"They hear it come out, but they don't know how it got there. They don't understand
that's life's way of talking. You don't sing to feel better. You sing cause that's a way
of understanding life."2
Ma Rainey
Welcome to our project that explores women in jazz! Our research focus explores the cultural perception of black women's lives and how they navigated through their struggles in this time period, told through jazz and blues music. We will be exploring the lives of three women in jazz, who happen to be Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Mamie Smith. Through these women's voices we explore what women were experiencing during the golden age of jazz and how they navigated their struggles.
We began our project hoping to analyze the way that jazz standards evolve over time by comparing different performances of the same song and recording lyric changes. Early on, however, we ran into copyright issues, meaning we had to pivot the focus. I had read Dr. Angela Davis’ Blues Legacies & Black Feminism and was interested in exploring how blues songs chronicled the experiences of Black women. We decided on three trailblazers in the music genre—Gertrude ”Ma” Rainey, Mamie Smith and Bessie Smith. Our research question is centered around the idea of discerning positionality through song lyrics. What can we learn about the social, political and interpersonal realities for Black women of the time through the work of these Blues icons? And why were these songs important? Project Members.
India Krug (she/her) is a junior at Pitt studying politics and philosophy. Her favorite song from our corpus is “It’s Right Here for You” by Mamie Smith.
Madelyn Miles (she/her) is a senior at Pitt studying history and anthropology. Her favorite song from our corpus is “Homeless Blues” by Bessie Smith.
Claire Stemmer (she/her), is a sophomore at Pitt studying theater arts and linguistics. Her favorite song from our corpus is “Bo-Weavil Blues” by Ma Rainey.
We also want to thank Ben Adams, our project mentor, Dr. Birnbaum, our course professor, and all of the teaching assistants who helped us along the way!
