♪ Party People by The Math Club playing ♪
♪
♪ somber music ♪
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: 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. NIKOLE: Yep.
- Surrounded by albums. NIKOLE: 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.
♪ The Big Payback by James Brown playing ♪
Wait, Nikole...
your parents had an argument soundtrack? NIKOLE: 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.
NIKOLE: [laughing] 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.
NIKOLE: 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! [audience applauding]
♪ Please Mr. Postman by The Marvelettes playing ♪
NIKOLE: 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.
WESLEY MORRIS: 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.
- WESLEY: Uh-huh. - Right? Like the harmony
and, like, the wistfulness. WESLEY: Uh-huh.
NIKOLE: 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. NIKOLE: 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. WESLEY: 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 ♪
OTIS WILLIAMS: Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers...
- ♪ Ooh-wah, ooh-wah, ooh Do the things that's right ♪
OTIS WILLIAMS: ...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. NIKOLE: [laughing] 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.
OTIS: 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 ♪
NIKOLE: 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?
WESLEY: 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.
NIKOLE: 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-- NIKOLE: 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?
WESLEY: I mean, for Black people, it's really important,
but for white people, it was eye-opening. NIKOLE: Mmm.
WESLEY: 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.
♪
MAN: ♪ I'm wading water to my knee ♪
GROUP: ♪ I'm gonna pray, I'm gonna pray ♪
MAN: ♪ Wadin' water to my knee ♪
GROUP: ♪ I'm gonna pray 'til I die... ♪
NIKOLE: The stars of Motown were the descendants of enslaved people,
women and men who made music as they labored.
[group continues singing]
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.
FREDARA HADLEY: 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 climax.
[group continues singing]
- ♪ Sometimes I feel like a motherless child... ♪
NIKOLE: 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 ♪
WESLEY: 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.
NIKOLE: White fascination with Black music during the era of slavery
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... ♪
NIKOLE: 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 ♪
WESLEY: 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.
NIKOLE: 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.
NIKOLE: 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...
WESLEY: 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.
NIKOLE: 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 Lord says He's coming by and by... ♪
JEFFREY CASEY: 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 ♪
♪ To Jesus ♪
- Um... probably a bit softer at the beginning?
Yeah.
♪ Steal away home ♪
♪ I ain't got long... ♪
NIKOLE: 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 Negro 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... ♪
NIKOLE: The original nine-group ensemble was formed in 1871
as a way of trying to raise money for the young institution.
FREDARA: 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.
NIKOLE: Ella Sheppard collected and arranged countless songs
for the group's repertoire.
During the starkly violent era following the end of slavery,
the Jubilee Singers toured the country and even went overseas,
drawing audiences that included Mark Twain,
President Ulysses S. Grant, and Queen Victoria.
FREDARA: 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."
NIKOLE: 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... ♪
NIKOLE: 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... ♪
NIKOLE: ...The Staple Singers...
♪ Sweet chariot... ♪
NIKOLE: ...Johnny Cash...
♪ Comin' for to carry me home... ♪
NIKOLE: ...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 ♪
NIKOLE: 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... ♪
NIKOLE: 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 ♪
FREDARA: 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.
NIKOLE: 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!
[audience applauding, cheering]
NIKOLE: 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... ♪
FREDARA: 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.
NIKOLE: 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 ♪
[audience laughing, applauding]
- And so you argue that Motown was the antidote to minstrelsy.
Because it was.
Berry Gordy's timing was perfect. NIKOLE: Mmm.
WESLEY: 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.
NIKOLE: 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.
NIKOLE: ...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.
NIKOLE: 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.
[siren wailing]
There was a lot of unrest in America.
There were college kids being shot on campuses.
My brother was at war,
and I prayed a lot that he would come through safely.
NIKOLE: 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 war.
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.
NIKOLE: 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... ♪
NILE RODGERS: 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.
♪
NIKOLE: 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... ♪
NIKOLE: We Are Family...
♪ We are family... ♪
NIKOLE: Notorious...
- ♪ No-No-Notorious... ♪
- ♪ You can be all the things you've always wanted to be ♪
♪ Just let it shine through... ♪
NIKOLE: And yes, even Soul Glo from Coming to America.
♪ Good times... ♪
NIKOLE: 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... ♪
NIKOLE: 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, gay, 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 ♪
♪ Clap your hands, clap your hands... ♪
NIKOLE: 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.
NILE: 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...
[imitating Grace Jones] "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...
[imitating Grace Jones] "Hello, we are personal friends of Miss Grace Jones."
And the guy slams the door in our face
and goes, "Aw, fuck off!" [Nikole chuckling]
NIKOLE: Deflated, Nile and Bernard grabbed a bottle of champagne
and headed back to his apartment nearby.
NILE: So I just picked up my guitar
and started singing the last words that I remember this guy saying.
So I started going...
♪ Ah, fuck off ♪
[humming]
♪ Fuck Studio 54 ♪
♪ Fuck off ♪
[humming]
♪ Aw, fuck 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.
NIKOLE: 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! ♪
NIKOLE: 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.
ANNOUNCER: Between games of tonight's doubleheader,
a local disc jockey blew up disco records in centerfield.
NIKOLE: 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.
ANNOUNCER: 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-- [smashing records]
Oh, that felt good.
ANNOUNCER: ...anti-disco slogan followed. Soon...
NILE: 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.
NIKOLE: 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...
[audience cheering]
NILE: I did Duran Duran.
I did INXS. I did Madonna.
I did another Duran Duran.
♪ You must be my lucky star ♪
NIKOLE: 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.
NIKOLE: 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 ♪
♪ She's up all night for good fun... ♪
NIKOLE: 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?
NILE: 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.
♪
NIKOLE: 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.
NIKOLE: 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.
NILE: 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."
NIKOLE: 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 Gang 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"... ♪
FREDARA: 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.
♪
NIKOLE: Most parents in the South Bronx
couldn't afford to get their kids instruments,
but what those kids did have were records.
[record scratching]
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 Bastard.
♪ Ooh, baby, I like it raw ♪
♪ Yeah, baby, I like it raw... ♪
♪ One Step Ahead by Aretha Franklin playing ♪
NIKOLE: 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.
WESLEY: Yes.
NIKOLE: Hearing a track where it was immediately familiar,
but not the same. WESLEY: Right.
Or you couldn't put your finger on why it was so familiar.
- NIKOLE: 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.
NIKOLE: 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 ♪
FREDARA: 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... ♪
NIKOLE: 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 killed ♪
♪ 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 ♪
NIKOLE: 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.
RAPSODY: 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.
NIKOLE: Snow Hill is just a few hours from Tryon, North Carolina,
where Nina Simone, the Priestess of Soul, was born.
♪
RAPSODY: 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... ♪
RHAPSODY: 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 ♪
[protesters chanting "Black lives matter"]
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 ♪
RHAPSODY: 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 ♪
BRITTANY HOWARD: 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.
♪
NIKOLE: Brittany Howard knows something about reaching across genres.
Throughout her award-winning career,
she's seemingly played everything and anything that she's wanted.
BRITTANY: 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, queer music.
NIKOLE: 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 ♪
NIKOLE: 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.
BRITTANY: 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.
NIKOLE: 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 ♪
NIKOLE: 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...
NIKOLE: We can't even win in our own category?
WESLEY: ...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.
[Wesley laughing]
It's-- It's a strong urge, and it is-- it is with us to this day.
♪
NIKOLE: 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.
BRITTANY: 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.
OTIS: 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.
NILE: 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.
NIKOLE: 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.
WESLEY: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
NIKOLE: 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.
♪
NIKOLE: But if the bedrock of American music
has been the expression of a people who were denied freedom for centuries,
the bedrock of slavery itself was a uniquely brutal form of capitalism.
WOMAN: 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.
MAN: 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.
♪