Singing of Resistance and Desire: Female Blues Singers’ Reclamation of Subjectivity, Sexuality, and Sisterhood

Blues music emerged as a unique musical genre recognizable to music connoisseurs globally due to its vivid expressions of human experiences and distinct musical structures. These songs were sung in a soulful manner by black artists living in post-slavery America. The purpose of this literary study was to critically evaluate the popular blues songs by two of the most renowned blues singers during the 1920s and 1930s through a feminist literary lens. Gertrude “Ma” Rainey and Bessie Smith moved their audience, not just with their powerful voices, but also through their blatant and unapologetic renderings of the black communal experiences living among a largely racist white majority, with special focus on the lived realities of black women at the time. Through these songs, we encounter doubly marginalized women; firstly by their racialized identity as black Americans, and secondly due to their gendered status as women in a male-dominating social system. Despite expressions of mental and physical abuse mentioned in these songs, most of them are radical assertions of female subjectivity and sexuality. Often, Rainey’s and Smith’s open articulations of female desire and radical deconstruction of compulsory heterosexuality make these two singers female rights advocates as they subvert stereotypical idealized images of submissive and passive women through their depictions of empowered and autonomous black women fully in charge of their female subjectivity and sexuality. These songs not only entertain but also inform the Black community as well as other communities across the world that female emancipation involves dismantling male-serving social norms and creating female subjectivity through self-determination and sisterhood.