Read
Davis, Angela. “Blame It On The Blues: Bessie Smith, Gertrude ‘Ma” Rainey, and the Politics of Blues Protest.” Blues Legacies and Black Feminism. Random House, 1998.
Chp. 6 of Wald, Elijah. Blues: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. 2010
Part One:
Briefly describe how "classic" blues lyrics were typically constructed and elaborate on the type of themes that they commonly explored by referencing at least one specific example from EACH of (1) and (2) above [NOTE: please provide author and page # for each example]. Do you think blues lyrics, and song lyrics more generally, should be considered poetry? Were ideas about originality and borrowing different back then? Can you give an example of a contemporary song that you find to be particularly poetic and/or particularly inflected by a blues ethos?
Sample Solution