麻豆社

Full Moon on Progress Street series 2 follows on from the first series (available on 麻豆社 Sounds), taking a close look at key moments and music to reveal the hidden lives and interests of more of the most important Black female artists of the 20th century 鈥� Sarah Vaughan, Ma Rainey, Abbey Lincoln, Bessie Smith and Josephine Baker. Dr Rommi Smith, lifelong jazz and blues listener, takes us on a journey into the creative life of each artist, reappraising what we think we know about them from popular culture. Each essay 'flips-the-script', to show a different hidden story. All of these iconic women are broadly misrepresented - history and popular perception airbrushing their interests, politics, activism, sexualities, creative legacies and passions.

Essay 2

Bessie Smith was called The 鈥淓mpress of the Blues.鈥� Her travelling tours of the rural south were spectacles of song, self-sufficiency and luxury. When she couldn鈥檛 travel first class due to segregation, undeterred, Smith bought her own Pullman car, travelling in style with her entourage. Legend has it that when the Ku Klux Klan disrupted one of her performances, in an act of daring and courage, she fought back. This essay replays that moment, using Smith鈥檚 repertoire to evidence how she set a benchmark for women performers engaged in the fight for civil rights. Track list: Nobody in Town Can Bake a Sweet Jelly Roll Like Mine, I鈥檝e Been Mistreated and I Don鈥檛 Like It and Devil鈥檚 Gonna Get You.

Dr Rommi Smith is a writer, broadcaster and academic. Winner of the Northern Writers Prize for Poetry, Rommi has been awarded prestigious fellowships, residencies and commissions, from organisations and institutions ranging from the 麻豆社 to The British Council. In 2025, she was appointed a judge for the Forward Prizes for Poetry.

Rommi is the inaugural British Parliamentary Writer-in-Residence. She was Writer-in-Residence for Keats鈥� House, the Wordsworth Trust and most recently, the inaugural Writer-in-Residence for Harewood House, writing in response to its exhibition about Jane Austen & JMW Turner. She is a librettist, collaborating often with the composer Roderick Williams. Rommi was commissioned by Lubaina Himid/the ICA to create Tracing the Thin Black Line (a new performance work marking the 40th anniversary of the exhibition The Thin Black Line). The work premiered at the Institute of Contemporary Art in 2025. Her academic scholarship centres on jazz and blues, women and civil rights. She is honoured to have interviewed leading contemporary musicians, from Dr. Dianne Reeves to Dr. Esperanza Spalding, Professor Terri Lyne Carrington to Cassandra Wilson as part her academic research. Rommi鈥檚 work is published by, amongst others, Routledge and New York University Press. A collection of poems inspired by her research is forthcoming.

www.rommi-smith.co.uk

Writer and presenter, Dr Rommi Smith
Producer, Polly Thomas
Sound designer, Paul Cargill
Exec producer, Chantal Herbert
A Thomas Carter Projects production for 麻豆社 Radio 3.