MA RAINEY

BORN: APRIL 26, 1886, COLUMBUS, GEORGIA

DIED: DECEMBER 22, 1939, COLUMBUS, GEORGIA

SINGER, PERFORMER

NOBODY DID IT LIKE MA RAINEY. She was the original trash-talking, take-no-shit Black woman. Now, her story is a bit of a precursor to that of Bessie Smith, whom you will hear about in this book as well. But as Ma Rainey used to tell it, she invented the music genre we know today as the blues.

The blues is a style of music developed in the Deep South that often used a storytelling component reflecting hardships and discrimination faced by African Americans in the United States. It also incorporated elements of spiritual hymns, work songs (like those sung by slaves laboring in the fields), hollers, and call-and-response.

Ma Rainey started out singing when she was very young, which isn’t uncommon when you look at many of today’s stars. You can easily go on YouTube and see old videos of Michael Jackson, Lauryn Hill, Jazmine Sullivan, and so many more, working on their craft from a very young age. Think no further than Beyoncé on Star Search.

Born Gertrude Pridgett, she was performing by the age of twelve in Black minstrel shows—which were a racist form of theater. White folks would paint their faces black and act out roles like Black folks were animals or otherwise not human. From time to time they would put Black actors in the shows, too. There were also Black minstrel groups that played out the same type of dim-witted performances to white audiences, but without the use of blackface. Back then, that might have been the only work a Black person could find. And that’s where Ma Rainey got her start.

At eighteen, she married Will Rainey, known as “Pa Rainey.” She decided from then on to take the stage name “Ma Rainey.” (Think of Anna Mae Bullock becoming Tina Turner.) Ma and Pa formed their first group, called the Alabama Fun Makers Company, and began traveling and performing. Later they joined the Rabbit’s Foot Company, which had a larger audience than their own group did.

Ma Rainey stated that her introduction to the blues occurred around 1902, when she was sixteen, although the sound didn’t have a name yet. She claims she invented the term the blues after hearing a song about a man leaving a woman. She learned the lyrics and began singing it in her act. When asked what type of music she was singing, she said she called it “blues music.” Whether this can be proven or not, it gives us a hint at the form’s origins and Ma’s character. This story makes me think of the many terms we use nowadays without ever really knowing who coined them.

Black communities have always repurposed language for specific needs. And the slang we create is often used—or appropriated—by dominant cultures. I hate the phrase coming out to describe the moment when a person publicly discloses they are not heterosexual. So what I say is that queer people are inviting in. I often get tagged or quoted as the person who said this phrase first, when in reality, my friend and former editor Darnell Moore actually coined the phrasing. His breakthrough allowed me to expand upon it. But those changed by the phrasing tend to be less concerned about its origins and more concerned about the person who allowed them the space to use it and feel seen. Luckily, we can trace this phrase because it was written down, but it can be hard to trace the origins of many terms, especially those passed orally but never recorded. Regardless, the words are in the world and can grow and change as people use them.

As blues grew as a genre, so did Ma Rainey’s popularity. It was during this time she met Bessie Smith—another Black queer singer of the Harlem Renaissance. I love how everyone seemed to know each other during the Harlem Renaissance. Many famous figures were friends, and the rest respected each other, for the most part. The rumor was that Ma and Bessie possibly had a sexual relationship. Bessie also bailed Ma out of jail. One thing’s for sure: Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith had a very close relationship.

The best one, though, is that Ma kidnapped Bessie Smith, forced her to join the Rabbit’s Foot Company, and taught her how to sing the blues. This story was refuted by Bessie’s sister-in-law, and I can’t imagine Ma and Bessie would have had the lifelong friendship they did if this had really happened. Then again, that’s the thing with rumors. There could be one side saying one thing, another saying the opposite, and then somewhere in the middle could be the actual truth.

In 1916, Ma divorced Pa Rainey and started a career of her own. From 1923 to about 1928, she recorded almost a hundred songs for Paramount Records, rivaling Bessie, who was at Columbia Records. Her recording career grew her fame far beyond the South. Ma became one of the most well-known performers of the Harlem Renaissance.

Her song “Prove It on Me Blues,” recorded in 1928, has been studied by many. Angela Y. Davis, in her book Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday, called the song a “cultural precursor to the lesbian cultural movement of the 1970s.” (Maybe you’ve heard of Angela as an activist—a Black Panther wanted for a time by the FBI—and a distinguished academic.) The lyrics include these lines:

Went out last night with a crowd of my friends.

They must’ve been women, ’cause I don’t like no men.

People say this song makes open references to lesbianism and bisexuality. Some claim Ma wrote it after she was caught performing sexual acts with several other women from her performance troupe at her home in 1925. An advertisement for the song showed Ma dressed in a three-piece suit, mingling with women while the police were nearby. It was clear that Ma Rainey enjoyed showing off the illegality of queerness.

I love how people who may not have been public about their sexuality during the Harlem Renaissance found ways to express it in essays, songs, poetry, and other arts. They were leaving us a road map for the future. With each generation, we see how what was once done in silence and in the dark has moved toward the light. We now have LGBTQIA+ actors, writers, singers, rappers, dancers, activists, and more, doing it all publicly. And every generation’s efforts become a blueprint for the next generation to do even more.

Ma Rainey was also a bit of a fashion icon. Music intersects with fashion, especially when you think of the Supremes, Patti LaBelle, Grace Jones, and so on. But we rarely hear about that happening before the 1950s and ’60s. Ma was known for wearing ostrich plumes, gold teeth, sequins, satin gowns, and gold chains. Her costumes were flashy, elaborate, and expensive. She was seen as one of the first musicians to introduce fashion to performance in this way.

In 2021, Viola Davis was nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of the singer in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, but not without controversy. Viola wore a fat suit for the role, which garnered a lot of pushback. People took issue with the portrayal of a fat, dark-skinned woman by an actress who wasn’t fat. They explained that this was a form of oppression, since fat actresses rarely get roles in Hollywood. Much like we observe today with colorism and fatphobia, during the Harlem Renaissance thin, light-skinned performers often had stronger careers and greater acclaim than their counterparts who were darker, fatter, or both.

This is an intracommunal fight we’ve been having for a long time. Colorism, desirability, fatphobia, and homosexuality intersect for many people. One group with privilege oppressing another. It’s why we have heterosexual actors portraying queer and trans characters. We’ve seen light-skinned characters portray dark-skinned characters.

We have a duty when retelling the stories of our past to tell them as accurately as possible. As many people stated with the portrayal of Ma Rainey, it would have been appropriate to use a fat Black actress. Her lived experience could have informed her portrayal of Ma Rainey and how Ma navigated society. We must hold ourselves to the standard of authenticity. And even when we fail, we should always invite criticism. I know critique has only made me a better person and writer.

The Harlem Renaissance has widely been taught from a local perspective, meaning that those who weren’t living in Harlem have often been left out of the narrative. Nowadays, we have done a better job of linking people like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey to the cultural scene. They had great influence on the period, despite being Southern performers. Ma Rainey may not have been based in Harlem, but she did perform there and had connections to many of its central figures.

That’s the beauty of Blackness. It’s expansive. It transcends our communities. Though Harlem was the epicenter, the Renaissance reached the South and Midwest, and vice versa. The musicians, artists, writers, and others all influenced one another. The period may be called the Harlem Renaissance, but it truly was a Black awakening across the country.

I feel like we are in a new Renaissance—and not just because of Beyoncé, but because Black queer people are shifting culture and being credited for that shift in a way that we haven’t been before. Folks like Ma Rainey paved the way for us to do this from every corner of this country—and the world.