Black History Month: 100 Years of Music

When Alvin Ailey discussed the founding of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, he said, “I had intended for it to be a kind of Brechtian showcase for Black music and culture—Black America’s contribution to music and dance.” In celebration of Black History Month 100, AILEY is honoring that vision by reflecting on 100 years of American music and dance that have been irrefutably influenced and enriched by Black artists.  

There is a now-iconic scene in Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, where revelers at Club Juke create a bridge between past and future through music. Ancestral Black communities and traditions—from African dances to folks who endured the inhumanity of slavery to the Afro-futurists imagining new emancipated worlds—burn the roof off the place, and musical genres syncopate across generations, revealing their shared lineage.  

Over the past hundred years, Black American music and dance have had a long history of connection and mutual development. At the turn of the twentieth century, jazz was the defining American musical innovation, originated, developed, and innovated by Black musicians. The evolution of jazz music, from its Southern beginnings to its eventual journey into northern cities during the Great Migration, was influenced by the dancers who embodied the improvisational energy of jazz on the dance floor.  

That lineage of dance and music supporting each other can be traced through many of the musical innovations of the twentieth century, pioneered by Black artists. Bebop, swing, rock ‘n’ roll, R&B, hip hop—these genres, many with roots in jazz, began in Black social communities where music was created in conversation with dancers. 

When he established his company in 1958, Alvin Ailey made a point to celebrate the cultural legacy of Black music. Some of his earliest works, which are still a part of the Ailey repertory today, are odes to Black American musical traditions.  

His first work, Blues Suite, is a conjuring of the low-slung laments of the blues in southern barrooms. His most famous work, Revelations, draws on the sorrow and joy that only come from traditional Negro spirituals—songs that were also a fixture of Mr. Ailey’s southern upbringing. The hope and fortitude expressed in the spirituals connects with people around the world, helping Revelations become one of the most beloved modern dances in history.

Mr. Ailey planned other works charting music history that never came to fruition. “There was to have been another piece based on jazz from New Orleans to Kansas, and another going from spirituals to early jazz,” Mr. Ailey said. Despite the works not coming to fruition, Mr. Ailey’s ballets and the music he chose for them always revealed the outsized contributions of Black artists in American music across genres.  

In Hermit Songs, the ballet he choreographed directly after Revelations, he chose music sung by Leontyne Price, the first African American opera singer to become a mainstay at the Metropolitan Opera. His 1984 ballet For ‘Bird’–With Love was an ode to jazz pioneer Charlie “Bird” Parker and to the smoky jazz bars where musicians like Parker experimented and improvised new musical ideas. His ballet Mary Lou’s Mass from 1971 was a collaboration with famed bebop and jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams, highlighting the fusion of spirituals, ragtime, Kansas City swing, and bebop music that came together on Williams’ piano. These works revealed Mr. Ailey’s deep appreciation for American music history, honoring the Black artists who were giants in their artistry and influence. 

Duke Ellington, one of the most influential jazz composers of the twentieth century, was one of Mr. Ailey’s most enduring collaborators. Bound by a shared impulse to free themselves from genre constraints as Black artists, they worked together on compositions of symphonic jazz and classical music. While works like Night Creature (1974) showcase the kind of sumptuous symphonic jazz composition Ellington was renowned for, his composition for The River (1970) showed his facility with classical composition, perfectly complimenting Mr. Ailey’s balletic approach to the work. “He had done major research on water music and had gathered together every piece of music with a water reference you could think of,” Mr. Ailey wrote of Ellington’s diligent pursuit of musical inspiration.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s repertory remains rich in works that showcase the breadth of American music that has roots in Black culture. Kyle Abraham’s 2022 work Are You in Your Feelings? collected popular music from artists including Lauryn Hill, Drake, Erykah Badu, Jazmine Sullivan, and Maxwell in a mixtape of contemporary favorites. Like Mr. Ailey, Abraham embraced popular artists whose music honored Black musical lineages, tracing lines from hip hop and R&B to jazz and the blues.  

Ronald K. Brown’s Grace, choreographed in 1999, is performed to house music by Peven Everett and Afropop beats by Fela Kuti. House music evolved out of disco, when famed DJ Frankie Knuckles moved to Chicago to become resident DJ at the Warehouse (from which house music derived its name). Knuckles played records that were more industrial, bass heavy, and grungier than the glitzy commercial sound that disco had become. In Grace, Brown draws historical parallels in his movement between house and traditional West African dances, revealing the unbroken lineage that the music bridges across time.

The musical legacy of Black American artists reaches far and wide—from the blues and jazz to classical and country, from Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie to Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar. That scope is reflected in the expansive musical legacies celebrated at AILEY, from children at AileyCamp encountering the heart of African musical traditions through percussion classes to our two companies’ repertory and in our Extension and Ailey school classes, where students dance to everything from live percussion to Rihanna.