Black History Month: Legends

Black History Month: Legends

8 February, 2012 | 8.50AM

• Written by: Beatportal
• Filed under: Music News: black history month

In a continuation of our Black History Month coverage, we spotlight the careers of some of the artists whose work best expresses the overlap between popular music and black culture. Read on to explore the music of Ron Hardy, Frankie Knuckles, Funkadelic, Lee Scratch Perry, and more.

Ron Hardy

Chicago’s Ron Hardy helped build the bridge from disco to house music, ushering in a twisted, new electronic sound in the early ‘80s. His performances at the Muzic Box were legendary for their frenzied energy; it was Hardy who played the world’s first acid-house cut, Phuture’s “Acid Tracks"—which he supposedly played four times over the course of its first night, hammering it home until it caught on. Hardy passed away in 1992, but his productions and his legacy live on.

Check out the chart on Beatport here, and listen to audio samples in the player below.

Drexciya

Detroit’s Drexciya reinvented electro according to their own standards, supplying their own Afrofuturist mythology to go along with it. Anonymous during the history of the project, their identities were revealed to the general public after member James Stinson passed away in 2002; his colleague Gerald Donald continues to record under a variety of aliases. Learn more about them in our recent Beatportal features here and here.

Check out the chart on Beatport here, and listen to audio samples in the player below.

Frankie Knuckles

Frankie Knuckles is so central to the history of house music that the genre’s very name is rumored to come from him, in a roundabout way. During his residency at Chicago’s Warehouse club in the early ‘80s, the story goes, record shoppers would ask local stores for “that Warehouse music”; the name eventually shortened and stuck. Whatever the truth of the story, Knuckles’ contributions to house music have never let up, whether via his residencies at clubs like New York’s Sound Factory or his Grammy-nominated productions.

Check out the chart on Beatport here, and listen to audio samples in the player below.

Funkadelic

George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic pretty much invented funk-rock in the late ‘60s and ‘70s, fusing political messages with far-out psychedelic imagery and, of course, some of the tightest, meanest grooves the world has ever known.

Check out the chart on Beatport here, and listen to audio samples in the player below.

Ashford & Simpson

Long signed to Motown, Ashford & Simpson gave soul music some of its most enduring hits, from “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” to Chaka Khan’s “I’m Every Woman.”

Check out the chart on Beatport here, and listen to audio samples in the player below.

Lee Scratch Perry

Jamaica’s Lee Scratch Perry (aka The Upsetter) is one of the most important artists in dub reggae. His Black Ark studio was responsible for classic recordings from some of reggae’s greatest, from Bob Marley and the Wailers to The Congos, while the techniques he pioneered set new standards for mixing-desk voodoo.

Check out the chart on Beatport here, and listen to audio samples in the player below.

Bobby Womack

Though he might be most famous for his song “Across 110th Street,” the singer/songwriter Bobby Womack has been a vital figure in popular music since the 1960s, when he played in Sam Cooke’s band and wrote “It’s All Over Now,” which would go on to become a hit for The Rolling Stones.

Check out the chart on Beatport here, and listen to audio samples in the player below.

Digital Underground

Best known for their 1990 hit “The Humpty Dance,” Digital Underground were a wildly creative hip-hop group from Oakland, California whose music epitomized the free-spirited sample play of the era.

Check out the chart on Beatport here, and listen to audio samples in the player below.

Gang Starr

Gang Starr was the duo of DJ Premier and the late Guru; they helped introduce acid jazz to hip-hop in the late ‘80s, and Premier’s beats remain the cornerstone of boom-bap at its finest.

Check out the chart on Beatport here, and listen to audio samples in the player below.

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