Welcome to the October 2020 issue of Black Grooves, sponsored by the Indiana University Archives of African American Music and Culture. 

Our featured release this month is bassist/composer Gregg August’s Dialogues on Race, an extended suite for large jazz ensemble, vocalists, and strings that draws upon poems by Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, Marilyn Nelson and other notable American poets. Other jazz releases include Teodross Avery’s tribute album Harlem Stories: The Music of Thelonious Monk; alto saxophonist/composer Charles McPherson’s Jazz Dance Suites; jazz-rock fusion drummer/vocalist Cindy Blackman Santana’s Give the Drummer Some featuring guitarists Carlos Santana, John McLaughlin, Kirk Hammett, and Vernon Reid; and the never-before-released album Just Coolin’ by Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers.

Rap and hip hop selections include Sa-Roc’s debut album, The Sharecropper’s Daughter; new socially conscious projects from two of the most politically charged rappers of the ‘80s and ‘90s—Paris’ Safe Space Invader and Public Enemy’s What You Gonna Do When the Grid Goes Down—and the Free Radicals compilation White Power Outage Volume 1.

Gospel music selections include the Chicago Mass Choir’s My Soul Says Yes and The Last Shall Be First: the JCR Records Story Volume 1, a compilation of Memphis area gospel recordings from the 1970s.

Also featured is Hearts Town from the R&B duo The War And Treaty; Frederick “Toots” Hibbert’s final album with the Maytals, Got To Be Tough; Philly R&B singer Valvin “V” Roane’s Image a Nation; Kenny “Blues Boss” Wayne’s Go, Just Do It!; an expanded reissue of the Curtis Mayfield soundtrack Let’s Do It Again featuring the Staple Singers; and a remastered vinyl edition of Classified by New Orleans keyboardist James Booker.

Wrapping up this issue is our compilation of September 2020 Black Music Releases of Note.