(ThyBlackMan.com) When I think about the roots of blues music—the raw honesty, the pain wrapped in poetry, the joy carved out of hardship—I think of Ma Rainey. Her voice was more than a sound; it was ...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Blues legend Gertrude “Ma” Rainey electrified Jacksonville’s LaVilla district in the early 1900s, building her reputation as the “Mother of the Blues” while breaking barriers as ...

The first few moments of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom are electrifying. It's 1927 in rural Georgia. Hundreds of people, all of them Black, are lined up at the entrance to a huge tent. Inside, Ma Rainey, ...

August Wilson took the name of one of blues singer Ma Rainey’s songs for the title of his play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. She’s a character in the play, but the drama isn’t primarily about her. (The ...

Lou Bellamy's raucous and masterful production of "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" at the Guthrie Theater includes two scenes of intense, thorny silence when America's tortured race history comes screeching ...