{"id":2167,"date":"2020-05-25T15:50:46","date_gmt":"2020-05-25T22:50:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pnwfolklore.org\/wp-nwhoot\/?p=2167"},"modified":"2020-05-26T15:51:39","modified_gmt":"2020-05-26T22:51:39","slug":"blues-in-times-of-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/pnwfolklore.org\/wp-nwhoot\/index.php\/2020\/05\/25\/blues-in-times-of-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"BLUES IN TIMES OF PANDEMIC"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Triumph of Death, oil on panel, 46 x 63.8 in., 1562, Museo del Prado, Madrid.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Music- including blues – speaks to major crises,\u00a0 and pandemics are no exception. The influenza epidemic of 1918-19 spawned many blues songs. Perhaps the most memorable of these is “The 1919 Influenza Blues.” We begin with a recent article by Shalom Goldman in Informed Comment<\/a>, reprinted here with the permission of the author and publisher.<\/p>\n

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Blues in the time of Pandemic, 1919 \u2014 \u201cIn a few days influenza would be controlled\u201d<\/h1>\n

By <\/span>Shalom Goldman<\/span>,<\/span> Informed Comment<\/a>
\n<\/time><\/p>\n<\/header>\n

Middlebury, Vt. (Special to Informed Comment) \u2013 The great influenza pandemic of 1918-19, which raged in the aftermath of the 1914-18 World War, killed and incapacitated over 50 million people worldwide. In the U.S. over 600,000 people died in the pandemic.<\/p>\n

Survivors of that pandemic have left us a rich cultural legacy, one that was inscribed in memoirs, novels, poems, and stories.<\/p>\n

As COVID-19 spreads, people are reading these works and asking themselves what the relevance of the past is for our immediate future. Some of the lessons gained from reading these century-old accounts are pragmatic. A comparison of the 1919 death rates in Philadelphia and those in St Louis reveals that the inhabitants of St Louis, which enforced an earlier form of \u2018social distancing,\u2019 had higher survival rates than the people of Philadelphia, whose city fathers were slower to alert the public dangers of person -to -person transmission. In September of 1918, despite a growing number of infections in the city, Philadelphia City Hall held a Liberty Bond parade to which 200,000 people flocked. Within a few weeks there were hundreds of cases in the city, which was the hardest -hit of America\u2019s metropolises.<\/p>\n

For me, and I imagine for many others, the benefits of studying the pandemics of the past are more in the aesthetic and emotional realms. We can relate to the stories of suffering, acceptance, and heroism conveyed in the accounts of the sick, the dying, and the survivors, and consider more thoughtfully the powerful challenges that lie ahead.<\/p>\n

The musical legacy of the Great Flu is similarly instructive. And with the exception of a few classical pieces written in memory of flu victims, that musical legacy is a popular one that springs from the Blues. \u201cThe 1919 Influenza Blues,\u201d which circulated among blues singers in the early 1930s, was in essence a protest song against officialdom, the wealthy, and the medical establishment of the day. The song opens with this verse.<\/p>\n

It was nineteen hundred and nineteen;<\/em><\/p>\n

Men and women were dying, <\/em>
\nWith the stuff that the doctor called the flu. <\/em>
\nPeople were dying everywhere, <\/em>
\nDeath was creepin\u2019 all through the air, <\/em>
\nAnd the groans of the rich sure was sad.<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s that last line that tells us that this blues is more than a lament. Its a complaint \u2014and a song of the poor, reminding us, with a bit of an edge, that now, in the pandemic, the rich too are suffering.<\/p>\n

In the next verse, the songwriter, who remains anonymous, moves from complaint to judgment: The tone is biblical, the land and its people are being judged. The doctors in the singer\u2019s town, Memphis, said that \u201cIn a few days influenza would be controlled.\u201d The consequence of that reassurance was more suffering ( h\/t protestsonglyrics.net <\/a>).<\/p>\n

Well, it was God\u2019s almighty plan, <\/em>
\nHe was judging this old land, <\/em>
\nNorth and south, east and west, <\/em>
\nIt can be seen, <\/em>
\nIt killed the rich, killed the poor, <\/em>
\nIt\u2019s gonna kill just a little more, <\/em>
\nIf you don\u2019t turn away from the shame.<\/em><\/p>\n

Down in Memphis, Tennessee, <\/em>
\nThe doctor said it soon would be, <\/em>
\nIn a few days influenza would be controlled.<\/em>
\nDoctor sure man he got had, <\/em>
\nSent the doctors all home to bed, <\/em>
\nAnd the nurses all broke out with the same. <\/em>
\nNow that the doctors, and the public, have \u2018been had\u2019 \u2013and the disease has struck deep and wide\u2014only death will take away the dread and the pain.<\/em><\/p>\n

Influenza is the kind of disease, <\/em>
\nMakes you weak down to your knees, <\/em>
\nCarries a fever everybody surely dreads, <\/em>
\nPacks a pain in every bone, <\/em>
\nIn a few days, you are gone. <\/em>
\nTo that hole in the ground called your grave.<\/em><\/p>\n

For many of us today, official reassurances that \u201cin a few days influenza will be controlled \u201c\u2013assurances that we heard a few weeks ago from the president and his advisors\u2013ring as hollow as they did for the composer of this song, and for the many victims he or she laments.<\/p>\n

A cover of \u201cThe 1919 Influenza Blues\u201d was recorded by the African-American singer Essie Ray Jenkins in 2004.<\/p>\n