The Blues...
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JoeUser Forums
The Blues….
The blues are the breadth of our tragedy. The blues live in shanty homes, mansions and condemned men’s cells. The blues hold a grim knowledge of women and men who survive when any sane human being would just lay down and die.
The blues are the black man’s culture, the black woman’s race. They are our identity and why we recognize each other in all of our hues and features, religions and origins. From the high yellow socialite from a well-respected Atlanta clan, to the pain and emptiness of the coal-coloured cowboy riding the lonely north Texas range. Both know each other because their lot is the same. Their ancestors all experienced slavery and the aftermath of slavery: what America told us was freedom. They both see a world that is invisible to most of white America. To them the beating of Rodney King wasn’t a crime: it was the picture of a common history that started centuries ago. They saw, consciously or not, tens of millions of Rodney Kings and hundreds of millions of white men with sticks.
This yellow woman and coal-coloured man are driven toward a common awareness by the blows rained down on us by a shared history. Black history, not white.
And on some overcast June when the yellow woman and coal-coloured man pass each other on a lonely street, there is a flash of recognition, a shared self-knowledge.
“I know you,” they both think. “I might not like you. But you are one of mine. I wish you would act differently. I wish you would speak more like me. But I understand you anyway. I hear the echoes that follow you down to your personal hell.”
They are family in the best, and the worst sense: family because they feel each other’s pain. And this empathy is our common identity and our begrudging compassion. It’s what isolates us and makes us who we are.
And who are we? Black people, African Americans, brothers and sisters, soul and blood. A family that has had to endure separation, isolation, and the jeers of demented hatred. Our common history and culture is mainly one of loss: loss of our African heritage and culture, loss of the ownership of our bodies, loss of our children.
The poetry of the blues tells us all of this. It often sings in a voice of despair. But it’s the hope and courage of the blues that make us listen and understand. For we know our survival is in our hands.
The blues are the breadth of our tragedy. The blues live in shanty homes, mansions and condemned men’s cells. The blues hold a grim knowledge of women and men who survive when any sane human being would just lay down and die.
The blues are the black man’s culture, the black woman’s race. They are our identity and why we recognize each other in all of our hues and features, religions and origins. From the high yellow socialite from a well-respected Atlanta clan, to the pain and emptiness of the coal-coloured cowboy riding the lonely north Texas range. Both know each other because their lot is the same. Their ancestors all experienced slavery and the aftermath of slavery: what America told us was freedom. They both see a world that is invisible to most of white America. To them the beating of Rodney King wasn’t a crime: it was the picture of a common history that started centuries ago. They saw, consciously or not, tens of millions of Rodney Kings and hundreds of millions of white men with sticks.
This yellow woman and coal-coloured man are driven toward a common awareness by the blows rained down on us by a shared history. Black history, not white.
And on some overcast June when the yellow woman and coal-coloured man pass each other on a lonely street, there is a flash of recognition, a shared self-knowledge.
“I know you,” they both think. “I might not like you. But you are one of mine. I wish you would act differently. I wish you would speak more like me. But I understand you anyway. I hear the echoes that follow you down to your personal hell.”
They are family in the best, and the worst sense: family because they feel each other’s pain. And this empathy is our common identity and our begrudging compassion. It’s what isolates us and makes us who we are.
And who are we? Black people, African Americans, brothers and sisters, soul and blood. A family that has had to endure separation, isolation, and the jeers of demented hatred. Our common history and culture is mainly one of loss: loss of our African heritage and culture, loss of the ownership of our bodies, loss of our children.
The poetry of the blues tells us all of this. It often sings in a voice of despair. But it’s the hope and courage of the blues that make us listen and understand. For we know our survival is in our hands.