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The Power of Our Songs: Black Music As Resistance
Black artists have created the soundtracks to every social movement aimed at liberating African Americans.
He had several hits songs in his catalog such as “You Send Me”, “Cupid”, and “What a Wonderful World.” In 1964, he penned the classic “A Change Gonna Come” departing from his previous work and building off of the blueprint of Billie Holiday’ s “Strange Fruit” which shed light on the lynching of Black Americans. Combining her classical training with elements of folk, gospel, blues, jazz, R&B, and pop on "Mississippi Goddam", which was released in 1964, her lyrics referenced the murder of NAACP leader Medgar Evers and the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four young black girls and left another partially blinded. Inspired by social injustice in America along with his brother Frankie’s three-year term as a soldier in Vietnam, Gaye battled Motown founder Berry Gordy to release a collection of protest songs as a conceptual LP.
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