Abstract
In this article I analyze how black music may be used to (re)interpret the legacy of slavery in Gayl Jones's literary works Corregidora (1975) and Song for Anninho (1981). I argue that female Classic Blues from the 1920s functions as a testimony of resistance and as a means to recount the stories featured in these two texts. The U.S. black author uses the cadences, themes, and tropes of the blues in order to decode female versions of the black diaspora in the Americas. In addition, by setting her literary work in Brazil, Jones establishes an inter-American dialogue and imagines polyphonic and syncretic spaces where the blues is the model for historical revision. Inscribing my study within the theoretical frame of black feminist cultural studies, I emphasize the importance of the first person enunciative voice in female blues, as well as in the texts selected.
Highlights
In this article I analyze how black music may be used tointerpret the legacy of slavery in Gayl Jones’s literary works Corregidora (1975) and Song for Anninho (1981)
It is noteworthy that West African cultures were mainly oral, a feature that was highly reinforced during the long period of slavery and well after its abolition in 1865.4 few black people had access to education, a right that was denied to them because, as Toni Morrison firmly asserts, “literacy was power” (“The Site of Memory” 89)
This multilayered historical revision through music, and especially through the blues, is enacted in three different ways: first, we listen to the voices of women and the traumas they had to bear during and after slavery; second, Jones evinces the social construction of history and cultural traditions that tend to silence and stereotype black women; and third, singing the blues about the largest settlement for runaway and freed slaves in Brazil constitutes a symbol of resistance in the Americas
Summary
Ma Rainey, one of the foremothers of Classic Blues, branded “Mother of the Blues” by Columbia Records, was a remarkably prolific singer who composed 40% of her repertoire, a total of ninety-two records. In the particular case of female blues singers, they reference sexism In this regard, Sandra Lieb points to Ma Rainey’s distinctive sense of humor, indicating that she was the first artist to include black actors in her vaudeville shows. Like Ma Rainey, Ursa composes her own blues The night that she first met Mutt, she talks about the authorship of some of the songs she sings and explains the meanings of the lyrics, which employ two of the most significant tropes in the blues: the train, a symbol for movement, and flying, an indicator of freedom: When I first saw Mutt I was singing a song about a train tunnel. The system of slavery itself assigned to black women a very specific role as childbearers, a historical imposition that Ursa will subvert by singing the blues
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