Angela Davis refers to the blues as the “predominant postslavery African-American musical form,” one that “both reflected and helped construct a new black consciousness.”6 Though influenced by slave songs and spirituals, the blues were distinct, in their secularity, as well as their relationship to emancipation: “blues created a discourse that represented freedom in more immediate and accessible terms.”7 While male musicians eventually dominated the blues, it was actually Black women who were the first to record the blues in the 1920s. Angela Davis’ Blues Legacies and Black Feminism focuses on some of these early Black women blues musicians, namely Gertrude “Ma” Rainey and Bessie Smith, as well as later jazz musician, Billie Holiday. Davis challenges notions that these blues musicians and their songs were apolitical or anti-feminist, offering close readings of their lyrics and recordings, as well as providing context about their personal lives and careers.
The blues gave voice to the struggles that poor Black communities were facing, including songs about “work, jail, prostitution, natural disasters, and other issues that when taken together, constitute a patchwork social history of black Americans during the decades following emancipation.”8 While there are numerous such songs to analyze—and there would have been more had Black artists been permitted to record all the songs they wrote and performed—Bessie Smith’s “Poor Man Blues” and Ma Rainey’s “Chain Gang Blues” exemplify the political views and expressions of early blues women.
“Poor Man Blues” concludes with the following two stanzas:
Poor man fought all the battles, poor man would fight again today
Poor man fought all the battles, poor man would fight again today
He would do anything you ask him in the name of the U.S.A.
Now the war is over, poor man must live the same as you
Now the war is over, poor man must live the same as you
If it wasn’t for the poor man, mister rich man, what would you do?
Recorded in 1928, this song is a social commentary on the racial inequality and exploitation that was—and still is—pervasive in the United States. It speaks of African American men’s service as frontline soldiers in World War I—not to mention every previous and following U.S. war—along with their lack of recognition and compensation. The song also captures this era succinctly, calling into question the wealthy’s reliance on poor people, yet their unwillingness to share the profits generated by their labor.
Ma Rainey’s 1925 song, “Chain Gang Blues,” gives voice to another injustice that has caused significant harm to the Black community, continuing to disproportionately target Black folks today. Despite the official end of slavery, slave-like conditions continued in Black communities for decades after the Civil War’s end—and some would argue still do today. During the Jim Crow era, Black codes and convict leasing meant that African Americans were kept bound in chains, figuratively, and in many cases quite literally, as Ma Rainey declares in her song. Interestingly, while most accounts of chain gang’s focus on men, Ma Rainey’s protagonist is a woman, bringing attention to the less-discussed fact that Black women too suffered under convict leasing and chain gang systems, and today Black women too are victims of the police state and prison industrial complex.
Using these and other songs as examples, Davis concludes that: “Gertrude Rainey’s and Bessie Smith’s songs may be interpreted precisely as historical preparation for political protest [. . .] While there may not be a direct line to social activism, activist stances are inconceivable without the consciousness such songs suggest.”9 This not only demonstrates the political perspectives of early blues singers like these two women, but also speaks to the need for political art and music, as a medium that inspires and sustains activism.
Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith’s songs were not only expressions of the economic and racial injustices that Black communities experienced during this era, but also were expressions of Black women’s distinct experiences under racism, capitalism, and patriarchy. Through their music, blues women created a vital space: “The performances of the classic blues women—especially Bessie Smith—were one of the few cultural spaces in which a tradition of public discourse on male violence had been previously established.”10 Fifty years later, second wave feminism—the face of which was white feminists, who often excluded their Black counterparts—would proclaim that “the personal is political,” and that women needed a space to speak out about domestic and sexual violence. Countless songs by Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, written and performed throughout the 1920s, 30s, and 40s did just that, yet these Black women were not revered as feminists as they ought to have been.
Another under-recognized feminist aspect of Rainey and Smith’s music is their expressions of desire. It was—and in many spaces, still is—considered radical for women to give voice to their sexuality, especially in the non-heteronormative way both Smith and Rainey did in their songs. For example, in “Young Woman’s Blues,” Smith sings of her desires for pleasure, and her resistance to marriage:
No time to marry, no time to settle down
I’m a young woman and ain’t done runnin’ ‘round
I ain’t no high yella, I’m a deep killer brown
I ain’t gonna marry, ain’t gon’ settle down
I’m gon’ drink good moonshine and run these browns down
See that long lone road, Lord, you know it’s gotta end
And I’m a good woman and I can get plenty men.
This feminist song not only celebrates women’s desires, but also in doing so, bucks against what we have only recently come to call slut-shaming. It also does this in a distinctly Black feminist way, as it revels in the protagonist’s ability to get plenty of men as “a deep killer brown” woman. Such positive portrayals of Black women’s sexuality is something our mainstream society today is still struggling to embrace nearly 100 years after Bessie Smith sang these words. Songs like these created fissures in what must have felt like a monolith of patriarchal white supremacy.
Ma Rainey’s “Prove It on Me Blues” goes even further to challenge heteronormativity:
They said I do it, ain’t nobody caught me
Sure got to prove it on me
Went out last night with a crowd of my friends
They must’ve been women, ‘cause I don’t like no men
It’s true I wear a collar and a tie
Make the wind blow all the while
‘Cause they say I do it, ain’t nobody caught me
They sure got to prove it on me
Wear my clothes just like a fan
Talk to the gals just like any old man
‘Cause they say I do it, ain’t nobody caught me
Sure got to prove it on me
Here Ma Rainey’s celebration of herself and her desires are made all the more radical by her gender-play and queerness. What’s more, the song's lyrics make clear Ma Rainey’s awareness of the heteronormative world and their disapproval, yet she is proud in her defiance. This is a sentiment that seemed radical to many in the 1970s, yet is here performed several decades earlier. As Davis states, “Both women were role models for untold thousands of their sisters to whom they delivered messages that defied the male dominance encouraged by mainstream culture. The blues women openly challenged the gender politics implicit in traditional cultural representations of marriage and heterosexual love and relationships.”11
The Blues and Black Feminism - Questions, Connections, and Activities
Guiding Questions
- What were some of the key struggles Black Americans were experiencing—and resisting—in the post-emancipation, post-Reconstruction years?
- In what ways did—and do—Black women face multiple, compounded struggles as a result of racism and sexism? What is intersectionality, and what is its relevance to Black women both past and present?
- How are contemporary Black women artists whose music and performance may not be seen as political, and who are often criticized, actually engaging in political work through their art?
Contemporary Connections
- Megan Thee Stallion
- Cardi B
Lesson Activities
- Read lyrics and listen to Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith songs
- Watch Dee Rees’ Mudbound to learn more about Jim Crow era racism and the experiences of Black veterans returning to the U.S. after service
- Watch excerpts from Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom to learn more about Blues women
- Read opinion-editorial by Megan Thee Stallion, as well as article about how Megan Thee Stallion became a symbol (both linked in resources below)
