30a: BACKWATER BLUES
*BONUS EPISODE*
Backwater Blues: "Natural" Disaster, Blues Records and the Commodity Form.
Ben looks at Bessie Smith's classic 1927 recording and the way it transforms a 'merely private misfortune' into a historical record of race and class dispossession, carving out a space for a collective consciousness. Music that speaks to and even operates as a social consciousness and memory—how has this changed over time? Can music in America and other “developed” capitalist societies still do this? Are there modern-day equivalents? Or has the commodification of recorded music and its shaping of the way we listen undermined our ability to have this kind of collective experience?
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