The Blues Under the Skin

In the early 1970s, during a resurgence of interest in the Delta blues, music documentarian Robert Manthoulis traveled to the Mississippi Delta to capture on film the remnants of the authentic American blues. Traveling throughout the deep South, Manthoulis filmed candid interviews and intimate performances by such legends as B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Mance Lipscomb, Bukka White, and Roosevelt Sykes. His objective was to not only document the music but also penetrate the surface of the blues and explore the emotional and sociopolitical factors that make it such an expressive and haunting musical form. Blurring the line between documentary and fiction, "The Blues Under the Skin" dramatizes the tumultuous relationship of a young couple (Onike Lee and Roland Sanchez) as they struggle to overcome the barriers of poverty and prejudice that keep them from finding happiness together. Virtually unseen in the U.S., "The Blues Under the Skin" is a thrilling rediscovery, an untapped treasury of musical performances that not only captures a vanishing musical form, but offers a priceless glimpse of Black life in the rural South in the 1970s.