AMNA NAWAZ: Punk music is known for its raw, aggressive sound, its edgy fashion and its mosh pits.

It's also long been known for being predominantly white.

That's changed a lot in recent years.

And resurfaced music from its earliest days underscores that punk has always been influenced and shaped by Black artists as well.

Stephanie Sy has this story for our arts and culture series, Canvas.

MAN: We were all convinced that we had a sound that no other rock 'n' roll band had at that time.

STEPHANIE SY: That time was 1971.

And three brothers from Detroit, David, Dannis and Bobby Hackney, started playing rock 'n' roll.

They were inspired by bands like The Who and Alice Cooper, but their sound had a different edge and reason behind it.

DANNIS HACKNEY, Musician: In rock 'n' roll, the more times people laugh at you, the more times people reject you, the more times, it builds up in anger.

STEPHANIE SY: Dannis played the drums.

DANNIS HACKNEY: But the only way we would take out our anger is through the music.

And I guess that's what made the music louder and faster.

STEPHANIE SY: The rejection, they say, came from an industry that didn't like the name of their band.

Even though later punk bands had names like the Dead Boys and The Damned, the name Death turned off major record labels.

BOBBY HACKNEY, Musician: David said, yes, why don't we call it Death?

He had such a conviction about it that we didn't have no choice but to get on board.

And when we did get on board, we were all in.

STEPHANIE SY: Bobby was the lead singer and bassist.

BOBBY HACKNEY: We got Death shirts printed up.

We were Death.

STEPHANIE SY: In more recent years, musicians, writers and critics have recognized the music Death was playing as the predecessor to punk.

BOBBY HACKNEY: Back in those days, if you called somebody a punk, you got one of two things.

You got either punched in the mouth or it started a fight.

STEPHANIE SY: Death recorded a seven-song album in 1975, but were unable to secure a record deal that year, and the band never played live.

They eventually dissolved in the late '70s.

URIAN HACKNEY, Son of Bobby Hackney: That's the problem with being ahead of your time.

STEPHANIE SY: Bobby's youngest son, Urian Hackney, grew up listening to punk rock, oblivious to his dad and uncle's pioneering pre-punk band.

URIAN HACKNEY: No one really accepted them for what they were trying to do.

So I understand why he wouldn't tell us about it because it was kind of like a moment of, like, them coming so close to this thing and then not grabbing the ball.

STEPHANIE SY: But a small number of promo records with two Death songs eventually made their way into the hands of record collectors and deejays.

And Death's music had found a receptive new audience.

Their album was finally released in 2009 on Drag City Records, 34 years after it was recorded.

RAEGHAN BUCHANAN, Author, "The Secret History of Black Punk": There were Black punk rockers in the story of punk rock at every turn.

We have always been there.

STEPHANIE SY: Raeghan Buchanan has been listening to punk music since she was a kid.

She began playing in bands in her early 20s, but sometimes felt alienated as a Black artist in the mostly white punk scene.

The better-known Black punk band Bad Brains was already in her rotation.

But it was years before she learned about the more obscure Black artists who developed the genre.

RAEGHAN BUCHANAN: When I found out about Pure Hell, I was actually, like, upset and, like, angry.

This was a band that had nobody had ever mentioned to me and I had never heard.

How could this had never come up?

MAN: This song is called "Noise Addiction."

KENNY "STINKER" GORDON, Musician: We were musicians in Philadelphia from the same neighborhood and we were -- basically had the same interest in music.

STEPHANIE SY: Around the time Death formed in Detroit, Kenny "Stinker" Gordon moved with his friends to New York City, a haven for America's budding punk scene.

KENNY "STINKER" GORDON: The younger people were just starting to want to create their own style of music.

And in New York, you saw people like the Talking Heads and The B-52's and The Ramones.

STEPHANIE SY: But while those bands released albums and became the face of punk, Pure Hell faded.

After a dispute, their manager refused to release their only album recorded in 1978.

KENNY "STINKER" GORDON: A lot of people say they got ripped off.

These guys were -- the original guys had gotten written off, and that's because you didn't have an album or record that was out there that was in the mainstream.

STEPHANIE SY: That is, until their music and photos of their classic punk aesthetic resurfaced online.

KENNY "STINKER" GORDON: People started to find out who we were.

We were elated.

STEPHANIE SY: Legendary punk musician Henry Rollins released a Pure Hell single on his label in 2017.

For Buchanan, who works as an illustrator, discovering Pure Hell was only the beginning.

RAEGHAN BUCHANAN: This kind of really pushed me to start really searching for other bands that I would like that were Black.

And I just kept finding so many.

This is Pure Hell, my faves.

STEPHANIE SY: Her discoveries culminated in "The Secret History of Black Punk," a comic she created profiling Black punk artists, like Poly Styrene from the X-Ray Spex, Pat Smear of The Germs, and musician and filmmaker Don Letts.

She also started a festival, one of a dozen across the world celebrating newer Black and brown punk artists, like Soul Glo, a hardcore punk band from Philadelphia, and Special Interest, a charismatic Black-led band from New Orleans.

ALLI LOGOUT, Musician: There has been just such a big shift just within the last decade.

Alli Logout is the lead singer of Special Interest.

ALLI LOGOUT: Now I feel like I see so many young Black and brown people at punk shows.

I think that it has really crossed over and is speaking - - speaking to people in a different way.

STEPHANIE SY: Of these new bands, there's one that hearkens back to punk's earliest days.

URIAN HACKNEY: Death never played a live show before, so he wanted to, like, show people that this music exists.

MAN: We are Rough Francis.

STEPHANIE SY: Bobby Hackney's sons, musicians in their own right, formed a band, Rough Francis, to play Death's catalogue front to back.

While they say the renewed interest is exciting, for Bobby and Dannis Hackney, Death was never just about the fame.

BOBBY HACKNEY: Even though we never made it, even though we never had a hit record, I will cherish between 1973 and 1976 as the best rock 'n' roll years of our lives.

STEPHANIE SY: David Hackney, who founded Death, died in 2000, but Bobby and Dannis are still making music together.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Stephanie Sy.