(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 ...

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, ...