Black Rock Coalition

The Black Rock Coalition is a New York-based artists' collective and non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the creative freedom and works of black musicians.

The BRC was founded in 1985 in New York City by Vernon Reid (guitarist for the rock band Living Colour), Greg Tate (journalist for the Village Voice), Dk Dyson (lead singer of Eye & I), and Konda Mason (producer), but today has members from around the world. Members that helped propel BRC at that time include but are not limited to; Chuck Mosely (lead singer, Faith no More,1983-1988), Angelo Moore (lead singer, Fishbone), Corey Glover (lead singer, Living Colour). Many of these members were key players in the formation centered on the band Living Colour to start with. The Black Rock Coalition was created to band black rockers together in the music world because of racial discrimination in the music industry. In the 1980s and 1990s, some Black rock bands such as Living Colour and Fishbone had illustrations rather than photos as their album covers. LaRonda Davis, the executive of the Black Rock Coalition, explained this was a marketing tactic used to avoid any confusion that the consumer may have off their judgment of the album cover. "If you saw a Black person on the cover, the assumption was that the music was R&B or hip-hop. It was about the look of the person on the cover as opposed to the sound inside, which created more work for the marketers."

“Their goal: to assert that a new generation of black musicians could play more than just R&B and hip- hop, and could rock the house as much as Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Arthur Lee, and Jimi Hendrix had done before. Now most of the scene’s bands are either footnotes or forgotten." The BRC's mission is to maximize the development, exposure, and acceptance of black rock musicians, and encourage artists who refuse to cater to "the creative straitjacket the industry has designed."

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