Noire Notes XVIII
Sympathy For The Sinnerman
Author’s Note: This piece, and its accompanying soundtrack, was inspired by an exchange of ideas with Makéila NéVette. You can read more of her work at The Southern Dove and Sips On Sundays.
This piece also features interpolations / references from various songs and poems. Links to the original source material are provided where applicable.
Lord, here is a sinner, who’s definitely going to sin again. A bluesman, a sinnerman, the son of a preacher man that has tasted the forbidden fruit. Not of knowledge but of music: its nourishing notes and hypnotic harmonies.
Hopefully, he gets to go to Heaven, he prays. But, right now, he’s going to drink, play his guitar and have sex tonight. All before he has to go to church in the morning.
This is the work of a hoodoo chile, born and raised in the Mississippi Delta, a swampland strewn with seeds from strange fruit. A place where roses don’t grow from concrete but from floorboards stained with the blood of butchered bodies. Bodies that once sang and danced in the name of freedom. In the name of love. In the name of every virtue and vice sent from above.
The Scripture speaks of a great fire, straight from the mouths of a congregation conversing in a language only they can understand. In a juke joint, several miles and millennia away, a similar scene surfaces, with Sammie Moore, the patron saint of sinners, at the center of it. His chorus calling out to anyone that can hear him: in this life or beyond. Beyond the boundaries of time and space. Beyond the brutal realities his people have to face. A beautiful but brief invitation to be raptured by rhythm’s grace.
Further Reading
[1] Amiri Baraka, Rhythm Travel, Tales Of The Out & Gone
[2] Sheldon Pearce, In ‘Sinners’, The Blues Is A Portal Between This World And The Next, NPR
Further Watching
[1] The Strange Magik Of Jimi Hendrix, Polyphonic
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dope note. from 1/2 of the real twins from the Sip. No vampires.