Welcome to the June Black Music Month edition of Black Grooves, sponsored by the Indiana University Archives of African American Music and Culture.
This month we’re traveling back in time to celebrate three of the most important African American composers of the early 20th century. First, Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake perform original songs from their groundbreaking 1921 Broadway musical on Sissle & Blake Sing Shuffle Along. The works of R. Nathaniel Dett are featured on two recent projects: My Cup Runneth Over: The Complete Piano Works of R. Nathaniel Dett performed by Clipper Erickson, and the oratorio The Ordering of Moses in a live performance by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and May Festival Chorus under James Conlon.
Our featured DVD this month, Stretch & Bobbito: Radio That Changed Lives, highlights one of the greatest hip hop radio shows of all time. Also under the hip hop category is the genre-bending album Gone With the Trends by the St. Louis-based act illPHONiCS.
Under jazz, we’re featuring Robert Glasper’s Miles Davis tribute Everything’s Beautiful, Marcus Strickland’s Nihil Novi, and Bill Evans’s Some Other Time: the Lost Session from the Black Forest.
Folk and gospel music releases include the Walker Family Singers’ Panola County Spirit, Leyla McCalla’s A Day for the Hunter, A Day for the Prey, and the reissue of two early Staple Singers’ albums Amen! and Why.
Wrapping up this issue is our list of May 2016 Releases of Note.