This is not a movie review. I'm just sharing a major aspect of the movie that has helped me emotionally, and that is the portrayal of the musicians and musical history. This movie is heaven sent because Ryan Coogler showed music as not just being a powerful creation central to humanity, but he took this message to a depth never seen before and he specifically acknowledged how Black people's unique and unforeseen, practically unfathomable and unimaginable injustices shaped and developed the timeless music they created.
What they created, with no resources, no human rights, etc just never died but was transformed through generations until it got to people like me lol. I grew up in the 1980s and loved the 80's music, but I have never forgotten that one night when I was a teen in the 1990s and I discovered Motown.
Now of course I had already heard many Motown songs growing up, everyone knew of The Supremes and The Temptations, The Jackson 5... When I say 'discovered' I'm talking about I sat and really listened to something that wasn't modern 90's era music and I was one of very few teens (that I knew of) back then who was a fanatic of "oldies."
So I would switch back between oldies and then RnB, modern Rhythm and Blues of the 90's and it's amazing how the music hits different parts of you depending on the era. I needed the "oldies" in order to unwind/heal from the day, go into a fantasy land, fall asleep and be back ready for school again.
The amazing thing about Sinners that I'm so grateful for is that it's made me continue to examine, why did I need that Motown music in my life so much at that time during those rough teen years, and just how much Motown helped me so much mentally, and helped me make it through those teen years. (And 20s, 30', 40s lol)
I still can't believe how Motown artists were able to create what they did during that time with the horrors going on in the 1950's and 1960's against them, and then Sinners takes the story back to the foundation: the Blues. I never thought about The Blues like that.
And I grew up in Alabama and when I was young, at most family gatherings the adults always played the Blues over and over and over. So Sinners also takes me back to being a little girl, deep South, and wondering why the grown folks adored that music so much and me just thinking it was "older people's music"
I didn't know that that very music helped build the 80's rap and pop music that I loved so much at the time.
It's also so amazing that the musicians of those horrifying time periods were able to create these gifts that would serve as a healing for people who would be born many decades later.
They do live on through the music, but I will forever be traumatized that they didn't get to live the lives they deserved as human beings
But I thank Ryan Coogler for telling their stories in a way they would certainly approve. And along with Buddy Guy!!
I can go on for hours I'll just say, even before I saw the movie I spent 3 hours talking to some people who were blown away by the ancestral angles and had just saw it. Then after I saw it, we talked even more lol
Wow, to the ancestors...
--------------------------
Ryan Coogler states:
what I’ll speak to, and after coming off of this movie and researching Delta blues music, you know, it’s music made by people who the state was built to make it so that they had nothing, to make it so that they had to be sharecroppers — you know what I mean? — to make it so that they couldn’t leave, to make it so that some of these plantations were so massive that they had their own currency and their own banking systems that they would pay them with.
You know, they were able to make art that changed the world. That art became rock 'n' roll. That art became the country music empire. That art became hip-hop. You know, that art became house music. You know, like, the fact that their stories were so amazing and so valuable, even though they were being told that they were worthless — you know what I mean? — even though they were told that they didn’t deserve anything, you know, that has stuck with me.
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/4/25/ryan_coogler_sinners
🧜🏿♀️👸🏾👼🏾
