“The blues is a congregation that sings on Saturday night in expectation of Sunday” (171). The blues forces us to deal with the realities of life. The woman who “done me wrong,” the death of friends, the strong allure of drink, smoke, and other vices. Yet at the same time, while in the fray of dealing with so much trouble, the blues points us to the hope of things to come. That glorious Sunday morning when all will be made right and salvation will surely come.
In his book, Getting the Blues: What Blues Music Teaches Us About Suffering and Salvation, Stephen J. Nichols takes us on a musical journey through the early 20th century Mississippi Delta in search of a theology in the minor key. Too many American evangelicals, he states, live life as though it is always “spring and summer without winter or fall. Or always Easter and never Good Friday” (14). This attitude, for the author, is simplistic and naïve at best, borderline blasphemous at worst. This is because it is a rejection of the experience and intent of Jesus Christ, who, though fully God, left the spring and summer of heaven to take on flesh and dwell in the winter and fall of earthly life.
Half history book, half theology book, Getting the Blues delves into how the blues can give us insight for living in this constant tension between reality and the hope to come. Comprised of six chapters, this book begins with an orientation to the world of the blues — its musical characteristics, origins, key players — as well as an introduction to the theological themes of the blues in a chapter entitled, “What Hath Mississippi to Do with Jerusalem.” The second chapter, “I Be’s Troubled,” explores the relationship between what both the blues and the Bible have to say about the human condition. “Man of Sorrows” turns to the individual, casting King David as perhaps the earliest blues singer, drawing parallels between many of the lament Psalms and Mississippi Delta blues. Men are not the only ones to sing the blues, however, and Nichols next turns to the experience of women in the Delta and Naomi from the book of Ruth in “Woman of Sorrows.”
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