In Black music, what seems "either/or" to european-heritage thinking is often "both/and" in the range of connotations of people whose original languages have been ripped from them in enslavement. Look for elegantly conceived expressions of several things in one well-chosen phrase or word. Captivity in "Bama" or "Babylon"-- are they so different? These types of fluidly comprehensive phrasings are so frequent in spirituals that it never surprises me to find them all over the blues.

~S~