Black Lives Matter Analysis

The Black Lives Matter: Music, Race, and Justice Conference was held Friday and Saturday at the John Knowles Paine Concert Hall at Harvard University.

The conference was a blend of ideas from the nationwide Black Lives Matter movement as well as multiple African American equality movements. Presenters at the event included Randall Horton, Cisco Bradley, Luke Stewart, and Jamal Moore. Randall Horton, a poet and professor at the University of New Haven, talked about the language music creates and the music of saxophonist James Brandon Lewis. Horton played excerpts of Lewis’s music and swayed to the beat of the music. Many of the audience members also bopped to the beat of the drums and cheered at the saxophone solos in the song.

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Bradley said that there has been a negative impact on black involvement in avant-garde due to the defunding of music programs. This led to many self-taught musicians and working class activists.

Bradley expanded his presentation to include Matana Roberts, a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. Bradley commented on Roberts she innovatively included her grandmother’s interviews in her music.

Bradley also presented Camae Ayewa, more commonly known as Moor Mother, an experimental musician in the Philadelphia punk scene. According to Rolling Stone, it was one of the best experimental magazines of 2016. Bradley concluded his presentation by discussing performance as a social event.

“African American musicians almost always talk about family when asked about the origin of their music,” Bradley said.

Luke Stewart and Jamal Moore began their presentation with a performance of Black American Improvised Music. The jazz musicians performed a short improvised piece for the crowd that caused many audience members to cheer throughout their performance. At the conclusion of their performance, Stewart posed a question to the audience, “can Black Lives Matter learn from the Black