The Blues Under the Skin

In the early 1970s, during a resurgence of interest in the Delta blues, celebrated music documentarian Roviros Manthoulis traveled to the Mississippi Delta to capture on film the remnants of the authentic American blues. Filming intimate conversations and stunning performances by such blues legends B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Mance Lipscomb, Bukka White, and Roosevelt Sykes, Manthoulis explored the emotional and sociopolitical factors that make the blues the most expressive and haunting of musical forms. 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 cask of musical performances that document not only a range of vanishing musical forms, but provide a priceless glimpse of a vanished culture in the 1970s South.