The Blues Algorithm Revisited: From Reincarnated to Sinners
An algorithm is a plan for solving a problem represented as a simple step-by-step description. Many people put algorithms within the boundaries of computer science but there are algorithmic patterns in M.C. Escher’s artworks or in patchwork quilts from Gee’s Bend, Alabama, which contain elements of West African textile patterns. Code is the implementation of an algorithm in a specific language or vernacular. Secret or hidden codes, such as the symbols that were sewn into quilts along the Underground Railroad, are used to protect important information by converting it into a disguised form that only members could decipher. This includes Ring Shout and the Cypher in hip hop culture. Ring Shout is the earliest form of resistance that Black Americans embraced. It is a dance and ritual that was developed away from the continent of Africa, but created by the descendants of African people, with significant African influences.
I’ll return to this topic later…
The song’s pattern is A-B-A-B-A... — James Snead
The first time I saw black music written as an algorithm was in an essay written by late Yale scholar and professor James Arthur Snead (see above). Though he only lived until the age of 35, he left behind several published works. After his death, Cornel West called him “among the most important American intellectuals in the late 20th century.” A little over a decade ago I read Snead’s “Repetition as a figure of black culture” that examines how cultures grapple with algorithmic patterns in the form of repetition. You can hear repetition in the blues, as well as in rap music. It’s foundational to Black creative expression and culture. Black culture, like many cultures, engages in various forms of “coverage” or “cover-up” to maintain its identity, and the key is in the algorithm. The source of Black algorithmic creativity and expression (repetition) is the Deep South.
The Legacy of Congo Square
When black people got to this country, they were Africans, a foreign people. Their customs, attitudes, desires, were shaped to a different place, a radically different life. — Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka), “Blues People: Negro Music in White America”
In the southern corner of Armstrong Park in New Orleans is Congo Square, which was the only place in the United States where African slaves were allowed to perform their own music and dance in the 1700s-1800s, establishing the roots of American music. It was here that foundational algorithms were created referred to as call-and-response participation and repetition. These plans or codes traveled across the U.S. through The Great Migration. The polyrhythmic, call-and-response and generative aspects of this hidden code led to the development of musical genres such as the blues and jazz that have repetitive elements that can be improvised upon based on shared instructions, steps, and rules.
Blues is the parent of all legitimate jazz, and it is impossible to say exactly how old blues is — certainly no older than the presence of Negroes in the United States. — Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka), p.17
The ‘blues algorithm’ migrated north with Black people in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Blues musicians based in places such as the Mississippi Delta and Memphis, Tennessee moved to cities such as Chicago and Detroit to join the ‘urban blues movement’. I’ve written previously about Memphis Minnie who wrote “When the Levee Breaks” that was later covered by Led Zeppelin. John Lee Hooker was well known for performing an electric guitar-style adaptation of Delta blues that he developed in Detroit. Skip James was another well-known Delta blues artist. In the late 1950s, a new blues style emerged on Chicago’s West Side pioneered by musicians such as Buddy Guy who influenced generations of creators, including Ryan Coogler who wrote and directed the 2025 film Sinners.
Conjurations: From Reincarnated to Sinners
‘An old African adage states that
“the Spirit will not descend without a song…”
We must make it clear that the Spirit
can’t be made to come through manipulation.’ — Pedrito U. Maynard-Reid, Diverse Worship: African-American, Caribbean and Hispanic Perspectives
Rapper Kendrick Lamar family arrived in California a decade after the Second Great Migration that moved millions of Black Americans from the South to the Northeast, Midwest and West. In November 2024 Lamar released his sixth studio album GNX that included the song “Reincarnated.” His performance, which evokes the late rapper Tupac Shakur’s vocal style, channels the stories of blues guitarist John Lee Hooker and jazz singer Billie Holiday who, when she was young, was inspired by the music of blues singer Bessie Smith. The first two verses of Lamar’s song find him recounting being a guitarist that manipulated and lied to the masses and music industry for unfair profit (Hooker) and a Black woman performer on the Chitlin’ Circuit whose drug addiction led to her death (Holliday).
I was head of rhythm and blues
The women that fell to they feet, so many to choose
But I manipulated power, as I lied to the masses
Died with my money, gluttony was too attractive, reincarnated — Kendrick Lamar, “Reincarnated”
Another life had placed me as a black woman in a Chitlin’ Circuit
Seductive vocalist as the promoter hit the curtains
My voice was angelic, straight from heaven, the crowd sobbed
A musical genius what the articles emphasized
Had everything I wanted, but I couldn’t escape addiction — Kendrick Lamar, “Reincarnated”
For “Sinners” Ryan Coogler channeled the blues algorithm, which also made several references to conjuring. Conjuration was “one of the African cultural survivals very early noted in the New World,” according to renowned linguist J.L. Dillard’s Lexicon of Black English. Conjure is used in the sense of bringing into existence or summoning, as in the Southern Black oral tradition and West African spirituality, often associated with magic and ritual. This oral tradition encompasses various forms of verbal art passed down through generations. This includes the blues, a genre known for storytelling and conveying moral lessons. As mentioned earlier, the blues is foundational and holds the key to the hidden or secret codes that has helped Black people maintain a cultural identity for generations. One of my personal favorites is Bukka White’s “Aberdeen Mississippi Blues”:
I was over in Aberdeen
On my way to New Orlean
I was over in Aberdeen
On my way to New Orlean
Them Aberdeen women told me
Will buy my gasoline — Bukka White
Ryan Coogler, like Kendrick Lamar, is a descendant of Black people who migrated from the south. His Black horror film “Sinners” is set in the Deep South, specifically Clarksdale, Mississippi, in 1932. The story follows a group of characters, including a young blues musician named Sammie (Preacher Boy), as they experience one night of violence, blues music, and a confrontation with the corporeal undead. Real life blues musician Buddy Guy plays the character Old Sammie who is a key connection between the past and present, acting as a link to key events that unfold in the film. As mentioned earlier, Guy is a pioneer of the Chicago blues. Guy is also a favorite of one of Coogler’s uncles and Sinners is loosely based on his life.
It all started with the fact that I would listen to that blues music to think about my uncle, and I thought, ‘Man, who was he thinking about when he was listening to it?’ Did he listen to that [music] and was it people that he was conjuring? — Ryan Coogler
Here’s the trailer for the film:
Note: In previous writings I link Ring Shout and Cyphers to the Kongo Cosmogram, a figure that is deeply rooted in African spiritual traditions. I wrote about Robert Johnson’s Crossroad Blues, which I will further explore in a different post. In an interview, Coogler talks about how listening to the blues helped him to conjure his uncle and write the script/story:
I would play blues music and I would kind of talk to my cousins, both of [James’] sons who passed away, there’s a lot of Smoke and Stack in my Uncle Rod and my Uncle Mark. — Ryan Coogler
A video short posted on Instagram features an interview with Miles Caton who portrays young Sammie in the film. Caton is the son of gospel singer Timiney Figueroa and nephew of gospel singer Anaysha Figueroa-Cooper. The blues and gospel, while distinct in their themes, share common roots in the Black American experience and often intersect musically. Gospel music, is centered around religious themes, and the blues, often deals with secular experiences of sorrow and resilience. Before, during and after the slave trade, artists from across the African diaspora have called upon their ancestors (spirits) and past experiences for inspiration and instruction. Both “Reincarnated” and “Sinners” continue the legacy of preserving the blues algorithm by conjuring the soul or consciousness of artists that have been reborn into new lives through music and film.