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The Bourgeois Blues
Title: The Bourgeois Blues
Artist: Lead Belly
Year: 1939
Label: Musicraft
Genre: Blues
Me and my wife run all over town
And everywhere we go, the people would turn us down
Lord, in a bourgeois town
It's a bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around
Me and my wife we were standing upstairs
I heard the white man say'n I don't want no n****** up there
Lord, he a bourgeois man
Uhm, bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around
Home of the brave, land of the free
I don't wanna be mistreated by no bourgeoisie
Lord, in a bourgeois town
Uhm, the bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues, I'm
Gonna spread the news all around
Me and my wife went all over town
And where we go, the colored people turn us down
Lord, in a bourgeois town
It's a bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues, I'm
Gonna spread the news all around
Them white folks in Washington they know how
To call a man a n***** just to see him bow
Lord, it's a bourgeois town
Uhm, the bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues I'm
Gonna spread the news all around
I tell all the colored folks to listen to me
Don't try to find you no home in Washington, DC
'Cause it's a bourgeois town
Uhm, the bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues and I'm
Gonna spread the news
Lead Belly wrote “The Bourgeois Blues” during a trip to Washington D.C. on June 22, 1937 to visit Alan Lomax, who was the Assistant in Charge of the Archive of Folk Song of the Library of Congress. While there, Lead Belly and his wife, Martha, experienced extreme racism due to the Jim Crow Laws in place, resulting in the couple and Lomax finding a hotel to stay in after not being allowed inside of Lomax’s apartment building (Scalera). The lyrics describe the racism that Belly experienced while in the nation’s capital. The lyrics, with lines such as “Home of the brave, land of the free, / I don’t wanna be mistreated by no bourgeoisie,” turn national clichés about freedom into sardonic critiques of inequality. The song resonates with A Lesson because, due to Jim Crow Laws, the characters in the novel are constantly oppressed by the white institutions present in South Louisiana at the time. We see characters such as the Sheriff and the store clerk, as well as other white characters, trying to put down Grant and the Black community. This song emphasizes that no matter where you go, you will end up in a bourgeois town with the bourgeois blues.
Here Alan Lomax tells the story of how Lead Belly came to write "The Bourgeois Blues":
Lead Belly could make a song when he needed to. Once, that actually happened when I was present. He came to stay with me in Washington. Washington, at that time, was a Jim Crow town, and blacks weren't supposed to enter white hotels or houses. Well, I lived in a little apartment across from the Library of Congress, and Lead Belly and his wife, Martha, came up to spend the night with us. The landlady objected, and Lead Belly and Martha, at the head of the stairs, heard the argument that I had with the lady - she said she was going to call the police and have us all put out. So we finally had to get in a car and find a hotel. But Lead Belly made a song about this called "Bourgeois Blues": "Me and Martha was standing up there/We heard the white lady say she didn't want no black folks up there/She's a bourgeois lady living in a bourgeois town." He'd heard us talking about bourgeois, and he put that word into a song so that nobody can ever forget its deleterious meaning.
(“American Roots Music : Oral Histories - Alan Lomax")
