Of course, everything from before 1865 is “from the slave period.” If it’s necessary to cancel music from that era, then certainly every other aspect of pre-1865 Western civilization should also be disposed of: not just art and literature but, say, furniture design and agricultural methods. And what about the scientific principles that were discovered before 1865 and that made possible electrification, travel by car and air, cures for various diseases and, eventually, the Internet?

If music is tainted, so are all of these things.

But why pick 1865? Do we really want to continue to exalt the cultural artifacts of the Jim Crow era? Shouldn’t we erase all products of the imagination that were conceived before America inaugurated its first black president?

Or is even that date too long ago?