dustry, but styles from all of these periods are still
performed.
Each of these periods in blues development
continues to influence African-American litera-
ture, and across the various blues subgenres and
regional styles, several patterns in theme and phi-
losophy can be identified. Among them are
- a belief that the artful rendering of painful
experience can be transforming; - an affirmation of the community, often
through the personal voice (e.g., “I” =
“we”); - a use of music for social criticism, fre-
quently in a covert manner; - an exploration of various aspects of adult
romantic and sexual relationships; - a willingness to dwell in stark reality;
- a reliance on personal power in the face of
challenge; - an “acceptance of the contradictory nature
of life” (Kalamu ya Salaam); and - a sharp attention to the consequences of
travel and movement.
African-American writers, such as Jayne Cor-
tez, RALPH ELLISON, and STERLING BROWN, have
sought to define the blues and its importance to
African-American culture. Cortez addresses the
paradigmatic potential of the blues with her claim
that “The [b]lues talks about and has respect for
the struggles of the past and is definitely concerned
with the present and the future. It talks about Black
culture and reinvestigates the African experience as
encountered all over the world” (Taking the Blues
Back Home, 1). According to Ellison, “The blues
is an impulse to keep the painful details and epi-
sodes of a brutal experience alive in one’s aching
consciousness, to finger its jagged grain, and to
transcend it, not by the consolation of philosophy
but by squeezing from it a near-tragic, near-comic
lyricism. As a form, the blues is an autobiographi-
cal chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed
lyrically.... They at once express both the agony
of life and the possibility of conquering it through
sheer toughness of spirit (Shadow and Act, 78). As
an early critic of the blues, Brown sought to validate
its literary impact and importance. He noted, “The
images of the [b]lues are worthy of a separate study.
At their best they are highly compressed, concrete,
imaginative, original.... With their imagination
they combine two great loves, the love of words and
the love of life. Poetry results” (239).
Brown, as well poets such as LANGSTON HUGHES,
sought not only to define the blues and its impor-
tance to African-American culture but also to
incorporate the blues thematically and structur-
ally into his works. Brown’s poem “Ma Rainey”
(1932) provides an excellent example of how Af-
rican-American writers have borrowed from blues
themes and philosophies. Keen in his poem is the
idea that the blues artist speaks for his or her com-
munity. First, Rainey is able to draw people from
“little river settlements,” “blackbottom cornrows,”
and “lumber camps” to come together for her per-
formance. The singer and audience establish a real
sense of community through call and response,
perhaps the centerpiece of black orality:O Ma Rainey
Sing yo’ song....
Sing us ’bout de hard luck
Roun’ our do’:
Sing us ’bout de lonesome road
We mus’ go.Critically important to her listeners’ sense of unity
and community is the cadence of Ma’s song; her
vocabulary and vernacular speak and reflect their
voice, allowing them to validate and empower
one another’s experience, despite the struggles
they have known individually and communally.
Ma Rainey’s song provides catharsis; it provides
listeners with the needed strength and determina-
tion to go forward in spite of whatever disasters,
natural or human, they might encounter along
their “lonesome road,” clearly a metaphor for life.
Indeed, the poetic quality of blues lyrics them-
selves has been a resource for nonmusical authors.
Poets have also mimicked the rhythms, repetition,
call and response, and AAB verse form of blues
songs from the “New Negro” HARLEM RENAISSANCE
era (e.g., Hughes’s first collection of poetry, The
Weary Blues), to poets of the BLACK AESTHETICSblues 61