Written by: Joshua Williams

The iconic line, “the revolution will not be televised,” echoes through my mind as I stand in a sea of protesters. The music I hear is of voices begging to be heard, and as a nation we are implored to listen. As a person of color many of my formative emotional experiences have been complemented by our music. I remember the song that played during my first kiss. I remember the song I listened to the first time I experienced depression as a teenager. And I remember what I listened to the moment I saw the video of George Floyd’s death because the silence that followed in my room was too much to bear; I needed Lauryn Hill to soothe me and offer understanding of the palpable fear I felt after.

Every generation has a soundtrack, a lyric to personify it, and artists that offer us a seminal moment of pride and levity when we are hurting as a community. We all have a mixtape that offers something we are craving in our lives, but there’s something every Black generation has in our mixtapes — a shared understanding of the pain and fear that is a part of our daily lives.

Being a part of a generation that is experiencing generational pain and strife — that has been building for four hundred years — makes self-reflection more powerful and important, now more than ever. When I look out into the sea of protesters, I see their mothers, and I wonder if they see mine too. The breeze whispers Roberta Flack and Nina Simone as I contemplate our shared head space of fear, intention, and lament about our progress under a hot sun and a cool, unflinching moon. Our shared pain is so intrinsically rooted in our history that it almost twists itself over our throats fiercer than a snake in the desert. With every tight breath I can feel the tinkling of keys in my bones reminiscent of Donny Hathaway and I start to breathe a little easier. With music, I understand how I feel now.

How does music highlight each generation and their progress? Our pain has stayed the same which brings a restlessness to our artistic expression. Our music currently brings a certain distinction from previous genre-defining moments, and that is our honesty. Emotional admissions (especially of a sexual nature) were once seen as uncouth outside of a loved one or community not broadcast to the world in such a raw and creative ways. Each generation’s definition of itself is tied to its sound. The era of jazz in the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s where Black heartache was front and center with songs like “Strange Fruit,” the funk and disco eras of the 70’s and 80’s spoke of Black and queer liberation from the societal pressures that brought injustice in that era through the Black arts movement, and the sounds of the 90’s to present day are a curious mixture of unflinching admissions of varied personal progress and recounts of haunting experiences full of vulnerability that needed to be heard and felt. From Kendrick Lamar to Jamila Woods to Solange to Rapsody, the expressions shared in music are like a chameleon changing the tones of it’s skin. The colors shift depending on the circumstances, but the chameleon retains its essence. This adds to the complex zeitgeist we’ve curated and held delicately to our hearts.

Our music is that of a self-conscious nature which is what makes our sound unique and sought after in an industry that co-opts our image and success to spotlight the white-washed version. Like with any revolution, people of color continually define what it is to be human which is what makes our treatment and injustices all the more egregious. We can’t talk about the self-exploration and honesty we’ve pioneered as a sound without examining hip hop and R&B. Rap is more self-conscious and artists offer their faults, successes, and insecurities to us with the hope that we’ll learn from their mistakes. These genres exemplify our existence and the unique space we’ve carved out for ourselves in pop culture. The sounds of freedom and liberation from the shackles of the white gaze is what leads our protests. The injustices broadcast to the world that we’ve always been subjected to without impunity implore me to seek safety in hip hop. The prose of our experiences is painful but necessary. The celebration of Black joy that we get from music is almost a priceless counterculture in the medium, a spotlight that illuminates an audience of Black faces.

The soulful and sonically generous tones of Black liberation throughout history are echoes forever ingrained in our history. Our history and sense of self are embedded in these songs. To be Black is to hold in our hearts an acknowledgment of generational pain, but with each song I feel my heart beat a little softer. If I were to ask the artists we look up to, I’m sure that a softer heart is their intention and, by extension, to heal. When we stand together through protests, our songs will be heard by, and healing, generations to come.