An Interactive Digital Museum of Black Music
The Black Music Project is an engaging exhibit that celebrates, promotes, and preserves the notion that the history of Black American music is integral to the story of America. It features a range of genres and artists, from Call & Response in the Pre-Civil War era to the emergence of Hip-Hop and Neosoul at the close of the 20th century, along with lesser-known narratives and curated music playlists. The narrative of African American music is incredibly powerful; it originates from struggle and suffering, yet is rich with love, passion, joy, and faith. This story can evoke deep sorrow in one moment and pure joy in the next. Although it is not a fairy tale, it consistently offers hope. The project aims to engage students of all ages, music enthusiasts, and admirers of Black culture and its global influence through a comprehensive historical context, entertaining trivia, and thoughtfully curated playlists. The website features a retro aesthetic, blending vintage display fonts and cartoon-style graphics alongside a modern minimalist card layout. This design effectively marries the historical significance of the content with a museum-like minimalism and an impartial presentation of information. The dark user interface with white text on a black background deliberately echoes the imagery of the Black Lives Matter movement. The entire website was created using Webflow, utilizing their CMS to organize the extensive library of artists, genres, and exhibits, and incorporating Finsweet libraries, JavaScript, and jQuery to enable various filtering and slider functionalities. Additionally, we incorporated the default Spotify API player to embed curated playlists, complete with custom artwork for album covers, allowing the Spotify player’s background to align with the respective artist or genre page.