The Color Line

With recent events in the US and the Black Lives Matter movement questioning whether the Civil Rights campaign of more than half a century ago remains unfinished business, this three-disc history of how the struggle for black emancipation was reflected in popular song comes at an opportune moment. Compiled by the French writer and musician Bruno Blum to coincide with a major three-month exhibition in Paris, the 59 tracks trace the line that runs from a 1916 recording of ‘Roll On, Heave That Cotton’ by the blackface minstrel Harry C Browne to Chuck Berry's ‘Brown Eyed Handsome Man’ five decades later. Along the way we hear from most of the giant names in black music of the first half of the 20th century, including Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Lead Belly, Ray Charles, John Coltrane, Harry Belafonte, Sun Ra, Aretha Franklin and Bo Diddley. That list tells you that the theme is socio-political rather than genre-based – work songs, spirituals, calypso, jazz, blues, rock, gospel and a speech by Marcus Garvey propel a narrative that stretches from the Harlem Renaissance to Martin Luther King. If resistance is the central motif, it is expressed with a multitude of different emotions: from anger and indignation to wit and humour via religion and reconciliation. The set ends fittingly with ‘We Shall Overcome’, the future tense perhaps reinforcing that the struggle is not over.