Is Music One of the First Gifts Black Women Gave Us?

Despite Living Oceans Apart, Our Mothers’ Music Teaches the Same Lessons 

Among generations of Black women, music has never just been entertainment. Image credit: Greta Hoffman 

Songs that Call Back History 

When you ask Ammie E. from Texas what songs remind her of the women in her family, she smiles  and says “Soon I Will Be Done, “Strange Fruit,” “Mississippi Goddam” or “Sinnerman.” When begged  for just one, she sighs quietly and says: “The songs that remind me of cotton fields. Most of the ones my family worked in still exist. Segregation. My grandma never went to school because there was no school for her to go to, until she was too old to go. My mother experienced segregation; my family history and what the women had to endure – sharecropping, lynchings, migrant work.” 

For Ammie, these songs are more than memory, they’re inheritances stretching back centuries. In 1790, Africans brought to America to be enslaved made up about 1/3 of the population of Georgia. These unpaid laborers were made to work from dawn to dusk as the economy depended largely on them.  In pain, servitude and despair, they sang Christian hymns earnestly, holding on as a lifeline to hopeful lyrics that one day, someday, all would be well with them. These hymns united  the enslaved from different regions, serving as group therapy. Wise mothers planted these songs in their daughters’ hearts to be passed down to new generations so history wouldn’t be wiped from the archives of culture. 

“When a mother sings ‘All the Pretty Little Horses’ to her child, she is singing a song about enslaved wet nurses forced to neglect their babies. The child may not understand yet, but the history is in their bones." Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, a Georgia scholar and founder of a capella group Sweet Honey in the Rock, explains in her research. This lullaby bonded a Black mother in the South with her child, stitching children into history.

Songs that Vocalize Sisterhood and Resilience  

For Mimi, in Florida, music “... creates a sense of community for Black women ... It was one thing that binds us all together; it gave us a universal language. We use it to express ourselves, whether it is peace … [or] anger.” 

Backed up by personal reflection, Angel, an editor from Nigeria concurs, “Black women's songs taught me that everything gets better, and that family and sisterhood are important. Each time I listen to Nigerian gospel singer Chinyere Udoma, [I remember] the family friend who had to leave Nigeria because she was raped in the ‘80s by armed robbers. When we visited the U.S., I remember my mum speaking in Igbo with her, as we drove to a mall, commenting on how happy, and successful she and her husband were. As someone who is also a survivor, I look to Chinyere Udoma's music when I need a reminder that I am well loaded, and all that I will be full of God's blessings." 

Preservation and the Future: Keeping the Rhythm Alive

   

Laura, a writer says: “ABBA's Dancing Queen [was] a household staple growing up. My mum played it first. She's been a big fan of ABBA songs since day 1. My mum through the chorus, specifically: 'You can dance, you can live, having the time of your life’ taught me freedom and confidence.” When asked if she would pass it to her daughters, she simply hummed “yes”. 

Black mothers on TikTok are planting seeds early, introducing their children to ABBA’s songs . Angel, for whom “Dancing Queen” was a household staple growing up, insists on doing so too. Songs by Beyoncé, for example, are fast becoming part of the canon of archival Black oral tradition. The  vocalist’s interpolation of Linda Martell’s country defiance mixed with the banjo’s African roots in songs on “Cowboy Carter,” reclaimed what had been erased. 

Through lullabies, survival spirituals, choruses of call-and-response, identity and community. Thus, despite living oceans apart, Black women’s music sings the same lesson: We are remembered, and we belong.