Why Is Jazz Missing From 'Sinners?'

I'm not a film critic. Just a bootsie jazz fan.

***This piece contains spoilers for the film Sinners***

Rounding out its fourth weekend in theaters, Director Ryan Coogler’s Sinners has been ravishing the box office with no signs of slowing down. A period piece horror, Southern-gothic-lite, Sinners takes on the difficult task of trying to convince the audience that there exists a violence more unimaginable and impossible than the terrors of the 1930’s Jim Crow South –an unworldly violence that even the most vile and decorated Klansman couldn’t conjure. With emphasis on Black southern history, its on-screen fabulation of chain-gang and lynching narratives, and its depiction of the elusiveness of the thinly veiled omnipresent Klu Klux Klan, Sinners’ symbolism of a White vampire murdering and disappearing Black country folk in the night doesn’t stand too far a distance from the violent realities of the time. 

There’s a specific scene in Sinners that’s been drawing a lot of conversation and applause, a pivotal moment in the film where two separate stories converge. In this scene, Sammie A.K.A. Preacher Boy plays his first Blues gig at Club Juke, a sawmill turned juke joint run by his twin trouble-maker cousins Stack and Smoke on the outskirts of Clarksdale, Mississippi. The twins have big dreams for Club Juke, looking to flip the truckload of booze and bags of money they stole from the mobs of Chicago into a real investment. In the Southern juke joint, music is the centerpiece –it’s what drives the people there, it's what sweeps them off their feet, makes them dance, and sends them running to the bar to keep the high going. Sammie’s performance this night automatically places him at the center, giving him full control of the attendees, nominating him as tonight’s puppeteer, a true MC. 

On this night Sammie debuts “I Lied to You,” a song about him disobeying his pastor father to play the blues. He says, “See, I love ya, Papa, you did all you could do // They say the truth hurts, so I lied to you // Yes, I lied to you // I love the blues.” This is followed by a plea that only the blues can make the listener embody, “Somebody take me in your arms tonight,” cries Preacher Boy. The crowd surrenders, they embrace the nearest dance partner and sway. The wooden walls sweat, the liquor flows and the spirits of the past and future are called to enter. Apparitions of Goje players from West Africa suddenly emerge to bless the juke. The first musician of the Black future appears dripping in the stylings of Parliament Funkadelic and introduces himself through a riff of his electric guitar. A DJ in thick-framed Gazelle’s drops his tag-line while scratching a record; a B-Boy donned in a red Kangol bucket hat and tracksuit proceeds to breakdance in the middle of the dance floor. As the camera pans throughout Club Juke more spirits appear –behind the bar Black women of the past and present twerk in unison; before entering the gambling room we see a couple of white-tee and bandana-wearing men two-step to a snippet of a Cali-infused Hip-Hop beat. In the midst of Sammie summoning his musical kinfolk, he consequently attracts the attention of an Irish vampire named Remmick, whose eyes glare ruby red while watching the moment unfold. Remmick decides then that Sammie will help him rejoin with the spirits of his ancient past. His targeting of Club Juke becomes a mission to possess Sammie’s gift, enslaving him for eternity.

Reviewers and critics have described this moment as entering a musical portal, the kind that only the blues can open. Sammie’s I Lied To You fastens a link often torn apart; one that connects Funk, Boom-Bap, West African Griots and Goje players, Trap Music, and the various forms of blues music across cultures and ethnicities. 

I loved this concept of various genres being rightfully united as descendants and distant siblings of the blues. I appreciated how this musical portal made a point to return and move forward. Yet, I wasn’t completely sold on the execution. For me, a key branch of this Black musical tree was missing. 

Where was jazz?

When I first posed this question to friends, they all pretty much responded the same: a sigh, a few cackles, and then, “of course you’d ask about jazz.” Now that I’ve watched the film three times, I can’t get past the idea of such a huge foundation of our musical history missing from this scene. Who decided to not include jazz, gospel, negro-spirituals, or the chain-gang in the Juke Joint? For years now, I’ve only known these music forms to be linked, to be products of one another, connected through a common goal of surviving White terror and keeping stories alive, black music as oral tradition. I realized that through the complexities of Sammie’s relationship with his father, gospel wouldn’t have made it to the juke. But jazz? There is nothing I can think of that would make sense of jazz being excluded from a moment of reverence for Black music. 

“And Negro music is essentially the expression of an attitude, or a collection of attitudes, about the world, and only secondarily an attitude about the way music is made. The white jazz musician came to understand this attitude as a way of making music, and the intensity of his understanding produced the "great" white jazz musicians, and is producing them now.”

– Amiri Baraka, Black Music (1967)

In a 1972 Black Music issue of The Black Scholar, musician, composer, and educator Max Roach spoke about his relationship with jazz in an essay titled, “What ‘Jazz’ Means to Me.” Roach was a staunch advocate of Black music as both an artist and educator, and sought to uphold its cultural significance which included not calling jazz “jazz.” He said, “Since the essence of black consciousness is the recognition of a distinct black identity, it is essential for us to recognize the black nature of our music, and develop the appropriate terms and nomenclature for that music and the things which relate to it.” Roach was one of the few artists of his time who witnessed the shift in how Black music was received and appropriated by the music industry. He both witnessed and endured exploitation as a recording artist and touring musician. He said, “What "jazz" means to me is the worst kind of working conditions, the worst in cultural prejudice… Typically, the clubs are owned by persons who have no cultural or musical appreciation of black music.” 

Vol. 3, No. 10, Summer 1972, The Black Scholar

Max Roach wasn’t the only artist on record who expressed disdain for the appropriation of Black music. Many promininent Black artists noted that the name “Jazz” removed the racial and cultural context of the genre, one that links it to the Blues, Negro-Spirituals and other Black music forms. Miles Davis said, “Rock is a White word. And I don’t like that word jazz that White folks dropped on us. We play what the day recommends.” Playing “what the day recommends” in the context of Black life of the past and present, encapsulates so much of how Black musical expression reflects all of what constitutes the lived experiences of Black people in America. Removing this aspect, removes a key element of its conception, and muddies its Black American origins. 

As the portal opens in the Juke Joint, a flashback occurs of the character Delta Slim, played by Delroy Lindo, speaking to Sammie earlier in the day. “Blues wasn’t forced on us like that religion, we brought this with us from home,” Delta Slim says, as the shot focuses on his face, emphasizing each word. He ends with, “The magic of what we do is sacred, and BIG, contextualizing the importance of the blues and inaugurating the sacred moment that follows. Jazz, like the blues, came from us. It was Hip-Hop before Hip-Hop. And much like Hip-Hop/Rap, we’ve lost countless histories, traditions, and representation in jazz as it has become mainstream. Consequently, non-Black musicians and executives are heralded as keepers of the genre today. 

“I know we are going to lose this gift of black culture unless we are careful.”

— Hortense Spillers

Clearly, I am a jazz fan and I am biased. I resonate with Miles and Roach who proclaimed Jazz as “Black American Music” and refused to name it anything else. I know their position came from a desire to maintain the music’s integrity and from decades worth of abuse and exploitation by the music industry. I believe that much like the blues, jazz can be yielded in the direction of all human emotion, to express it all, capture it all. I’d like to think as a Black history enthusiast, Ryan Coogler would include one of our most precious art forms. When the decision to add turf dancing, modern dance, twerkers, LA gang-bangers was made, why did jazz musicians go unmentioned? When they decided that Sinners would debut in April, did they consider that would also be Jazz Appreciation Month? The symbolism of Sammie’s musical and spiritual gift being preyed upon by a White vampire speaks to the exploitation that Black working musicians have experienced for over a century. By the end of the film it's revealed that not only did Sammie leave Clarksdale to pursue music, but that he became a successful musician, playing at his own Blues club called “Pearlines.” Certainly, Sammie’s character would have found himself among countless Black musicians who played the jazz scenes; some making it, others falling victim to the seedy and destructive downsides of night life. 

I’ve reconstructed this scene countless times in my mind, searching for Jazz’s place. Considering that jazz makes up several of the genres that were showcased, it does live somewhere in the film. However, the acknowledgment should’ve been explicit and instead has been relegated to the fantasies of movie watchers like myself, and critics who ramble about what could have been.

…

Sammie in the midst of conjuring ancestral spirits and future griots is greeted by the wail of a brass trumpet. The trumpet player meets him there in the belly of his song and pleads beside him, his tune mirroring the same blues, “somebody take me in your arms tonight.” That lone trumpeter is decorated in the memory of trumpeters before him - a young Louis Armstrong playing the riverboat circuit of New Orleans in the 1910s trying to drown out the blare of his healthy rival King Oliver, whose cornett sent ripples across the bayou. Embodying Miles, Byrd, Lee, Gillespie, Hubbard, Hargrove, channeling rhythms and sounds of the already here and the yet to come. In the final shot of the portal, as the juke is set ablaze revealing the occupants as they dance, sweat, laugh, and drink amongst the musical spirits, the trumpeter is seen blowing endlessly into the wind, extending Sammie’s song to the edges of the universe.