I was on and off music much of this year because of *gestures all around* stuff. But along with all our once-in-a-lifetime curses came a pattern of once-in-a-lifetime advancement for women of colour.
The music industry has had little interest in black artists in general and women of colour in particular, unless they fit “allowed” niches. Spotify Queens in skimpy clothes cooing R&B-lite love songs and other “black” genres were welcome; “uppity” black women who wanted to sing country or folk or rap about “women’s issues” were shunned. Quelle horror if they want to strap on a guitar and rock!
Then came Covid. Spotify had already forced musicians to start doing it for themselves (as Aretha once sang), and the pandemic further nudged out the non-creators (or as Ray Wylie Hubbard calls them, “the sons-of-bitches who ripped off musicians and stole their riches.”)
Veteran women of colour were ready to step up.
“Bookings were dependent on our ability to fit in,” activist and music artist Lilli Lewis (Americana) told a magazine. “And I’ve decided that I’m not doing anybody any good by co-conspiring with that.”
This year we had albums and songs called Black Myself (Amythyst Kiah), Black Like Me (Mickey Guyton), Stand For Myself (Yola), and Our Country (Miko Marks).
Of the 12 albums shortlisted for the Mercury Prize (UK), half were by women of colour. A #BlackOpry virtual festival launched. Promising black women in country music are at the heart of a new Apple Radio show, Color Me Country (Rissi Palmer).
Two roots-oriented women of colour – Adia Victoria (A Southern Gothic) and Allison Russell (Outside Child) – made Obama’s songs of the year list with frank, disarming albums about parental sexual abuse and sleeping rough.
Jazmine Sullivan (Heaux Tales) speaks for women of colour who get labelled ‘hos’ (heaux) for having a sex life. #FemQueenJoy Ms. Boogie (Breakdown) writes music about “normalizing Black trans women being happy.”
And Sunny War, on one of the year’s best kept album secrets (Simply Syrup), rallies against the unfair expectations placed on famous black women.
Neither age, nor dress size, nor how their name is spelled mattered for women of colour this year. #newnormal #aboutime