Blues is a Woman

Pamela Rose’s BLUES IS A WOMAN is a new theatrical concert with multi-media, celebrating the powerful contribution women in early Blues gave to American culture. These stories and songs, culled from this country’s most disenfranchised group, black women in the early part of the 1900’s, literally gave voice to the feminist movement and popularized our most enduring art form – the Blues. BLUES IS A WOMAN is also an ensemble piece, featuring outstanding Bay Area women blues musicians who sing and tell stories. Their collective voices onstage will represent the myriad unheard voices of the past. This is a theatrical concert in which storytelling by the women musicians onstage is woven around the music, augmenting the powerful, truth-telling, original songs written and popularized by early Blues Women (Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Memphis Minnie, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Sophie Tucker). Without ever feeling like a lecture, or sacrificing the improvisational magic of a great Blues concert, this work aims to create a narrative presence as authentic as the music itself. In addition, archival film footage of these ladies in concert will act as counterpoint to the stage performances and ambient photo projections, to transport the audience to the makeshift stages and tent shows from which these powerful songs and women sprang.