African-American Music Appreciation Month, 2013

Vol. 78

Thursday,

No. 109

June 6, 2013

Part III

The President

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Proclamation 8992--African-American Music Appreciation Month, 2013

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Title 3--
The President

Proclamation 8992 of May 31, 2013

African-American Music Appreciation Month, 2013

By the President of the United States of America

A Proclamation

Since our Nation's founding, people from every walk of
life have set out to capture the American experience
not just in poetry or prose, but also in the timeless
quality of song. When the outcome of a revolution hung
in the balance, drums and fifes filled brave patriots
with the strength to carry on. When slavery kept
millions in bondage, spirituals gave voice to a dream
of true and lasting freedom. Through every generation,
music has reflected and renewed our national
conversation, bringing us together and reminding us of
the humanity we share.

African Americans have always had a hand in shaping the
American sound. From gospel and Motown to bebop and
blues, their story is bound up in the music they made--
songs of hurt and hardship, yearning and hope, and
struggle for a better day. Those feelings speak to
something common in all of us. With passion and
creativity, African-American performers have done more
than reinvent the musical styles they helped define;
they have channeled their music into making change and
advancing justice, from radio booths to the stage to
our city streets.

That story is still unfolding today. We see it in the
young poet putting his words to a beat; the
conservatory student perfecting her technique; the jazz
musician making old melodies new again. During African-
American Music Appreciation Month, let us celebrate
these artists and the generations who inspired them,
and let us reflect on our heritage as a Nation forever
enriched by the power of song.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the
United States of America, by virtue of the authority
vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the
United States, do hereby proclaim June 2013 as African-
American Music Appreciation Month. I call upon public
officials, educators, and all the people of the United
States to observe this month with appropriate
activities and programs that raise awareness and foster
appreciation of music that is composed, arranged, or
performed by African Americans.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this
thirty-first day of May, in the year of our Lord two
thousand thirteen, and of the Independence of the
United States of America the two hundred and thirty-
seventh.