The Mary V. Jordan Multicultural Center hosted Jonathan Blanchard and his band, The Usual Suspects, to begin celebrating Hip-Hop History month.
Blanchard and the band are touring with an act called “History to Hip-Hop” where they perform an array of American music, starting with songs sung by inbound slaves in the bellies of ships coming across the Atlantic Ocean and ending with the creation and introduction of hip-hop as a genre.
The band is a seven-piece unit featuring Blanchard on lead vocals, backed by two other vocalists, keys, guitar, drums and a one-man brass/horns section.
Vocal-heavy field songs and gospel hymns, which Blanchard described as “songs that are a mixture of Blues and Appalachian mountain music,” lead the performance before moving into Blues and the major impacts it had across the spectrum of American music.
“Mississippi is the home of the blues, but Memphis is its caretaker,” said Blanchard.
Blanchard commanded the crowd with a fun and energetic presence. At various times, he would incite chants and singalongs and even turned over lead vocals to the audience at one point.
History to Hip-Hop mixes storytelling from a historical context with its live music performance. The band performed a variety of hit songs from every era they touched on.
Blanchard gave a brief but detailed introduction to each genre the band performed. He described how Blues was renamed “Rock and Roll” to appeal to a younger, mostly teenage crowd to capitalize on record sales in a newly emerging middle-class in America and its newfound “pocket change,” as he referred to it.
The finale of the performance summed up the history of American music as a culmination of influences that ultimately yielded hip-hop as a cultural and musical moment.
