Between drifting and captivity, there is an undeniable melancholy. The blues is testimony to the possibility of a laugh, a sweetness in each place. A libation poured for the dead. And joy. Of course the lost-cause narratives of “happy slaves” on plantations were false. But it is true that the culture made by enslaved people insisted upon joy. It was not a naive childish satisfaction. No, it was, it is, the joy of a voice that could soar one moment and growl the next, giggle and holler. It’s the joy of dancing in a whip-scarred, food-deprived, achy body. The joy of love, of the binding between
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