Musical Celebrations Around the World – African American Music Appreciation Month

Each June, African American Music Appreciation Month recognizes the musicians, composers, performers, communities, and musical traditions that have helped shape American culture.

The observance is also widely known as Black Music Month. It was first recognized at the White House in 1979 during the administration of President Jimmy Carter. Thirty years later, President Barack Obama formally proclaimed June 2009 as African-American Music Appreciation Month.

Both names continue to be used, but the purpose remains the same: to celebrate the extraordinary influence of Black musical creativity and to deepen our understanding of the people, histories, communities, and experiences behind the music.

For music educators and ensemble directors, the month offers more than an opportunity to assemble a playlist of familiar artists. It is a chance to explore how Black musicians have created, transformed, and expanded musical traditions across generations, and to consider how that history can shape what students listen to, study, and perform.

What Is African American Music Appreciation Month?

Black Music Month grew from the work of musicians, music-industry leaders, educators, and advocates who wanted national recognition for the contributions of Black artists. The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture describes the observance as a celebration of African American musical influences that form an essential part of the nation’s cultural heritage.

The month recognizes internationally celebrated performers and composers, but it also honors the countless musicians whose names may not appear in textbooks. Church musicians, teachers, local bandleaders, community choirs, instrumentalists, songwriters, producers, arrangers, dancers, and tradition-bearers have all contributed to the development and preservation of Black music.

That history is not confined to one genre. Black musical traditions have shaped spirituals, gospel, blues, jazz, ragtime, rock and roll, rhythm and blues, soul, funk, country, disco, house, techno, hip-hop, pop, musical theater, opera, choral music, concert band music, chamber music, and orchestral composition.

The Smithsonian’s All Music Is Black Music project explores this central place of African American music and culture within the broader story of American music.

Musical Traditions That Shaped American Music

Musical styles do not develop in isolation. They grow through movement, exchange, migration, faith, resistance, celebration, technology, commerce, and contact among communities. Studying Black music therefore means exploring both individual genres and the connections among them.

Spirituals and Gospel

The African American spiritual is one of the most significant forms of American folk music. Spirituals developed among enslaved African Americans and brought together Christian texts, African musical practices, oral tradition, communal participation, improvisation, repetition, and deeply expressive singing.

The Library of Congress overview of spirituals provides historical background and listening resources that can help educators approach the tradition with appropriate context.

Gospel music developed through Black church communities and drew upon spirituals, hymns, blues, jazz, and other traditions. Its influence can be heard far beyond worship, including in soul, rhythm and blues, rock, pop, musical theater, and contemporary vocal performance.

Blues, Jazz, and Ragtime

Blues emerged from African American musical traditions in the American South. Its forms, harmonies, expressive techniques, and storytelling influenced generations of jazz, country, rhythm and blues, rock, soul, and popular musicians.

Jazz developed through Black communities, particularly in New Orleans, before spreading to cities including Chicago, Kansas City, and New York. Improvisation, rhythmic energy, ensemble interaction, individual expression, and musical dialogue remain central to the tradition.

Ragtime, closely associated with composers such as Scott Joplin, brought syncopated rhythms into homes, theaters, public gatherings, and published piano music. Together, ragtime, blues, and jazz changed how musicians and audiences understood rhythm, harmony, improvisation, and performance.

Popular Music and New Musical Forms

Black artists have repeatedly transformed American popular music. Gospel vocal techniques helped shape rhythm and blues, soul, rock and roll, and pop. Funk musicians placed new emphasis on groove, rhythm, bass, and ensemble precision. Hip-hop brought together DJing, emceeing, dance, sampling, production, visual art, and storytelling to create a global cultural movement.

Electronic music also carries important Black histories. House music grew from Chicago club culture, while techno developed through Black artists in Detroit. These styles demonstrate how musicians have continually adapted emerging technologies to create new sounds and new forms of community.

Studying these relationships can help students understand that genres are not sealed categories. Artists listen across traditions, borrow and transform ideas, respond to earlier generations, and create music that reflects the world around them.

Black Composers in the Concert Hall

Black composers have also made significant contributions to orchestral music, chamber music, opera, choral repertoire, concert band literature, and musical theater.

Directors can explore music by composers including R. Nathaniel Dett, Florence Price, William Grant Still, Margaret Bonds, William Dawson, Undine Smith Moore, George Walker, Adolphus Hailstork, Valerie Coleman, Rosephanye Powell, Omar Thomas, Jessie Montgomery, and Carlos Simon.

The Library of Congress guide to Black composers includes digitized scores, recordings, research materials, and additional resources that directors can use when planning repertoire or classroom projects.

Juneteenth: Music, Memory, and Freedom

African American Music Appreciation Month also includes Juneteenth, observed each year on June 19.

Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, when Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, and announced that enslaved people there were free. The date came more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation and became the basis for an enduring celebration of freedom, family, community, remembrance, and Black culture.

Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021. The National Park Service Juneteenth resource and the Smithsonian’s account of the historical legacy of Juneteenth provide useful starting points for understanding the date and its significance.

Music has long been part of many Juneteenth gatherings through spirituals, gospel, blues, jazz, brass bands, community singing, concerts, dancing, and contemporary popular music. Those performances can express celebration and joy while also honoring the history that gives the observance its meaning.

For educators, Juneteenth should not be treated simply as a theme for a concert. Music should be placed within a larger discussion of emancipation, delayed freedom, community memory, and the continued work of understanding American history.

Ways Music Educators Can Celebrate

African American Music Appreciation Month can become part of an ensemble’s ongoing musical education rather than a subject visited only during June.

• Program music by Black composers. Select works that fit your ensemble’s instrumentation, ability, and artistic goals. Include Black composers throughout the season rather than limiting their music to one commemorative concert.
• Teach the history behind the repertoire. Discuss who created the music, where it developed, what community it represents, and how its meaning may change when it is performed in a different setting.
• Trace connections among genres. Ask students to follow one musical element, such as improvisation, call and response, syncopation, vocal expression, bass lines, or rhythmic layering, through several different traditions.
• Compare original works and arrangements. Examine how an arranger adapts a spiritual, jazz standard, popular song, or orchestral work for a new ensemble. Discuss what is preserved, what is changed, and how the original creator and tradition are credited.
• Create a guided listening library. Invite students to recommend artists and compositions, but ask them to provide historical background and explain why each selection belongs in the collection.
• Study local musical history. Research Black churches, schools, performance spaces, musicians, ensembles, record labels, radio stations, and community organizations in your own region.
• Invite a guest artist or scholar. A composer, performer, conductor, historian, church musician, producer, or local tradition-bearer can provide perspectives that a textbook cannot.
• Explore the musical life of HBCUs. Historically Black Colleges and Universities have supported generations of performers, composers, directors, educators, marching bands, choirs, orchestras, and researchers. The Smithsonian’s feature on musical life at HBCUs provides a useful introduction.

Repertoire Pathways for Different Ensembles

Directors do not need to build an entire concert around one genre or historical period. A thoughtful program can introduce audiences to the breadth of Black musical creativity while still fitting the identity of the ensemble.

For Choirs

Choral directors can explore spirituals, gospel traditions, extended concert works, sacred compositions, art songs, and contemporary choral music. Composers and arrangers to investigate include R. Nathaniel Dett, William Dawson, Margaret Bonds, Undine Smith Moore, Moses Hogan, Adolphus Hailstork, Rosephanye Powell, and Stacey V. Gibbs.

When programming a spiritual, directors should identify the arranger, research the history and text, and help singers understand that the piece comes from a specific cultural and historical tradition rather than treating it as a generic folk song.

Directors planning a broader program can also use our guide to the Encore Repertoire Library to explore what other ensembles have performed in concert halls, churches, and cultural venues around the world.

For Orchestras and Chamber Ensembles

Orchestras and chamber groups can explore works by Florence Price, William Grant Still, George Walker, Adolphus Hailstork, Valerie Coleman, Jessie Montgomery, Carlos Simon, and other historical and contemporary composers.

A program might place a Black composer alongside familiar repertoire from the same era, compare different approaches to a shared musical form, or trace how composers combine concert traditions with spirituals, jazz, blues, folk music, and contemporary influences.

For Bands

Concert bands and wind ensembles can explore works by composers including William Grant Still, Adolphus Hailstork, Valerie Coleman, Omar Thomas, Carlos Simon, and Katahj Copley. Marching programs can also study the musical and visual traditions developed by HBCU bands, paying attention to their history, precision, sound, movement, and community significance.

As with any repertoire selection, directors should review instrumentation, technical demands, cultural context, edition quality, and performance rights before programming a work.

Teaching Black Music With Context and Care

Celebrating Black music requires more than adding several names to a concert program. It means recognizing authorship, understanding context, and avoiding the assumption that one work, genre, or artist can represent an entire musical history.

It is also important not to frame Black music only through hardship. Enslavement, segregation, discrimination, exclusion, and unequal access are essential parts of the history, but Black music also expresses joy, faith, humor, love, experimentation, celebration, virtuosity, community, imagination, and artistic freedom.

Directors can help students become more thoughtful musicians by asking questions such as:

• Who composed, arranged, or first performed this music?
• What community and historical setting shaped it?
• How has the music changed as it moved between performers, places, and generations?
• Are the original creators and traditions properly credited?
• What should performers understand before presenting the work to an audience?
• How can this learning continue beyond one month or concert?

Bringing Musical History Into Performance

Music takes on greater meaning when performers understand the people and places connected to it. Whether an ensemble is studying a spiritual, a symphony, a jazz arrangement, a gospel work, or a contemporary band composition, historical and cultural context can change how musicians rehearse and perform.

That principle is central to a meaningful performance tour. Workshops, exchanges with local musicians, visits to historically important sites, and concerts in culturally significant venues can help ensemble members understand that repertoire does not exist separately from the world in which it was created.

Encore Tours works with choirs, orchestras, bands, and other ensembles to create programs shaped by their repertoire, educational priorities, performance goals, and community. As we explore in Why the Concert Experience Is at the Heart of Every Encore Performance Tour, the most memorable concerts grow from a strong understanding of what the music communicates and why sharing it matters.

A Celebration That Continues Throughout the Year

African American Music Appreciation Month provides an important opportunity to focus attention on Black musical history, but the work should not end when June does.

Black composers, performers, and traditions belong in listening lessons, repertoire plans, music-history courses, concert programs, and ensemble discussions throughout the year. The goal is not simply to complete a commemorative activity. It is to help musicians develop a fuller understanding of the music they inherit and the many people who shaped it.

By listening with curiosity, performing with care, recognizing the creators behind the music, and continuing to explore beyond familiar names and genres, ensembles can make African American Music Appreciation Month the beginning of deeper musical discovery.

---

This article is part of our Musical Celebrations Around the World series, created to help music educators and ensemble leaders explore the people, traditions, and observances featured in the Encore Tours Musical Celebrations Calendar.

Explore the World Through Music

Encore Tours creates customized international performance tours that combine meaningful concerts, musical learning, cultural exploration, and opportunities to connect repertoire with the places and communities that shaped it. Speak with one of our tour consultants to begin exploring the possibilities for your ensemble.