Race Music

Into the newly-settled (in 1910) Mississippi Delta country comes Sam Schwartz, a Russian immigrant, one of the many wandering Jewish peddlers who comb the backwoods of the American South, a man fleeing an oppressive country and a painful past. He experiences an emotional rebirth with Leafy, a black Delta woman. Race Music (the original term for blues recordings) is the story of Sam and Leafys relationship, of the family they start and of a love betrayed a betrayal that has consequences that will span fifty years and reach all the way from the Delta to Chicagos South Side. Delta music the blues is always in the background. Celebrated figures like Charlie Patton and Bessie Smith and the fabled Robert Johnson are encountered as they create the Deltas truest history and cultural legacy.