"DREAM BLUES" by Gertrude "Ma" Rainey

Ma Rainey expresses the lyrics in her song, Dream Blues, with short sentences pattern and a bland rhyme scheme but utilizes an elongated rhythm that highlights her distress and confusion. As with most blues songs, the melody and rhythm is pretty consistent throughout the song with the exception of her last two sentences, “Yes, I had a bad dream last night/ Mama don’t mind dyin” in which she varies her pitch to a much higher level and then abruptly drops it. Her catchy melody mostly uses long notes to create a flowing and feminine rhythm which repeats throughout the song with an A, A’, B pattern. The rhyme scheme in the song is overly simple and tends to rhyme the same words without much variation. The straightforward word choices make the song easy to comprehend and relate to for her audience in the early 1900’s. As Elijah Wald points out, “blues was the heart-cry of poor, backcountry black folk” and Rainey successfully captures the intended audience with her lyrical content, simple rhyme schemes and memorable melody. The distress of being mistreated by men is a prevalent theme within most of Rainey’s songs and effectively works as a cultural commodity to heighten her success as a blues singer.

 

Comments

[BethRatay]

Many of you that wrote about “Dream Blues” and “Black Eye Blues” mentioned the portrayal of women in abusive relationships. Do you think the women in these songs are strong or weak? What part of the music makes you feel that way? (the lyrics, the singer’s expression, the instruments, etc.) Are these songs meant as a warning to the listener or are they meant for commiseration between women in the same situation? or both? Here are three posts that address some of these questions well. Please comment on one of the posts to add your thoughts to the discussion.

http://benleedscarson.com/ma-rainey-and-bessie-smith/2009/10/10/dream-blues.html
http://benleedscarson.com/ma-rainey-and-bessie-smith/ma-rainey-dream-blues.html
http://benleedscarson.com/ma-rainey-and-bessie-smith/what-it-means-to-have-the-black-eye-blues.html