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For the second year running the Black Music Association /Toronto Chapter (BMA/TC) is not calling on Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman to proclaim June Black Music Month. Just as Brother Power and his committee proclaimed the first Sunday in May as Dudley Laws Day, the BMA/TC is proclaiming June 2002 Black Music Month in the City of Toronto. We are calling on mainstream radio in general and community radio in particular to recognize Black Music Month. The BMA/TC is not satisfied with Mr. Lastman and how he handled the question of Africans boiling him and his wife in hot water in Kenya. Mayor Lastman's comments were disrespectful of every Black child, woman and man on earth. He is getting away with murder. We are currently lobbying the government to make June Black Music Month just as it did with Black History Month, which is every February. The times they are changin' and Canada must change with the times.
When Black Music Month was conceived it was to be multi-purposed. Black music entrepreneurs could bum rush record companies and "whitemail" them into giving them cash for everything from creating magazines to educating inner-city youth. And for the more politically minded, it was a time to pay tribute to those fallen warriors who paved the way for Black Music.
This set of activists could honour everyone from Bessie Smith to Burning Spear. Music historians could be published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail. Black music was to be respected and protected. After all, it is to African people in North America what oil is to Arabs or water to Canadians. Black music is one of our many gifts to the world.
Since 1983, thanks to the efforts of the BMA/TC, Toronto Mayors June Rowlands, Barbara Hall and Mel Lastman, respectively, have recognized June as Black Music Month. The BMA/TC's is currently lobbying program directors at mainstream and community radio stations to program more Canadian Black music. Wade O. Brown, Carlos Morgan, Divine Earth Essence, Lazo, King Cosmos, Jay Douglas, Motion, Ghetto Concept, Saukrates, Choclair, July Black, Sharron Mcleod, Peculiar I, Kardinal Offishall and Jayson, among others, deserve airplay during June and every month.
Since the formation of the BMA/TC Canadian Black music has grown. Today, Oscar Peterson, Tamia, Deborah Cox and Glenn Lewis are bona fide international stars. Canadian Black music is producing the second generation of stars. Lewis' father Glen Ricketts was one of Canada's great soul singers of the 1970s. Check out Ricketts' work with The Crack of Dawn on Columbia Records.
Peterson, Tamia and Cox broke ground when there was little or no major market airplay in any Canadian city. In fact, when Peterson became an international music star Norman Granz took him to the United States where he was welcomed by jazz fans. Peterson has pointed out to this writer that when he would appear in European cities people from the United States would come to his concerts. They assumed that he was an American 'Negro'. This was in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Tamia who was born in Windsor and was discovered by Lionel Richie's ex-wife Brenda has since given up her Canadian citizenship. Clive Davis of Arista Records discovered Cox. While Cox has not given up her Canadian citizenship she still lives in Los Angeles.
During the month of June CKLN-FM 88.1 will be playing resistance music from Trench Town to Toronto and Cape Town to Nova Scotia. Artists like Jayson who recorded the song "South Africa" in the 1980s, King Cosmos whose song "Reparations" is making noise in North America and Lazo who has just put Claude McKay's revolutionary poem "If We Must Die" to music will be played in heavy rotation during Black Music Month.
Music by artists like Miriam Makeba, Peter Tosh, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Jayne Cortez, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Fela Kuti, Clifton Joseph, Lillian Allen, Devon Haughton, Paul Robeson, The Coup, Burning Spear, Valentino, Steel Pulse, Bob Marley, Gil Scott-Heron, Tasha T, dead prez, the Last Poets and many others from the African world will be played. The BMA/TC is also calling on mainstream and community radio to follow suit.
