Ma Rainey

the urban North. Many of the earliest black American recording stars were blues singers. The first blues songs to be recorded, often called “classic blues,” were jazz-influenced songs in a vaudeville style, sung by the great blueswomen: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and others. These singers were often accompanied by pianists,…

Ma Rainey’s character is actually based on the famous singer. As previously mentioned, black entertainers were viewed as property. The characters Sturdyvant and Irvin “become wealthy exploiting Ma’s recordings, providing a strong example of black victimization…

center in St. Paul, Minnesota. In this new milieu, expelled from his local Pittsburgh, Wilson started to perceive lovely characteristics in the dialect of the place where he grew up. While his initial two dramatizations gathered little notice, his third, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1984), was acknowledged by the National Playwrights Conference in 1982, where it drew the consideration of Lloyd Richards, the creative executive of the Yale Repertory Theater. After perusing the content, Richards…

A popular, marketable time in America were the 1920’s, also known as the “roaring twenties,” with a number of notable events remembered in history. World War 1 had just ended and drastic changes would occur in the US. Although music was existing far before the twenties, music in the twenties was the start of a new decade that completely changed the way music was viewed. Genres like jazz, dance bands, and blues were the center of music in the twenties, all of which became national sensations.…

Considering the recent presidential election, the idea of changing one’s hair to fit the paradigms of society coincides with Muslim women’s struggle with wearing their hijabs in the modern world. Similar to Harris-Perry’s idea that stereotyping makes black women conform to the “crooked room,” the fear of being shipped away has women, Muslim Americans questioning whether they should continue wearing their hijabs. Both, the black women in Harris-Perry’s book and Islamic women are perpetually in a…

The blues, like any music genre, is a representation of emotion. Most of the time the emotion that is associated with the blues is well feeling blue. When a person gets laid off or someone close dies, they feel blue. If one starts to listen to some of the artist of the blues genre; however, one can see quickly that there are other emotions that can be associated with the blues. One can view that the blues is also about overcoming those hard times or letting go of those emotions that are making…

example of Bessie’s encounter with a Klansmen. This feminist author is showing female dominance at its best. Bessie was a self made millionaire in a time were oppression and suffrage still exist. Even with Gertrude Rainey, the term “ma”, significances meant boss. She wanted to be known as “ma” because of the respects mothers received. The author had many views in this book that…

Bessie Smith is a blues songwriter that is very parallel to that of “Ma” Rainey. By this I mean that, they write songs that connect about many of the same issues; such as Ma’s use of the theme of marriage in her songs. In the case of Bessie Smith, “she alludes to rejection, abuse, desertion, and unfaithful lovers but still manages to keep positive ideal in her songs by speaking about “independence and assertiveness” (pg 21). This idealism can be seen in the song, “Broken Hearted Blues”, Smith…

Living life to the fullest and looking forward,we all strive to be this person. Bessie Smith made this her life motto and lived it well. Facing hardships and tragedies Bessie Smith still made it in a world against her race and her gender. She spoke for a generation of women about love and loss and what it meant to be an early 1900’s African American woman. The Empresses of the Blues remains a legend today, her lyrics still empower and speak to the women of this time, her message living on.…

have been disproportionately represented. Dating back to the 1920s, black women have successfully been “contest[ing], protest[ing], and affirm[ing] working-class ideologies of black womanhood (187)” through the blues. Notable blues singers, such as Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Ida Cox, paved the way for women MCs today to speak out about their experiences of being a black working-class woman. The four categories of women rappers that have emerged are: “Queen Mother,” “Fly Girl,” “Sista with…