While Black History Month is all year round for us at PAM, we’re going to celebrate this February and publish a number of special articles. Here we have an annotated playlist made up of 5 songs from 5 historic activists.

Each week during Black History month PAM will be celebrating by looking at a seminal piece of black American music that helps tell the story of the United States. Today its “Georgia On My Mind” by Ray Charles.

Nina Simone’s song became Aretha Franklin’s hit. It’s many covers attest to how much it has spoken and continues to speak to black artists from the US and elsewhere.

Despite being an inspiration for Chuck Berry and Elvis, this gospel singer and virtuoso guitarist was left almost totally absent from the history books before a recent revival that is finally beginning to do her justice, almost 40 years after her death.

PAM looks back at landmark works of American black music that are enmeshed in the country’s history. Today, the album Roots, Curtis Mayfield’s fine tuning of his allegiance to Black Power.

Who better to close our Black History Month feature than with this militant centenarian. Tim Black rubbed shoulders with the greatest figures in 20th century Black History: political leaders and jazz legends jostle in the memories […]

Released in 1975, the political-funk delirium “Chocolate City” by George Clinton’s Parliament imagined the American capital under black sovereignty and a White House entrusted to figures of Black Power. Here is the third episode of […]

Each year on the 1st of February, Black History Month begins in the United States. A month dedicated to African-American history and the African diaspora. This February, PAM revisits a few moments of its history […]