“Good music has stories to tell, a message to give.”
The presentation will feature Aretha Franklin, John Batiste, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye. It will start with the civil rights song,
We Shall Overcome and ending with the Black Lives Matter movement anthem,
We Are.
Thornley said there were many levels of meaning in music, and that was the beauty of it.
“You don’t ask the question, what did they intend? You ask, what do I hear from those things? It’s open to interpretation and that’s fun.”
He said he liked soul music because it was the “soul of the United States of America”, and it sounded best on vinyl.