They say the truth hurts, so I lie to you
Yes, I lied to you
I love the blues
—Miles Caton (as Sammie in the movie “Sinners”)
Sammie’s song for his father is called “I Lied to You”(Co-written by Ludwig Göransson and Raphael Saadiq). Sinners begins at the end with this preacher’s boy returning to his family’s makeshift church after surviving the harrowing night at the Juke. As Sammie holds onto the neck of his destroyed guitar for dear life, his father begs him to put the guitar down and embrace the pulpit. Isn’t all he’s seen enough to give up the devil’s playthings and stay safe with him and pray?
Sammie can’t do that. He loves the blues.
Sammie loves the blues because he loves life and all that comes with it. Born into poverty under Jim Crow, Sammie greets each day with gratitude, kindness, curiosity, and a desire to share his incredible gifts with the world.
I didn’t love the blues—maybe I never knew it. I have always associated blues with its maudlin themes, ignoring until now that joy stands right next to it. I have long preferred the rhythm of R&B—that boogie woogie—over the wobbly strings of a guitar or the warbles from a harmonica. Blues thrives in contradiction. It loves the saint and the sinner equally. It doesn’t seek to hide from grief, anger, frustration, weakness, or the devil. To do so would also deny the pleasure and possibility of being alive.
Ludwig Göransson’s score and the soundtrack album for this movie have me considering the blues with fresh ears. On the In Proximity Podcast, Göransson and Ryan Coogler discuss their love of the genre as they explain how the film’s music came together. Coogler finds a throughline between “Tha Crossroads” by Bone Thugs-n-Harmony and the work of folks like Buddy Guy, who appears as the elder Sammie in the post-credits scene. Hip-hop artists Rod Wave, Young Dolph, and OG DAYV appear on the soundtrack.
Where “Tha Crossroads” lingers in grief and mourning, I find my hip-hop blues in De La Soul’s stripped-down reflections. Songs like “I Am I Be” and “Trying People” (see also The Grind Date & And The Anonymous Nobody…) remove artifice, mute the boom bap, and bare the soul of rappers taking stock of their lot in life at specific moments in time. These songs provide clarity and hope during challenging times, not by false bravado but through vulnerability and tenderness. Their mere existence as marvels of creativity let me know that whatever I’m going through, I will survive it. I may even thrive.
That is the motivation of all the film’s protagonists. They all buy into the Juke Joint dream of the Smokestack Twins because they can see the possibilities despite the dangers. They all gladly trade the doldrums of their everyday for just the chance to feel truly free away from the watchful eyes of their oppressors. By the end, most lose their lives but never give up their agency.
I’m starting to understand the blues.
In the film, Delta Slim tells the tragic tale of a friend who was a victim of the oppressive racism of 1930s Mississippi before turning his harmonica into a beautiful expression of all the trouble he’s seen and endured. My mind turns to Nina Simone and the unimaginable woe she conveys in her performance of “Mississippi Goddamn.” Simone doesn’t appear on the soundtrack or the official playlist that Coogler and Göransson put together, but Alice Smith does. She covered Simone’s “I Put A Spell on You” on a tribute album from a decade ago. In the weeks before the release of Sinners, I just so happened to be revisiting Smith’s debut album, For Lovers, Dreamers, and Me.
The surreal montage “Magic What We Do” awakens the lead vampire’s interest in Sammie in the movie and has stirred something deep in me. I’m weaving across genre, time, space, and race, as I reckon with my relationship with this powerful music.
Later in the podcast, Göransson refers to the silver-adorned instrument Sammie carries with him throughout the film as “The Hero Guitar.” Woody Guthrie—the American folk singer and songwriter inspired by the black blues artists of his time—often performed with a hero guitar of his own. Guthrie’s axe wasn’t meant to ward off vampires like those in Sinners. He wanted his audiences to know that “This Machine Kills Fascists.”
Those were the monsters of his time. And ours.
I may not be well-versed in B.B. King, Albert King, Geeshie Wiley, Lightnin’ Hopkins, or Professor Longhair. Yet, I understand their willingness to acknowledge the trauma of the human condition while still delighting in the wonders of life.
I lied to you.
I love the blues.
