In the roaring twenties of the twentieth century, the first African-Americans to become music stars were women who sang blues leading orchestras, influenced by vaudeville and bursting with glamor: sequins, feathers, scarves, pearl necklaces of various turns.
Their names were Bessie Smith, Mamie Smith, or Ma Rainey.
The success was fleeting, but his feat paved the way for great jazz voices that came later: Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughan.
The movie
The Mother of the Blues
(on Netflix) vindicates the pioneer Ma Rainey, who managed to impose her rules on an emerging record industry dominated, of course, by white men.
Nominated for five Oscars (she won those for costume and makeup and hairdressing), she has as a hook the last role of Chadwick Boseman
(Black Panther)
, who died before the premiere.
More information
Blues matters
The Pompeii of the blues
Most of the plot, set in 1927, takes place while the band waits for the artist in the Chicago recording studio, which was then a mecca for black immigrants from the South. There, Boseman looks like a trumpeter with avant-garde ambitions. She (Viola Davis) appears little and when she does she occupies the entire screen. An arrogant, burly, cheeky, lesbian goddess. He wrote explicit lyrics, with some coming out of the closet. No one was going to dictate what and how to record.
The great depression and the change in fashions put an end to glamor and her career.
And then came the discovery, by critics, of the rural blues of the Mississippi Delta, which were sung by poor, unfortunate black men alone with their guitar: Blind Lemon Jefferson, Son House or Robert Johnson.
They exuded authenticity and sowed the seeds of
rock and roll.
They deserved recognition but, once again, history cornered the names of women who had shone with their own light.
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