Black Lives- from Generation to Generation

Biographie

What is taken for granted today was a bold statement in 1968: “Say it loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud”! James Brown’s funk anthem against racism was a provocation for many just a few months after the murder of Martin Luther King. Music became an essential part of the US civil rights movement. Half a century later, a new global movement emerged with “Black Lives Matter.” After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, protests against violence against people of color gained new momentum. Almost every day we hear about new crimes and discrimination: whether on a state-juridical level, social-structural, in sports, professionally – or even in art and culture. And again and again, music of the most diverse genres was and is an essential part of the protest and unites its fighters, often also provides them with a musical anthem and strengthens the cohesion, gave and gives strength. Black artists (by necessity) have played a leading role in the fight against racism for hundreds of years – and not only in the USA.

Stefany Calembert, the busy Brussels-based producer and married to one of the participating artists (Reggie Washington), explains: “Of course, as a white woman who is married to a black man and has three children with him, I know racism and its many forms. But not just since then. It’s actually been going on for 35 years. First during my school years in Belgium, then later as a teenager when we were traveling, and then of course during my travels in Guadeloupe and Senegal. I had a lot of black friends and soon realized that it is true how deeply rooted everyday racism is in society – everywhere in the world. I often feel uneasy when I encounter certain ‘superiority’ behaviors of my fellow white people and their occasional hypocrisies. And it saddens me that often even those who reject any resentment far and wide find it difficult to have an open discussion.”