Category: Black Excellence

https://www.yamaha.com/en/inspired/019

Fighting to Eradicate the Prejudice Against Female Musicians.

Islam Elbeiti is one of only a few female bassists from Sudan. From early in life she has lived in many countries, experiencing cultures that by contrast reveal the deep-rooted prejudice against female musicians in her motherland. “Life is tough for a female musician in this country,” she tells us breezily. We asked where she gets her strength to thrive as she does.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethel_Waters

Ethel Waters (October 31, 1896 – September 1, 1977) was an American singer and actress. Waters frequently performed jazz, swing, and pop music on the Broadway stage and in concerts. She began her career in the 1920s singing blues. Her notable recordings include “Dinah“, “Stormy Weather“, “Taking a Chance on Love“, “Heat Wave“, “Supper Time“, “Am I Blue?“, “Cabin in the Sky“, “I’m Coming Virginia“, and her version of “His Eye Is on the Sparrow“. Waters was the second African American to be nominated for an Academy Award, the first African American to star on her own television show, and the first African-American woman to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award.

https://www.givingbroadly.com/the-better-buggy

How did you come up with the idea for The Better Buggy?

It was Day 73 of pandemic quarantine and my husband Jonathan and I had just put Baby J, my busy toddler, down for bed. 

We were lying on our living room floor, and my husband asked me to put together a list of groceries to order online for delivery in the morning. I looked at him and asked if he missed being able to support local, Black-owned stores and farms.

“Black-owned stores and farms” wasn’t an option you could choose on a grocery delivery app. Neither were farmers markets. We realized that if we were having this issue, there were a million others experiencing the same thing. I told him, “Today is the day we start The Better Buggy.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bessie_Smith

Bessie Smith (April 15, 1892 – September 26, 1937) was an African-American blues singer widely renowned during the Jazz Age. Nicknamed the “Empress of the Blues” and formerly Queen of the Blues, she was the most popular female blues singer of the 1930s. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, she is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era and was a major influence on fellow blues singers, as well as jazz vocalists.^[1]

Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Smith was young when her parents died, and she and her six siblings survived by performing on street corners. She began touring and performed in a group that included Ma Rainey, and then went out on her own. Her successful recording career with Columbia Records began in 1923, but her performing career was cut short by a car crash that killed her at the age of 45.

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/10/nx-s1-5306937/as-fentanyl-deaths-drop-fast-experts-say-more-survivors-need-help

PHILADELPHIA — On a blustery winter morning, Keli McLoyd set off on foot across Kensington. This area of Philadelphia is one of the most drug-scarred neighborhoods in the U.S. In the first block, she knelt next to a man curled on the sidewalk in the throes of fentanyl, xylazine or some other powerful street drug.

“Sir, are you alright? You OK?” asked McLoyd, who leads Philadelphia’s city-run overdose response unit. The man stirredand took a breath.”OK, I can see he’s moving, he’s good.”

In Kensington, good means still alive. By the standards of the deadly U.S. fentanyl crisis, that’s a victory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyler_Mitchell_(photographer)

Tyler Mitchell (born April 12, 1995)^[1][2][3] is an American photographer. He is based in Brooklyn, New York, and is best known for his cover photo of Beyoncé for the cover of Vogue.^[4]

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/05/833528769/roy-ayers-whose-everybody-loves-the-sunshine-charmed-generations-dies-at-84

Roy Ayers, the vibraphonist, composer and jazz-funk pioneer behind “Everybody Loves the Sunshine,” has died at the age of 84.

He died Tuesday in New York City after a long illness, according to a statement shared on his Facebook page.

Ayers was born in Los Angeles on Sept. 10, 1940, to a musical family. Like a scene out of a movie, a 5-year-old Ayers boogie’d so hard at a Lionel Hampton concert that the vibraphonist handed Ayers his first pair of mallets.

“At the time, my mother and father told me he laid some spiritual vibes on me,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 2011.

https://www.kathybullock.com/about-me

Dr. Kathy Bullock is an educator, scholar, singer, accompanist, arranger and choral conductor who specializes in gospel music, spirituals and classical works by composers from the African diaspora.  A Professor Emerita of Music from Berea College, Berea, Kentucky, she currently teaches, performs, and conducts workshops and other programs on African American music throughout the United States, Europe, and Africa.