Connecting the threads of culture and music takes a full year of planning and a big dose of what folklorist Rachel Reynolds calls “magical pragmatism.” That force was hard at work as Reynolds planned ...

(ThyBlackMan.com) When I think about the roots of blues music—the raw honesty, the pain wrapped in poetry, the joy carved out of hardship—I think of Ma Rainey. Her voice was more than a sound; it was ...