🎙️ REPLAY: The Blues Narrative — The Next Chapter of the Slave Narratives

Originally aired: Late March Broadcast | 9 PM CST
Presented by: Jack Dappa Blues Heritage Preservation Foundation
In partnership with The African American Folklorist and We The Blues People

We are proud to share the full replay of our special broadcast that launched a new chapter in our cultural memory work — The Blues Narrative.

This powerful episode explores the lived experiences of the Children of The Great Migration — the Blues People whose lives carry the rhythms of survival, resistance, and Black cultural power in the face of systemic oppression.

In this broadcast, you’ll experience:

• 🎤 First-hand accounts and oral histories from tradition-bearers

• 🎶 Blues soundscapes that score our shared historical memory

• 📚 Critical theory grounded in Black ecological, cultural, and musical traditions

• 🗣️ Reflections on how the Blues functions as both archive and resistance

This series is the continuation of the Slave Narratives — a living archive voiced by those who inherited the legacy and forged new paths through song, story, and sound.

📡 Available now to members.

Your support helps us preserve, publish, and share the Black oral tradition — rooted in the real lives of our elders, our communities, and our future.

👉🏾 Join us, support the work, and be part of the Blues Narrative.

In this episode, we dive back into the film Sinners, not just as a movie, but as a cultural reckoning. We’re breaking down how the film tells a deeper story about Black American folklife, Blues culture, and the enduring legacy of Blues People. This time, we’re not just exploring themes; we’re getting into the characters, the plot, and the ways they reveal the real-life struggle between tradition and transformation.Rather than just reviewing the film, we’re asking why Sinners matters. It’s not just entertainment, it’s a bold statement about what it means to be a Blues person in a world where survival, spirituality, and cultural memory are constantly tested. We’ll explore how the film reflects critical ideas like Blues Ecology, Clyde Woods’ Development Arrested, and the legacy of the Plantation Complex. We’ll also look at how the film’s portrayal of Black womanhood, feminism, and colorism challenges or reinforces cultural narratives.Big Bill Broonzy’s legacy will be front and center as we examine how his words and music resonate with the film’s themes. As Broonzy once said, “They don’t like the idea of hearing the old original way it went because it’s said to carry them back to the horse and buggy days, and slavery time, and they don’t want to think about that.” Just like his music, Sinners forces us to confront the past and ask hard questions about what’s been lost and what survives, and how Ryan Cooger brings to life this visual story of Blues People, Blues Folk Belief, and Blues Culture of the time!We’ll also dig into the cultural intersections of the Mississippi Delta, how Irish, Chinese, Black, and Afro-Indigenous communities shaped the Blues tradition. And we’ll make connections to other cultural works like August Wilson’s plays, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, and Crossroads, exploring how each handles the intersection of performance, truth, and storytelling.To break it all down, I’m joined by Dr. Langston Collin Wilkins and Dr. Elisha Oliver, whose insights into Black folklore and cultural memory will help us unpack the film’s deeper layers.This episode isn’t just a conversation; it’s a call to think critically about how Black life and Blues culture are represented and remembered. Tune in for a cultural reckoning where the Blues itself gets to testify.

In this episode of The African American Folklorist, we honor Dr. Ebony Bailey as Folklorist of the month of May. Dr. Bailey is a dynamic scholar, writer, and cultural worker whose groundbreaking research intersects Black Literature and Folklore. Dr. Bailey explores how African Americans have historically been both represented as “the folk” and how they have powerfully redefined that term through literature, activism, and cultural intervention.

We dive into her acclaimed article, (Re)Making the Folk: Black Representation and the Folk in Early American Folklore Studies (Journal of American Folklore, 2021), and discuss her public talk, Re(Making) the Folk: The Folk in Early African American Folklore Studies and Postbellum, Pre-Harlem Literature. Through this dialogue, Dr. Bailey highlights how early Black writers and intellectuals used folklore as a site of resistance, cultural affirmation, and narrative control.

She also shares insights from her work as a museum researcher with Kera Collective and her leadership in equity-centered initiatives within the American Folklore Society. As a contributor to The African American Folklorist platform, Dr. Bailey helps shape the future of folklore by amplifying Black voices, reclaiming tradition, and challenging dominant narratives.Join us for a rich and necessary conversation on race, representation, and the reclaiming of folk knowledge.