B.B. KING

Tennessee state Rep. Harold Love Jr.'s father put up a fight in the 1960s against rerouting Interstate 40 because he believed it would stifle and isolate Nashville’s Black community.

In Questlove's documentary “Summer of Soul” a musical flood, too long dammed up, is finally released.

Singer Shemekia Copeland and guitarist Christone “Kingfish” Ingram are among this year's the top winners at the Blues Music Awards.

People walk to the entrance of the National Museum of African American Music, Saturday, Jan. 30, 2021, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)NASHVILLE, Tenn. – A new museum two decades in the making is telling the interconnected story of Black musical genres through the lens of American history. Even as Nashville has long celebrated its role in the history of music, the new museum fills a gap by telling an important and often overlooked story about the roots of American popular music, including gospel, blues, jazz, R&B and hip-hop. “Most music museums deal with a label, a genre or an artist,” said H. Beecher Hicks III, the museum’s president and CEO. She noted that the museum put gospel music in context with how it inspired social change, especially during the civil rights era.

The film will debut at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. (Sundance Film Festival via AP)Sundance Institute programs. Known as “Black Woodstock,” the festival occurred during the same summer as Woodstock — and just 100 miles away — but received far less attention. It debuted Thursday night at the Sundance Film Festival where it spawned immediate acclaim and countless at-home dance parties for virtual festivalgoers — a party Questlove extended with a live-streamed after-party DJ set. Morris Park for a celebration of soul, gospel, funk and, most of all of Black identity at a pivotal point in African American culture.

Members of the Mississippi Highway Safety Patrol Honor Guard prepare to raise the new Mississippi State flag at the Capitol in Jackson, Monday, Jan. 11, 2021. Tate Reeves signed a law that created the new state flag with magnolia at the center, six months after the state retired the last state flag in the U.S. that included the Confederate battle emblem. The law retiring the old flag also specified that the commission's proposed new flag would go on the Nov. 3 ballot for a yes-or-no vote. The Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups have waved the Confederate battle flag for decades. A few dozen people demonstrated on the south steps of the Mississippi Capitol in support of reviving the old flag.