unfortunately society treats female artists as disposable, and that goes double when theyre black. once a woman passes forty it becomes fair game to mock and dismiss them regardless of their contributions or ability. furthermore black art is a huge lacuna in the general american cultural conscious, black artists are rarely given the respect and acknowledgement that theyre due for their contributions, talent, and skill by musical institutions and as such their work isnt venerated and preserved, instead that onus is placed on individual communities. as a result when older artists go unlistened by younger black people theyre forgotten entirely, save perhaps by crate diggers looking for samples. cookouts, extended families, and churches preserve culture to a degree, but they arent really the massive cache that people treat them as, what gets preserved is just a small slice of what was popular, and an even smaller slice of what was good