There is a distinct frequency in Black music that requires no translation. It is the equivalent of stepping onto a porch in the heat of July, hearing the murmur of elders before you even see their faces, or catching the aroma of a family recipe that hasn’t changed in four generations. It is an immediate, innate recognition. We often call it a vibe, or a groove, or soul, but is it actually spiritual memory at work?
For Black Americans, our music has never merely been a collection of commercialized commodities to be bought and sold on charts. Our music is an ever-evolving yet unbroken lineage of oral history. When we play, sing, or listen to music that carries this weight, we are returning to a communal center. It is an intentional act of remembering who we are, where we have been, and how we managed to survive the journey.
While our sound has branched out into hip-hop, R&B, gospel, blues, and neo-soul, the root system that feeds all of these expressions remains firmly anchored in a tradition of improvisation, ancestral reverence, and deep internal reflection.
Jonathon C. Neal, a professional musician performing as J. Clyde Neal, views this structural connection as absolute. “I’m a jazz musician, so I am of the belief that jazz is the root, the foundation, of Black American Music,” Neal explains to BINAMU. This root system is not defined by strict academic genre boundaries, but by a shared impulse to take the fragments of a fractured history and synthesize them into something whole, sacred, and entirely our own.
Neal recently sat down with Binamu to unpack how this creative lineage acts as a spiritual technology for the diaspora, particularly in the Jazz genre. Currently pursuing his Doctor of Musical Arts in Jazz & Contemporary Improvisation at the University of Michigan's School of Music, Theatre & Dance, Neal’s scholarly and artistic work directly centers Black American Music as a sacred tradition.
The Architecture of Resistance and Rest
Our music was born out of an absolute necessity to create a safe, communal space where society permitted none. When the transatlantic slave trade systematically stripped our ancestors of their drums, their languages, and their tangible connections to home, it could not touch the internal rhythm or the spiritual reservoir they carried inside their bodies. The spirituals, the blues, and eventually jazz emerged as sophisticated technologies of survival. They became tools to navigate an environment designed for our destruction. “Jazz was created out of an act of rebellion,” Neal says. “Jazz is the result of the African American mind at rest. The positive reaction to our adverse condition.”
This concept of the Black mind finding rest through creative expression is a revolutionary mode of resistance. In a world that historically viewed Black bodies strictly through the lens of labor, production, and subjugation, turning inward to create a complex, improvisational language was a radical assertion of humanity as well as freedom of expression. When a musician steps up to an instrument, or a vocalist takes the microphone, they are entering a sanctuary of psychological safety. The music becomes a space where the constant weight of the outer world can be temporarily set aside, allowing the spirit to breathe, contemplate, and heal.
Honoring the Ancestral Council
Because this music is forged from a shared history, it operates as a continuous dialogue across time. We do not create in a vacuum. Every time a contemporary R&B singer uses a particular melisma, or a hip-hop producer loops a specific horn sample, they are actively invoking the names and spirits of those who laid the tracks. The stage becomes an altar, and the performance becomes an act of collective reverence. In our culture, the separation between the past and the present has always been fluid; our ancestors remain part of our daily consciousness, guiding our hands and voices.
Neal notes that this awareness is foundational to the discipline of the craft, creating a bridge between the living and those who paved the way. “There are many musicians we honor in this music because of their massive contributions to jazz,” Neal observes. “We are always honoring the ancestors when we play this music.”
This ancestral honor is what gives the music its familiar, comforting texture. It feels like home because it carries the literal and figurative breath of our predecessors. When we hear the music fully embodied, it triggers a recognition that bypasses intellectual analysis and strikes straight at the soul. It reminds us that our stories are durable and that our collective memory cannot be erased.
When his ensemble performs at storied venues like Cliff Bell's, Neal shares that this deep connection is exactly what transforms a performance into a sanctuary for both the artist and the audience. “Jazz is the embodiment of the human spirit,” Neal says. “How we feel is exactly what comes out in the music. When a jazz musician can fully embody the music, jazz always feels like home.” One that is not bound by geographic coordinates or physical structures; “home” becomes a spiritual state of being where we are fully seen, understood, and wrapped in a familiar warmth.
The Vulnerability of the Sacred Vessel
Reaching that level of artistic and spiritual connection requires an immense amount of personal courage. You cannot hold back or wear a mask when you are operating in this tradition. The music demands a transparency that can feel at once terrifying and exhilarating as it exposes the rawest parts of the inner self to the world.
In Black musical spaces—whether it is a storefront church, a crowded living room, or a smoky basement club—there is no wall between the performer and the listener. The sound is an intimate extension of the person making it, carrying their joys, their grief, their testimonies, and their prayers–as well as those of the ancestors. “It takes an incredible amount of vulnerability to play this music,” Neal shares, reflecting on the intense emotional stakes of improvisation. “Because through the breath and the sound that follows, your most intimate thoughts are on full display for the group and for the listener.”
This vulnerability elevates the music from mere entertainment to a high spiritual calling. The studio and the bandstand become extensions of the sanctuary, places where the divine intersects with the human experience. The music becomes a vehicle for a higher purpose, whether that purpose is communal healing, personal peace, or divine worship.
Neal views his own artistic journey through this lens of sacred utility and love. “Spirituality is a huge part of the foundation of this music. Many musicians are looking to glorify a supreme being as part of a belief system or they are playing for their own inner peace,” Neal says. “I personally play music as an act of God’s love that he wishes to spread to humanity. I play in hopes of one day being a vessel for his message. I believe we were all here to create and when we acknowledge and use our creative gifts, it is the ultimate act of love.”
The Intergenerational Custody of Soul
As this music carries the weight of our spiritual history and cultural survival, it cannot be learned solely from a textbook or an academic syllabus. Musical tradition and practice must be passed down through proximity, relationship, and oral tradition. It requires elders pouring into the youth, and the youth having the humility and reverence to sit at their feet and listen to the story behind the sound, the message behind the music. This intergenerational handoff is what keeps the spirit of the music pure, preventing it from being diluted or disconnected from its cultural source. This responsibility is a sacred trust that every true keeper of the culture must accept. We are custodians of a legacy, and our survival depends on our willingness to teach the music to those coming behind us. Neal encourages this educational exchange between the generations, emphasizing that “It is wholly each musician’s responsibility to be intergenerational.” Through this continuous, loving transfer of knowledge, Black music remains an eternal flame. It ensures that no matter how much the world changes, our children will always have a sonic map to guide them back home, back to the ancestors, and back to themselves.
