It was music that made
us think on a different level.

And to an artist,
that kind of freedom,

especially to an
artist of color,

that kind of freedom...

Like they say, you can't put
the cork back in the bottle.

Once that's unleashed
upon the world,

you can only go
forward from there

regardless of how hard the
gatekeepers try and stop you.

The music that my
father passed down to me,

that we danced to at
cookouts and family reunions,

and listened to in
moments of joy and sorrow,

is a part of who I am

and will, ultimately, be
passed on to my daughter.

So much of what makes
our music so beloved,

so full of life
and full of soul,

comes from the singular experience
of being Black in America.

So you wrote that the sound of
Black music is the sound of freedom.

- Mm-hmm.

That Black music is uncatchable,

and that is a... A
particular choice of word

for people who were
brought here in bondage.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Uh, so what is it about
Black music that is uncatchable?

I mean, it is constantly moving.

It is constantly
being transferred

from one generation to
the next generation.

I think it can't
be written down.

It can't be literally explained.

It's a feeling.

It's a thing that you
hear and recognize.

You know, it is a
spirit that lives in us,

and it's a thing that lots
of people want to respond to,

but they don't know what to
do with it when they get it.

You know, you have to... You
have to know it when you feel it.

There are centuries
in that music.

Centuries in that spirit.

And it sounds like a light thing, but
it's actually... it's actually deep.

And it's... it's too
deep to be encapsulated.

It's too fast. It's too elusive.

Whatever money they
want to make off of it,

they'll never get what
it's actually all about

because you can't catch it.

But if the
bedrock of American music

has been the expression of a people
who were denied freedom for centuries,

the bedrock of sl*very itself was a
uniquely brutal form of capitalism.

So this is
one of the first,

uh, highly standardized
plantation account books.

Six days a week, you have the amount of
pounds of cotton that they're picking.

If you're on the Amazon website,
you put the item in your cart,

boom, literally pops up on
your screen as a picker.

I've picked on an average,
350 to 400 items an hour.

They push you to pick 400.