This year, in honour of Black Music Month, we’re exploring the undeniable impact of Black music and musicians around the world. Hip-hop and R&B dominate the Canadian charts in 2021, but Black music and culture weren’t always embraced this way in Canada. While Canada has always had an abundance of gifted Black artists, they were historically relegated to niche platforms while the music industry and mainstream media showed heavy bias towards white rock, alternative and pop artists. One of the first Black artists to truly break out of Canada was Oscar Peterson, a legendary jazz pianist and eight-time Grammy winner. Peterson was followed by other trailblazers such as Maestro Fresh-Wes, Michie Mee, Kardinal Offishall, Jully Black and countless more. Despite the fact that there’s a clear sea change underway in Canada’s music culture—led by Drake, The Weeknd, and others—there is still much work to be done to ensure we honour our Black artists of yesterday, today and tomorrow. Here, we want to celebrate the success of Canada’s incredible community of Black creators, while acknowledging what a struggle it has been to get to this point, as well as the difficult but extremely important work that is yet to be done. Dive into our Black Music Month playlist, and if you hear something you like, save it to your library.