Black Americana is the musical embrace of our past, present, and future. We are presenting this style for the people of Soulaan as our contribution and display of respect and acknowledgement of who they are and what they are doing.

Hip-hop producers have short-sampled Black Americana, with a special shout out to the NYC underground mixtape hip-hop scene and Wu-Tang, MF Doom, Jay-Z and more. Now we are going to enter long-form Black Americana music style and that’s were we are today.

In this article, we want to describe this style of music that was under the radar for decades and now will be a prominent driver of promoting indigenous Black American culture and economic driver of our communities. Will also show how to create the tracks as well.

The long term goal is to use this style of music to drive setup distribution and retailing, streaming licensing and more and learn the craft to create our own music industry and our own media we control. We are the Black media now and it’s time to build infrastructure.

Let’s get started.

Early Example: Sound of Blackness

From Wikipedia - the group was founded in 1969 by Russell Knighton at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the group was called the Macalester College Black Voices. It was in 1971 when current director Gary Hines took leadership over the ensemble, and the group name was officially changed to Sounds of Blackness.

This was one of the songs many remember that combined styles of urban 90s and gospel elements that went mainstream and the positive message. Some will this song “Optimistic” helped brought Yolanda Adams, BeBe & CeCe Winans, and Mary Mary into the mainstream urban music scene.

Pioneer: Kanye West & Emanuel Roro

Kanye West was always a prolific MPC sampler and beat maker and he sampled plenty of Black historical songs and took snippets of the nuances of those songs to make a new beat. Once he hooked up with Emanuel Roro to create Sunday Service, it wasn’t not the music that changed everything – it was the spirit and energy that blew it all out of the water.

This concert I believe was free to attend in Los Angeles and in other cities had changed people entire lives and they found God and declared Christ is King. That’s what our music, our faith and our music can do to folks out here.

Madeon Good Faith

This is one of my top 20 favorite albums and it is the beginning of the new production style. Madeon is a French electro-pop and a good one. If you know anything about Paris, they love gospel concerts and gospel music as well as the rest of Europe.

This style is the future of the Black Americana that merges our music with other genres and brings a new level of energy and spirit. And that’s where we are today.  And I believe you and I will be able to carry this genre in our own way, from our own identity and make a whole new landscape as a result of the self-ecosystem project of the individualist and your story.

Creating the Black Americana Sound

You can create this sound with either AI or as a musician. It doesn’t matter because the song will shine because it will be an extension of you as an individual – that is why we are in an exciting golden era of AI. We cannot reproduce your spirit, but when you let your spirit shine, that’s what’s going to radiate everything around you when the rest of us feel it.

To create the AI version, think of what elements you want to use and the style of music. We have blues, ragtime, swing, Motown, Philly sound, Chicago house, Detroit techno, New Jack Swing, DC Go-Go, Fusion Funk, Neosoul, Smooth Jazz, West Coast Groove, Funk, Miami Bass, H-town R&B - we can keep going forever to be honest because that’s how versatile Black Americana is.

The music production is to go retro with modern elements. That is what we have done with the “Sun Over Soulaan” project. So combine these in music creators such as ElevenLabs or Suno as prompts and experiment until you find that special sound that vibes with you. What you become is a vibe music producer, like a vibe coder, creating music from prompts.

For those who have real music skills, Soul Choir is one of the latest plug-in/expansion packs on Native Instruments. Also, the same producers in the video created Glaze which use good R&B soul sounds spanning decades. So this is for those who want to create long-form performances with their unique sound.

The Business and Industry of Black Americana

Business economics of Black Americana is just as beautiful as the music. We can create retro soul cafes in our communities that play Black Americana tracks and serve classic soul food and treats like pineapple cake and Kool-Aid mixed with Vanilla Extract like we used to do growing up in the projects. But we do fried rice, shrimp po boys, tacos, and enchiladas as well.

That alone, just like the chillhop café can spin off bakeries that distribute food and coffee, and create a third space for people to chill, study, meet up, ponder and so much more in their comfort zone around their own people, their own music.

Then it comes to digital media where we can stream Black Americana music, distribute worldwide and have people travel to visit our café just to experience the environment. The real move is to set up a café in Asia and have other tourists from around the world check in.

Now we can create music stations that stream instrumental beats like chillhop, and they can stream on YouTube with a looping Black history scene. You know the picture above was created with AI, I didn’t have time to search within the Library of Congress archives for a Black Americana photo.

If the Soulaan caught on, they would be moving on this like the Nation of Islam have the Salaam restaurant and bakery on 79th in Chicago. This is a whole movement of using our music and reach back into our history of music and creating a new genre and a new start to celebrating who we are and where we are going, while creating economic empowerment in the process.

You and I are the Black media now and the revolution will not be broadcasted on legacy Black media.