0301blog

Music, War and Racism

If you want to open your eyes to how racism was infused in the recording industry in the 1920s and on the battlefields of Vietnam, I suggest you check out my two favorite films of 2020, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and “Da 5 Bloods.”

“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” is set in 1927 in a Chicago music studio where Ma Rainey, known as the “Mother of the Blues,” is recording songs with her band. It was a period when the nation was bristling with emboldened racism and Jim Crow laws, the reemergence of the KKK and total white control of recording companies and their artists.

Gertrude “Ma” Rainey was an early African American blues singer and was dubbed the “Mother of the Blues” with her powerful, energetic, gravelly voice that expressed the black experience that was the blues. The forceful woman bowed to nobody as she entertained in flashy, expensive costumes wearing ostrich plumes, satin gowns, sequins, gold necklaces, diamond tiaras and gold teeth.

Rainey is in a constant battle for control over her music with her white studio owner while one of her musicians, Levee, scarred as a child when he saw his mother raped by a gang of whites, tries to assert himself but is treated shabbily by the racist studio owner. Levee’s rage boils over but because of his impossibly, subservient position he acts out his anger and frustration against other band members. The movie has a constant undercurrent of the brutality and violence that each of the characters has experienced as they are kept under the thumb of white society.

Most of the early, African American blues musicians were exploited by white-owned recording companies and made little pay while their music was segregated from white audiences in the category of “race records.” The period between 1920 and 1940 was a rich period in the developing sounds of blues, jazz and gospel, but musicians like Rainey and others were paid poorly and recorded in poorly equipped studios compared to the white musicians.

Many of the black artists recorded without contracts and were never paid royalties on their music, though the recording companies reaped bonanzas. Many artists were listed by pseudonyms on their records and consequently they couldn’t convert their musical fame into successful performing careers. And while artists like Rainey, Big Bill Broonzy, Ethel Waters, Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong became popular with white audiences, the white businessmen reaped most of the profits.

“Da 5 Bloods” is about how five, aging African Americans who served together in the Vietnam War, return to Vietnam 50 years later to search for the remains of their fallen squad leader and the treasure they buried while serving there. The film shows the lingering and long simmering effects the war had on African American soldiers as they painfully try to reconcile their lives after the war.

African Americans were more likely to be drafted than whites and the Vietnam War had the highest proportion of African-Americans soldiers. They comprised 11 percent of U.S. population in 1967, but were 16.3 percent of all draftees. In 1967, the armed services drafted 64 percent of eligible African Americans while drafting just 31 percent of eligible whites, while many whites were awarded deferments to attend college, something not afforded to the African Americans.

After the draft ended, many more African Americans enlisted because the pay was better than anything they could otherwise have made. But African Americans were more likely to be assigned to combat units and would find that though they comprised 11 percent of all troops, only 5 percent of Army officers were African American and only 2 percent across all branches.

For many, enlisting in hopes of a good job, was a fatal error. In 1965, nearly a quarter of troop casualties were African American and in total, 7,243 African Americans died during the Vietnam War, representing 12.4 percent of total casualties.

In the mid-1980s, African American veterans were twice as likely as White veterans to suffer from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), for reasons ranging from social and racial hostility during the war, institutional racism within the military, and racism after the war.

Both movies are important particularly for white audiences to understand how racism has permeated life and death of African Americans in the country for so many years and continues to do so.

The Golden Globe Awards for 2020 were announced on Sunday and the best actor award in a drama went to Chadwick Boseman, who played Levee in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” Boseman died last August. “Da Five Bloods” gained critical acclaim but did not win a Golden Globe Award.