Documentary T’Aint Nobody’s Bizness: Queer Blues Divas of the 1920s Showcases Ma Rainey Ahead Of Netflix Biopic
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, a Netflix original biopic, was released on Dec. 18, 2020 and Shoga Films wants you to get to know the woman behind the screen.
Shoga Films is a 501(3)(c) non-profit production company that produces independent films with a focused intersectional lens between Blackness and the LGBTQ community. In 2011, the company released a documentary, T’Aint Nobody’s Bizness: Queer Blues Divas of the 1920s. Now that the Netflix biopic has been released, Shoga Films hosted a live-streamed excerpt and roundtable discussion so that people can get to know the real woman behind the film.
“[Ma Rainey] really pioneered it. During the period that she was performing most actively, like the first two decades of the 20th century, the blues was just like coming into formation and coming into some sort of consciousness. She was really the spirit of that,” said Robert Philipson, Director of the film and Filmmaker Executive of Shoga Films.
Ma Rainey is an iconic blues singer from the 1920s. What some people may not know is that she was bisexual and loud and proud of it. And most of the other blues queens featured in the film, like Bessie Smith, were either bisexual or lesbians. The Netflix biopic is a fictitious version of Ma Rainey’s legacy starring Viola Davis and the late Chadwick Boseman — but the Shoga films documentary highlights how ingrained this was in their music and that the blues were an inspired “gospel” of the people, rather than the church’s version.
Gertrude Ma Rainey was born on April 26, 1886, and died on Dec. 22, 1939. (Photo from Wikicommons)
“Went out last night with a crowd of my friends.
They must’ve been women, ‘cause I don’t like no men.
It’s true I wear a collar, and a tie,
makes the wind blow all the while.
Don’t you say I do it, ain’t nobody caught me.
You sure got to prove it on me.”
- Ma Rainey in her 1928 hit “Prove It On Me Blues”
The extended film excerpt gives a short 16-minute introduction to Ma Rainey’s sound along with interview clips from specialists and Mo’nique, who played Ma Rainey in the 2015 Drama Bessie. It’s narrated by well-known Black lesbian poet and novelist Jewelle Gomez. The T’Aint Nobody’s Bizness roundtable discussion featured Philipson and Oakland musicians MH The Verb, Khalil Sullivan, CDot King, and Jaji Preme. You can watch the excerpt and discussion in full on Youtube.
“She opened the door for disco, she opened the doors for rock and so she opened the doors for hip hop. So for her to be the first person to step into that is really cool,” Preme said.
T’Aint Nobody’s Bizness: Queer Blues Divas of the 1920s is available for purchase on Vimeo.
To learn more about Shoga Films, Ma Rainey, and the queer blues divas, visit their website.
To Watch the Netflix biopic, click here.