Black America’s ability to move society forward has been beyond remarkable

"If anyone’s ever made this hard land great in the past, it’s been Black Americans" freelance journalist Piotr Orlov writes in a great essay about Black music - "the first musical art-form original to the United States". It was born of "a desire to express oneself within a society that did not want to hear any of what you had to say. A society that, in many cases, did not regard you as fully human". Black culture, on the other hand, is characterized by - "creation of culture, the strength of moral character, the depth of communal compassion". Black blues and jazz, Orlov argues, is "the basis of all great new music of the last 100 years—paving the way for the post-modern Black electronic music (hip-hop, house and techno and electro) which is the core of pretty much all popular sounds of the 21st century", but "we don’t get to have this music without the burden that preceded it".