In Train Whistle Blues, Bearden uses his signature collage technique to transform the sound of a passing train into a resonant image of Black American experience. Part of The Prevalence of Ritual series, the work layers cut paper, fabric, and photographs into a scene that is both specific and symbolic: a figure waits at the edge of the frame, shadowed by smoke and steel, as the train barrels forward.

For Bearden, the train was never just a mode of transportation—it was a recurring motif of displacement, possibility, and change. It evoked the Great Migration, the rhythms of the blues, and the ever-present pull between home and elsewhere. In Train Whistle Blues, the fragmented imagery mirrors the emotional texture of the blues itself: aching, enduring, improvisational.