Porgy and Bess is the only Opera in the Canon that portrays a story of Black American people… and it was written by white people.

George Gershwin, 1937

George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess has long been hailed as an iconic work in American opera, blending classical music with jazz, blues, and folk influences to tell the story of life in a fictional African American community in Charleston, South Carolina.¹ While its music is undoubtedly powerful, Porgy and Bess also requires critical interrogation, particularly due to the opera’s portrayal of race, culture, and identity. This raises uncomfortable questions about representation, authenticity, and the perpetuation of racial stereotypes.

At the heart of Porgy and Bess is a narrative of struggle, love, and survival,² centered on the character of Porgy, a disabled beggar, and his troubled relationship with Bess, a woman caught in the grip of addiction and abuse. The opera’s setting—Catfish Row, a poor African American neighborhood—creates a world where the characters’ lives are defined by poverty, violence, and hardship. While this portrayal is grounded in the socio-economic realities of many Black communities in the early 20th century, it also risks reinforcing a reductive and stereotypical image of African American life.³

The opera’s focus on African American characters, often depicted in crisis or dependency, can be seen as problematic. Critics have noted that Porgy and Bess is deeply influenced by a white gaze, one that both romanticizes and victimizes African Americans. While Gershwin was committed to incorporating Black music traditions into his work, his portrayal of Black life lacks the nuance and agency that would allow African American characters to transcend their circumstances.³ Each character fits the minstrel stereotypes: either asexual or overly sexual. Either unintelligent or villainous. These reinforce patriarchal white-supremacist ideology that perpetuates a false narrative further.

Modern productions of Porgy and Bess, have sparked important conversations about how the work can be reimagined.² These revivals attempt to acknowledge the complexities of race and representation, offering opportunities for greater authenticity and racial equity in performances.

Yet, even in its reinvention, Porgy and Bess remains a product of its time—one that must be engaged with critically to understand the tensions between artistic excellence and the reproduction of harmful racial stereotypes.

Ultimately, Porgy and Bess poses a challenge to contemporary audiences. While it is undeniable that the opera has shaped the American musical landscape, its legacy also serves as a reminder that the only work centered around the African American experience was written by white people and serves at perpetuate minstrel stereotypes. To truly recognize the richness of Black identity and culture, it is necessary to interrogate the ways in which works like Porgy and Bess both distort and reflect the lived experiences of Black communities.

Bonhoeffer with Students in 1932.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran Pastor and theologian who was executed in 1945 was executed by Nazis in 1945 for his involvement with a plot to kill Hitler. In 1930, Bonhoeffer came to America to pursue a fellowship at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Bonhoeffer was introduced to the Abyssinian Baptist Church by a fellow seminarian. Bonhoeffer served in the ministry there while he was in the U.S. and formed a love and affinity for the Black Church.

Theologians love to draw the connection between Bonhoeffer’s encounter with the Black Church and his resistance work back in Germany. For a detailed treatment of this subject see Reggie L. Williams’s excellent book Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus.

Bonhoeffer was apparently quite moved by Black Spirituals during his time in America, and even recorded them (Williams 80-1). He said that spirituals were “some of the greatest artistic achievements in America” and described them as having a “strange mixture of reserved melancholy and eruptive joy” (Williams 80). He would later, according to one his biographers, play these Spirituals for his students in his underground seminary back in Germany. His friend and biographer Eberhard Bethage wrote “We hummed ‘Swing low, sweet chariot’ twenty years before the radio and concert halls made it familiar here.” (Bethage, quoted in John W. Doberstien’s introduction to Bonhoeffer’s Life Together 9).

The affinity between Bonhoeffer and the Spiritual tradition isn’t surprising. Both share theological roots in resistance to oppression. The original religious context of Spirituals was in clandestine meetings where enslaved people would sing and worship together. Bonhoeffer’s resistance seminary was also underground. It’s hard not to see the resonance with the early church as well. The type of Christianity these three movements express is an imminent and liberation focused Christianity, which requires “Costly Grace,” an idea developed by Bonhoeffer.

“Costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: ‘My yoke is easy and my burden is light’” (Witness to Jesus Christ “The Cost of Discipleship” 158).

Such grace exists perhaps especially in the midst of oppression. Grace, christian or otherwise, does not release us from our ethical duties to each other, but instead strengthens them.


Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together. trans. Doberstein, John. Harper & Brothers. 1954.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Witness to Jesus Christ. ed. John De Gruchy. Collins Liturgical Publications. London. 1988.

Williams, Reggie L. Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and An Ethic of Resistance. Baylor University Press. 2014.

12-bar blues is a foundation that artists from all genres around the world have used to build their musical visions.

Blues goes beyond just a genre of music. The 12-bar blues progression has become one of the most significant building blocks of American popular music. Its influence can be traced through decades of musical evolution, from the birth of rock and roll to the rise of modern pop and hip-hop.

The 12-bar blues was a chord progression that could be used for improvisation and manipulation to create thousands of works of music. The structure allows for ample room for improvisation and emotional expression, especially when it comes to vocal delivery and instrumental solos.¹ It’s easy to see why it became so foundational to blues musicians—it provided both a predictable framework and the freedom to inject personal style and feeling into the music.

Blues started in America. It’s origins are traced back to the late 19th century in the Southern United Stater. It was created by African American musicians and influenced by precursors like ring shouts, work songs, and spirituals.¹ Blues was the most popular music for Black Americans for a long period of time, before white people made the style commercially profitable and published (stole) the work of black artists. Blues is also famous for being grass-roots and there are many folktales about where it really started. The start, to me at least, is less important than it’s legacy among American (and non-American) music today.

So what artists have used the 12-bar blues to make their music?

Led Zeppelin uses the 12-bar blues in their song “Rock n Roll”.

Johnny Cash is a country singer who often uses the blues influence in his music.

In the movie The Little Mermaid the song “Kiss the Girl” uses the 12-bar blues.

This extremely popular song might not be thought of as part of the Blues genre by listeners, but it is certainly a blues song that uses the 12-bar blues progression.

John Mayer uses the 12-bar blues his song “Gravity”.

The 12-bar blues is not just a formula—it’s a framework for expressing a large range of deep emotions that  encapsulate the universal human experience. As long as musicians continue to innovate, adapt, and express themselves through song, the 12-bar blues will remain a key part of American popular music.