Sound and sense …

… The Omni-American Blues by David Bradley | Articles | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… one did know the spirituals, which, Murray pointed out, “did reflect life on the plantation and the effects of political bondage; but they were also a profound and universally moving expression of Protestant Christianity, interwoven with . . . many other things, including an active physical existence and a rich, robust and highly imaginative conception of life itself.” Likewise, the blues, which, he said, “affirm not only U. S. Negro life in all its arbitrary complexities and not only life in America in all its infinite confusions, they affirm life and humanity itself in the very process of confronting failures and existentialistic absurdities.”