‘For Centuries, Black Music, Forged In Bondage, Has Been The Sound Of Complete Artistic Freedom. No Wonder Everybody Is Always Stealing It.’

“Americans have made a political investment in a myth of racial separateness, the idea that art forms can be either ‘white’ or ‘black’ in character … This country’s music is an advertisement for 400 years of the opposite: centuries of ‘amalgamation’ and ‘miscegenation’ as they long ago called it, of all manner of interracial collaboration conducted with dismaying ranges of consent.” An essay for The 1619 Project by Wesley Morris. – The New York Times Magazine