Veronica Swift - A Little Taste

There has always been an uncomfortable tension between rhythm and blues and rock and roll, a cyclical influence that vacillates between inspiration, appropriation and separation. Popular music has broken off into categories of rock, pop, country, and R&B, each with their own origin stories. But R&B and rock, usually codified as vastly different, Black and white styles, have long been intertwined in ways our historical memory may have us forget. 

Despite the innovation that comes from separation, rock and R&B always find their way back to each other. In recent years, rock veterans have turned to the genre’s classics for inspiration. Queens of the Stone Age veered from their typical hard rock with 2017’s Villains, a dance y album inspired by frontman Josh Homme’s love of 1920s jazz and swing, other Black genres that laid the groundwork for the popular music of today.

The whitewashing of rock’s history has oversimplified music’s malleability and silenced the voices of America’s most marginalized and most talented. As the industry reaches an era of fluidity once again, remembering popular music’s roots makes for a more enriching and accurate listening experience.

Source: Aural History: The Inextricable Ties Between Rhythm and Blues and Rock and Roll by Carys Anderson

Veronica Swift - A Little Taste

• Written by: Dave Frishberg, Johnny Hodges
• Released in: 2019
• Genre: Jazz

"Veronica Swift first gained major international attention in 2015 when she won second place in the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz International Vocals Competition."

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