“Antebellum” means “before the war,” associated with the time before the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865) until after that conflict was over.

“Music from the past is a gateway to understanding and feeling the past.  A Communion among music from people from the past to people in the present.”  … Tolstoy. 

“I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears.” … Frederick Douglass

African musical traditions like call and response and the bluing of a note at its essence – is the DNA of American music.

It took 400 years of the Middle Passage, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, arhoolies, spirituals, bloodshed and sorrow to create blues music.

“History repeats itself first as tragedy then as farce” as first said by Karl Marx is now more understandable than ever. Especially visible in the so-called American “cultural wars” of today about racism.   What does “Critical race theory” actually mean, and why are Americans so excited about it?

Any form of history that gets suppressed or repressed or erased out, it comes back to haunt. This painful and charged history needs to be acknowledged and discussed.

We live in society beyond our choosing with a past that we cannot change.  George Orwell, “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”  The past cannot be controlled. It is what it was.