From Bessie Smith’s blues grit to Tina Turner’s fire, these two singers helped shape Janis Joplin’s unforgettable vocal style.

On January 20, “The Bessie," was presented to African American dancer/educator Dyane Harvey-Salaam and choreographer Garth Fagan.

Long before superstardom existed, Bessie Smith showed the world what it meant to be a legend. Born into poverty, she turned ...

More than 270 photographs show expressions of gender and sexuality across two centuries. Works by well-known photographers such as Berenice Abbott, Robert Mapplethorpe, Man Ray and Edmund Teske hang ...

In 2012, scholar John Turner published an award-winning biography of Brigham Young, a mountain of a man in Western Americana. But there remained a bigger fish to pursue, namely Joseph Smith, the ...

The Bessie Smith Cultural Center will present a full month of events this June celebrating African American history, culture and music. "From honoring Negro League baseball legends to uplifting ...

Like a perfectly timed high note in a torch song, Bessie doesn't tiptoe into queerness as filmmaker Dee Rees gives us a love letter to Black, bisexual brilliance. After all, when history forgets our ...

Bessie Smith was an American blues singer widely renowned during the Jazz Age. Nicknamed the "Empress of the Blues", she was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s. She is often ...

Adorned with feathered headpieces, strings of pearls, bright lipstick and custom-made wigs and satin dresses, flecked with jewels and gems, Detroit's finest jazz vocalists — including Veronique ...

Voices honoring female jazz and blues legends Billie Holiday, Phyllis Hyman, Nancy Wilson and Bessie Smith drifted through Aretha's Jazz Café, in Detroit's Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts, ...

As we celebrate Black History Month, we embark on a profound journey through the evolution of Black music in America – a story of resilience, creativity, and cultural revolution that continues to ...