ipl-logo

How Gertrude Ma Rainey Sang Black Rural Southerners Into Popular American Culture

1655 Words7 Pages

Post-Reconstruction Blues: How Gertrude “Ma” Rainey Sang Black Rural Southerners into Popular American Culture. Legendary blues vocalist and Harlem Renaissance artist Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, known as the “Mother of Blues,” introduced blues music to a mainstream audience, transforming the genre and expanding opportunities for African-American artists. Through lyrical depictions of black Southern life and the complex experiences of African-American women, Rainey’s music increased the visibility of a people silenced in popular culture. While less well-known today, Rainey left a legacy that continues to influence musicians and broaden our knowledge of life for African-Americans in the post-Reconstruction era. Ma Rainey was born Gertrude Malissa Nix Pridgett on April 26, 1886, in Columbus, Georgia. Rainey possessed musical talent from a young age and performed in public for the first time at age 14 at the Springer Opera House in Columbus. Soon after, she found her calling singing on tour in vaudeville and African-American minstrel shows. …show more content…

Originating from minstrel shows, vaudeville became popular at the turn of the century and featured unrelated acts such as singing, dancing, comedy, acrobatics, and magic. While no video recordings of Ma Rainey exist, the memory of her vibrant performances has been passed down through written reviews. According to critic Mary L. Bogumil in Understanding August Wilson, Rainey wore “flamboyant” jewelry and costumes and performed in front of a backdrop that featured a large gramophone design, “which gave the appearance of Ma emerging right from the speaker, issuing from and manifesting the music itself" (qtd. in Timmel. Such extravagant details exemplify the sensational nature of vaudeville shows. Rainey’s bold and brilliant stage persona was magnetic. She forced the audience, who were often men, to listen to what she had to

Show More
Related
428 Words | 2 Pages

Throughout her career, “Mills earned a reputation for her wondrous, high-pitched voice, unique dance movements and comedic timing that allowed her to become an unparalleled force during the Harlem Renaissance. With Mills quite aware of the racial dynamics of the day and wishing to make a difference, she also served as an icon for African-American performers and audiences of all backgrounds.” (Bio.) Mills was well recognized for amazing talents, and became more popular as she starred in “Shuffle Along”, “Plantation Revenue”, and “Blackbirds”. Starring in mostly musicals, Mills was recognized more for her beautiful voice, and was a huge star in Britain by 1926.

Read More
2098 Words | 9 Pages

Lena felt that her success was mainly due to her looks rather than her vocal abilities. During the 1940’s the atmosphere in show business, and everywhere else, had obvious tones of racism and the black performers were treated very poorly.

Read More
125 Words | 1 Pages

The greatest white female rock singer of the 1960s, Janis Joplin was also a great blues singer, making her material her own with her wailing, raspy, supercharged emotional delivery. First rising to stardom as the frontwoman for San Francisco psychedelic band Big Brother & the Holding Company, she left the group in the late '60s for a brief and uneven (though commercially successful) career as a solo artist. Although she wasn't always supplied with the best material or most sympathetic musicians, her best recordings, with both Big Brother and on her own, are some of the most exciting performances of her era. She also did much to redefine the role of women in rock with her assertive, sexually forthright persona and raunchy, electrifying on-stage

Read More
931 Words | 4 Pages

She was hired as a dancer rather than a singer, because the company also included the well-known singer, Ma Rainey. One of the numerous myths about Bessie Smith is that she was tutored (some versions claim kidnapped) by Ma Rainey, the prototype blues singer, and forced to tour with Rainey's show. Rainey didn't have her own show until after 1916, long after Smith had achieved independent success in a variety of minstrel and tent shows. Rainey and Smith did work together, however, and had established a friendship as early as 1912.Bessie eventually moved on to performing in various chorus lines, and she would rise to become its biggest star after signing with Columbia

Read More
220 Words | 1 Pages

Women’s Blues music in the 1920s and early 1930s served as liberation for the sexual and cultural politics of female sexuality in black women’s dissertation. Hazel V. Carby explores the ideology of the white feminist theory in her deposition, "It Jus Be 's Dat Way Sometime: The Sexual Politics of Women 's Blues", and critiques its views by focusing on the representation of feminism, sexuality, and power in black women’s blues music. She analyzes the sexual and cultural politics of black women who constructed themselves as sexual subjects through songs in blues music and explains how the representation of black female sexuality in black women’s fiction and in women’s blues differ from one another. Carby claims that these black women

Read More
205 Words | 1 Pages

I choose a jazz singer named Bessie Smith. Bessie is one of the best blue and jazz singers of 1920’s. One the most important fact that interested me, was she lived in a hard time of discrimination, suffering, and abuse, but she never gave up on singing. I think Singing for Bessie smith and doing what she loved kept her alive through all that suffering. Bessie went from being orphaned after her family died to become the highest paid singer at her time.

Read More
629 Words | 3 Pages

Louis Armstrong was a “Hot Musician” in Harlem in the 1920’s; he was very talented playing the trumpet. He was a poor boy so he went to live with his grandmother when he was 5. Louis was 9 when he got arrested for shooting a pistol at midnight. By the time Louis was 18 Armstrong was playing music full time (Kallen 36-37). Florence Mills was a dance in Harlem.

Read More
761 Words | 4 Pages

Originating from African Americans residing in the deep south, blues music began to spread. Chicago bloomed with blues and became the roots for this style of music. The use of pathos and ethos allows the author to delve into the Stones and how they made a name for African American musicians. He uses direct quotes from blues musicians, like Muddy Waters, to provide an emotional attachment to the struggles of African American musicians during this time. He also provides a detailed background with interviews to provide a glimpse into their life and credibility.

Read More
1334 Words | 6 Pages

Miller focuses on the authenticity of music based on race or region in the 1920s, while Stimeling approaches authenticity from the fronts of gender and technology. Stimeling makes a compelling argument and develops a sound thesis for issues of gender in music. However, I completely disagree with his attempt to find justification for the use of autotune on any level beyond a mild enhancement to preserve a particularly good take of a performance that might contain a minor

Read More
993 Words | 4 Pages

Her audience and shows flourished with both whites and blacks, peacefully mingling together to behold Ma’s performances. In this era taut with fear over race, both whites and black adored her. Ma Rainey showcases queerness through

Read More
230 Words | 1 Pages

During the Civil Rights era of the United States, many talented artists used their works to support the growing movement. Artists like Bob Dylan, Billie Holiday, and Aretha Franklin used their music to further the outreach of the movement and reveal to outsiders what it was about. Nina Simone was also a contributor to this movement, composing several songs that dealt with the issues of racism and injustice that still dominated the southern states. She was outraged that supporters of civil rights were being killed in the South and began to write songs that expressed her anger about the injustice that was occurring. The song “Mississippi Goddam” by Nina Simone supported the Civil Rights Movement, used compelling language to sway the opinions

Read More
1084 Words | 5 Pages

Nina Simone’s Mississippi Goddam was released in 1964 from the album ‘Nina Simone in Concert’ and would later be known as her “First civil rights song” (Feldstein, 2013, p.84) This essay will critically evaluate Nina Simone’s contribution to the civil-rights movement, assess cultural themes of ‘Mississippi Goddam’ including race and gender, and question whether Nina Simone was a positive activist who sought equality with her protest songs or only bread hate through the promotion of violence in her career. ‘Mississippi Goddam’ was written in 1963 in an hour following the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham where 4 young black girls were killed. (Staggs, 2013) Although it is in-keeping with Nina Simone’s stylistic fusion of jazz, classical and blues, this song seemed to take on a more dramatic tone than previous work as Simone uses its changing dynamics to highlight the theatricality of the performance, moving between whispers, silence, screams and cries, as discussed by Richard Elliot (2013, p.53).

Read More
1302 Words | 6 Pages

Post-slavery one theme was predominant in the changing period that followed, the freedom Black people gained. The blues especially was a vehicle to explore black artists' thoughts and feelings, as an avenue of freedom. As blues singers, women played into the expectations of being more in tune with their emotions and being able to provide the emotional release that black audiences sought, and creating a rapport knowing that women do and can provide catharsis. Women acted as messengers and preachers to the spiritual release provided by the expressive nature of the blues. In her first chapter of Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, Angela Davis points out that the blues was the predominant post-slavery Black musical form replacing the religious

Read More
600 Words | 3 Pages

This book gives a great list of achievements in African American music and art over a period of almost 400 years. This book is divided into eight chapter exploring every genre of the African American music. It goes from the time period of songs created during the time of slavery up until they reach the 90’s music which deals with new media. This was my most helpful from of resource. The

Read More
875 Words | 4 Pages

Music is not only used to capture peoples hearing but it is used to power peoples minds through the power of an individuals voice. Music served a critical role in the African American’s lives, as it was used to uplift their spirits as well as providing them with hope and strength to fight for civil rights and overcome segregation between white superiority and the unfair treatment of the inferior black. Music was defined as the voice of the people that lived through the oppression of the civil rights movement. During the civil rights movement, there were many different types of music genres sung, dependent on the culture, this included spiritual music; gospel and even folk music, which was performed by musicians, singers and even people of any musical talents. Through this, it brought about the uniting of people to join together and sing songs that helped them go through the oppression of the civil rights movement.

Read More

More about How Gertrude Ma Rainey Sang Black Rural Southerners Into Popular American Culture

Open Document