The breath of black musicians is the noblest – and fundamental – trait in American culture

Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Earl
Hines, 
Nat King Cole, Count
Basie,
The Empress of the Blues.
 
Prez, Klook, Lady Day.
Art, Bud
Thelonious Sphere Monk.
 
Bird, Mingus
Miles
Prince of Darkness, coal
‘Trane! Coltrane!

Aretha, Queen of Soul
Ornette’n
                       voices,
                                          riffs

Black lives. Black
lives

Music: Charles Mingus «Fables of Faubus», Ah Um 1959