Universal Blues

In completing the readings for today, I found the final two readings on the black experience in literary work and the blues extremely interesting as a context for much of what we have been reading. I was struck by these pieces because of my observation about how today’s readings seemed to have a different feel than the poetry we have read so far. This time, there seemed to be more reflection, more hidden meaning and exploration aside from the common slavery-era and freedom/reconstruction themes we had seen so far. There seemed to be a much greater social commentary here, especially in consideration of the black race as a whole and the challenges faced by its fledgling cultural identity.
It was interesting to read about how the common or vernacular experience of the African American community transformed into a written form of exploration, identity, community, and culture simultaneously, and also how some of the specific indicators of the time, like railroads, made this exploration of identity present in the music scene as well. A final thought, was in the last section of the blues piece in which the author mentions how train imagery and feeling of excitement, hope, freedom, and future that it portrayed to many in this vernacular group, was also a feeling that crossed racial lines as white European Americans were able to tie these feelings into their history as well. While this universitality of the emotion of blues begs important consideration of the values instilled in the genre’s representation of black history, culture and struggle, it also prompts the question of American identity and commonality as echoed by Claude McKay…