Enslaved African Americans longed for freedom, and that longing took many forms including music. Drawing on biblical imagery, slave songs both expressed the sorrow of life in bondage and offered a rallying cry for the spirit. Like a Bird brings together text, music, and illustrations by Coretta Scott King Award-winning illustrator Michele Wood to convey the rich meaning behind thirteen of these powerful songs.

In his acclaimed debut as a filmmaker, Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson presents a powerful and transporting documentary, part music film, part historical record, created around an epic event that celebrated Black history, culture, and fashion. Over the course of six weeks in the summer of 1969, just one hundred miles south of Woodstock, The Harlem Cultural Festival was filmed in Mount Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park). The footage was largely forgotten,...

Jazzy Ash and her band the Leaping Lizards present fourteen songs that represent and celebrate music created by African-American children, adults, and musicians from the mid-1800s to the early jazz era, including fresh takes on sassy playground clapping songs, soulful lullabies, and classic New Orleans melodies.

The 200 year history and evolution of gospel through its many musical styles: the spirituals and early hymns, the four-part harmony-based quartets, the integration of blues and swing, the emergence of soul, and the blending of rap and hip-hop elements, walking in step with the history of African-American culture.

The album tells an Afrofuturist story set in a far-future world devastated by climate change. Jake Blount and his collaborators embody a group of Black climate refugees as they perform a religious service, invoking spirituals that are age-old even now, familiar in their content but extraordinary in their presentation. These songs, which have seen Black Americans through countless struggles, bind this future community together and their shared past;...

Jesus Rocked the Jukebox offers a spirited celebration of some of the most foundational songs in American musical history, tracing the evolution of the modern Soul, R&B, and Rock n' Roll genres via the likes of The Blind Boys of Alabama, The Swan Silvertones, The Staple Singers, Sam Cooke, and The Chosen Gospel Singers featuring Lou Rawls. Includes in-depth liner notes by noted gospel scholar and historian Bob Marovich.

From pioneering guitar legends Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Willie Johnson to pre-blues songsters and field holler-inspired singers, the state of Texas has long played a key role in the evolution of the blues. This Rough Guide charts the many different facets to this incredibly rich and diverse of early blues genres.