W. Ralph Eubanks at the Hedgehog Review:
As it emerged after the overthrow of Reconstruction, when black voices were again being silenced in public and civic spheres, the blues became an alternative form of communication. As Shelby “Poppa Jazz” Brown reminded the noted folklorist William Ferris,
Why do you think they play the blues in Mississippi? Because of the way they used to plow the folks here, chop cotton at daylight in the morning. They would get out there and work so hard, they be even looking at the sun, saying, “Hurry, hurry, sundown. Let tomorrow shine.” They wanted the sun to go down so they could stop working, they worked so hard. They learned the blues from that.4
I would eventually come to see the blues as poetry born out of the struggle for survival, the songs, when taken together with their heroes, tricksters, and lovers, forming a kind of Homeric epic of suffering and resistance, of loves sought and lost, of acts of subversive cunning and triumphs of resilient humor—in sum, as a literary as well as musical form containing multiple layers of meaning.
more here.
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