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The Century Cycle #3
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
The time is 1927. The place is a rundown recording studio in Chicago. Ma Rainey, the legendary blues singer, is due to arrive with her entourage to cut new sides of old favorites.
Waiting for her are her black musician sidemen, the white owner of the record company, and her white manager. What goes down in the session to come is more than music. It is a riveting portrayal of black rage ... of racism, of the self-hate that racism breeds, and of racial exploitation ...
Waiting for her are her black musician sidemen, the white owner of the record company, and her white manager. What goes down in the session to come is more than music. It is a riveting portrayal of black rage ... of racism, of the self-hate that racism breeds, and of racial exploitation ...
111 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1984
About the author
August Wilson
58 books531 followersAmerican playwright August Wilson won a Pulitzer Prize for
Fences
in 1985 and for
The Piano Lesson
in 1987.
His literary legacy embraces the ten series and received twice for drama for The Pittsburgh Cycle . Each depicted the comic and tragic aspects of the African-American experience, set in different decade of the 20th century.
Daisy Wilson, an African American cleaning woman from North Carolina, in the hill district of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, bore Frederick August Kittel, Junior, the fourth of six children, to Frederick August Kittel, Senior, a German immigrant baker. From North Carolina, maternal grandmother of Wilson earlier sought a better life and walked to Pennsylvania. After his fifth year, his mother raised the children alone in a two-room apartment above a grocery store at 1727 Bedford Avenue.
After death of Frederick August Kittel, Senior, in 1965, his son changed his name to August Wilson to honor his mother.
In 1968, Wilson co-founded the black horizon theater in the hill district of Pittsburgh alongside Rob Penny, his friend. People first performed his Recycling for audiences in small theaters and public housing community centers. Among these early efforts, he revised Jitney more than two decades later as part of his ten-cycle on 20th-century Pittsburgh.
Wilson married three times. His first marriage to Brenda Burton lasted from 1969 to 1972. She bore him Sakina Ansari, a daughter, in 1970.
Vernell Lillie founded of the Kuntu repertory theatre at the University of Pittsburgh in 1974 and, two years later, directed The Homecoming of Wilson in 1976.
Wilson also co-founded the workshop of Kuntu to bring African-Americans together and to assist them in publication and production. Both organizations still act.
Claude Purdy, friend and director, suggested to Wilson to move to Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1978 and helped him secure a job with educational scripts for the science museum. In 1980, he received a fellowship for the center in Minneapolis. Wilson long associated with the penumbra theatre company, which gave the premieres, of Saint Paul.
In 1981, he married to Judy Oliver, a social worker, and they divorced in 1990.
Wilson received many honorary degrees, including an honorary doctor of humanities from the University of Pittsburgh, where he served as a member of the board of trustees from 1992 until 1995.
Wilson got a best known Tony award and the New York circle of drama critics; he authored Ma Rainey's Black Bottom , and Joe Turner's Come and Gone .
In 1994, Wilson left Saint Paul and developed a relationship with Seattle repertory theatre. Ultimately, only Seattle repertory theater in the country produced all works in his ten-cycle and his one-man show How I Learned What I Learned .
Constanza Romero, his costume designer and third wife from 1994, bore Azula Carmen, his second daughter.
In 2005, August Wilson received the Anisfield-Wolf lifetime achievement award.
Wilson reported diagnosis with liver cancer in June 2005 with three to five months to live. He passed away at Swedish medical center in Seattle, and people interred his body at Greenwood cemetery, Pittsburgh on 8 October 2005.
His literary legacy embraces the ten series and received twice for drama for The Pittsburgh Cycle . Each depicted the comic and tragic aspects of the African-American experience, set in different decade of the 20th century.
Daisy Wilson, an African American cleaning woman from North Carolina, in the hill district of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, bore Frederick August Kittel, Junior, the fourth of six children, to Frederick August Kittel, Senior, a German immigrant baker. From North Carolina, maternal grandmother of Wilson earlier sought a better life and walked to Pennsylvania. After his fifth year, his mother raised the children alone in a two-room apartment above a grocery store at 1727 Bedford Avenue.
After death of Frederick August Kittel, Senior, in 1965, his son changed his name to August Wilson to honor his mother.
In 1968, Wilson co-founded the black horizon theater in the hill district of Pittsburgh alongside Rob Penny, his friend. People first performed his Recycling for audiences in small theaters and public housing community centers. Among these early efforts, he revised Jitney more than two decades later as part of his ten-cycle on 20th-century Pittsburgh.
Wilson married three times. His first marriage to Brenda Burton lasted from 1969 to 1972. She bore him Sakina Ansari, a daughter, in 1970.
Vernell Lillie founded of the Kuntu repertory theatre at the University of Pittsburgh in 1974 and, two years later, directed The Homecoming of Wilson in 1976.
Wilson also co-founded the workshop of Kuntu to bring African-Americans together and to assist them in publication and production. Both organizations still act.
Claude Purdy, friend and director, suggested to Wilson to move to Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1978 and helped him secure a job with educational scripts for the science museum. In 1980, he received a fellowship for the center in Minneapolis. Wilson long associated with the penumbra theatre company, which gave the premieres, of Saint Paul.
In 1981, he married to Judy Oliver, a social worker, and they divorced in 1990.
Wilson received many honorary degrees, including an honorary doctor of humanities from the University of Pittsburgh, where he served as a member of the board of trustees from 1992 until 1995.
Wilson got a best known Tony award and the New York circle of drama critics; he authored Ma Rainey's Black Bottom , and Joe Turner's Come and Gone .
In 1994, Wilson left Saint Paul and developed a relationship with Seattle repertory theatre. Ultimately, only Seattle repertory theater in the country produced all works in his ten-cycle and his one-man show How I Learned What I Learned .
Constanza Romero, his costume designer and third wife from 1994, bore Azula Carmen, his second daughter.
In 2005, August Wilson received the Anisfield-Wolf lifetime achievement award.
Wilson reported diagnosis with liver cancer in June 2005 with three to five months to live. He passed away at Swedish medical center in Seattle, and people interred his body at Greenwood cemetery, Pittsburgh on 8 October 2005.
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February 7, 2017
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is part of August Wilson's Century Cycle of plays, each depicting a decade of African American life during the 20th century. In Ma Rainey's, Wilson visits 1920s Chicago, as the Great Migration north has just started, and African Americans have began to assert themselves to gain rights denied to them in the south. It is in these parameters that Ma Rainey and her band have gone to a recording studio to produce songs sure to be hits and gain them financial independence.
Over the last two months, I have read two of Wilson's other plays, Fences and The Piano Lesson, which both won the Pulitzer for drama. Not quite at the other plays' level, Ma Rainey does note that the north was not all African Americans expected, at least at first. In Chicago, Ma Rainey despite being a famous blues singer, is accused of causing a car accident and needs a caucasian friend in high places to bail her out. Additionally, the band members demand to be paid in cash because even in Chicago it is nearly impossible to find a bank willing to service their needs. During the first decade of the Migration, African Americans saw better conditions in the north, but not as widely different as they initially expected.
Wilson has the various band members bring different viewpoints to the rap on race. A few were content to sing in Ma Rainey's band because it meant to them a ticket out of poverty. Others, however, believed the south to be better than north because they could act like themselves rather than as whites, even if it meant the constant fear or lynching. Even Rainey herself, who demands to be called Madame, has to distinctly assert herself in order to have her voice heard in a northern white dominant world.
As in his other plays, Wilson has one character stand out in his World perspective. In this case it is band member Levee who desires to start his own band in order to no longer be dependent on whites to make gains in society. Wilson employs these conflicts to highlight African American society as a whole during the decade he writes about. He attempts to demonstrate how their life has improved in each decade yet also pinpoints how racism is prevalent in the world at large.
In classic bingo, one of the squares is a classic play. The group considers a classic any material published before 1999, and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom fits into the definition. I had already read Fences and The Piano Lesson, but I wanted to include August Wilson in my challenge as he is a influential 20th century American playwright. A glimpse into African American life during the 1920s, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is a solid 3.75 stars for me. Eventually I hope to read Wilson's entire century cycle.
Over the last two months, I have read two of Wilson's other plays, Fences and The Piano Lesson, which both won the Pulitzer for drama. Not quite at the other plays' level, Ma Rainey does note that the north was not all African Americans expected, at least at first. In Chicago, Ma Rainey despite being a famous blues singer, is accused of causing a car accident and needs a caucasian friend in high places to bail her out. Additionally, the band members demand to be paid in cash because even in Chicago it is nearly impossible to find a bank willing to service their needs. During the first decade of the Migration, African Americans saw better conditions in the north, but not as widely different as they initially expected.
Wilson has the various band members bring different viewpoints to the rap on race. A few were content to sing in Ma Rainey's band because it meant to them a ticket out of poverty. Others, however, believed the south to be better than north because they could act like themselves rather than as whites, even if it meant the constant fear or lynching. Even Rainey herself, who demands to be called Madame, has to distinctly assert herself in order to have her voice heard in a northern white dominant world.
As in his other plays, Wilson has one character stand out in his World perspective. In this case it is band member Levee who desires to start his own band in order to no longer be dependent on whites to make gains in society. Wilson employs these conflicts to highlight African American society as a whole during the decade he writes about. He attempts to demonstrate how their life has improved in each decade yet also pinpoints how racism is prevalent in the world at large.
In classic bingo, one of the squares is a classic play. The group considers a classic any material published before 1999, and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom fits into the definition. I had already read Fences and The Piano Lesson, but I wanted to include August Wilson in my challenge as he is a influential 20th century American playwright. A glimpse into African American life during the 1920s, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is a solid 3.75 stars for me. Eventually I hope to read Wilson's entire century cycle.
July 22, 2019
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom—the only drama in the Pittsburgh Cycle not set in Pittsburgh—is August Wilson’s first great play. Like his masterpiece Fences, it presents us with a compelling central character—the great blues singer Ma Rainey—who organizes the play around herself by virtue of her own personal energy, molding what might otherwise be a mere collection of thought-provoking scenes and atmospheric tableaux into a parable not only of black and white power relations, but of the relationship of the artist to his business, and the relationship of the artist to his art. In exploring these complex issues, however, Wilson never loses track of the songs and wounds that form and transform the human heart.
The entire play takes place in a recording studio during the production of a single record: “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” but Ma—although unforgettable when she appears—is not the whole show. The white men, Irv her manager and Sturdivant the producer, have their place of course, but the characters who really give a dynamic feel and color to the play are the other musicians in Ma’s band, particularly Levee, a brash young trumpeter eager to play his own music, and Cutler the trombonist and Toledo the pianist, two veterans reconciled to their status as side men. The way they explore each others pasts, philosophies and musical approaches adds to the depth and richness of the play.
The play ends in tragedy, which comes—as it often does in life—suddenly, without apparent warning. Yet when we reflect upon the nature of the world Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom has shown us, tragedy, as sudden and arbitrary as it seems, does not come as a surprise.
I’ll end with a few things Ma has to say about the Blues:
I never could stand no silence. I always got to have some music going on in my head somewhere. It keeps things balanced. Music will do that. It fills things up. The more music you got in the world, the fuller it is….White folks don’t understand about the blues. They hear it come out, but they don’t know how it got there. They don’t understand that’s life’s way of talking. You don’t sing to feel better. You sing cause that’s a way of understanding life….The blues help you get out of bed in the morning. You get up knowing you ain’t alone. There’s something else in the world. Something's been added by that song. This be an empty world without the blues. I take that emptiness and try to fill it up with something.
August 4, 2021
4.5 stars — Finally, a play in August Wilson's Century Cycle that packs the same punch on the page that it surely must on the stage!
Reading the first two plays in this series left me wanting more, but this one left me breathless and reeling and tempted to re-read right away. Every scene, every interaction, every line of dialogue in this claustrophobic ensemble drama pulsates with wisdom and humor and barely repressed rage.
Set in Chicago in 1927 (apparently the only play in the series not set in Pittsburgh), this entire play takes place on the same chilly, late-winter afternoon in a small recording studio where the legendary Blues singer "Ma Rainey" (known as the "Mother of the Blues") meets up with her band (and a couple white producers) to record a new album.
Ma Rainey makes a flamboyant and magnetic appearance here as an independent Black female singer (what we'd no doubt call a "diva" today) shrewdly navigating the perks and limitations of "fame" for an African-American woman in 1927.
On the one hand, she wields the power of her popularity (i.e., huge profits for the white-owned record label) to preserve the artistic integrity of her music, indulge in a little nepotism for her comically unqualified nephew, keep a young, pretty (female) plaything at her side, and make shady white music producers grovel and beg at her feet.
But she's not naive about the fickle fragility of her fame either. She knows all too well that once her album is recorded and the paperwork signed, she's just another Black woman in America, unable to hail a cab or avoid harassment from racist police.
Despite her mesmerizing presence every time she appears on the stage, Ma Rainey is surprisingly enough more of a supporting, dare I say even "minor" character here. The real stars turn out to be the four men in her band.
Long, rambling stretches of this play consist of these characters joking around, swapping stories, philosophizing, and bruising each others' egos while they rehearse and wait for the recording session to start. The banter here is rich with the authentic rhythms of casual, everyday conversation, ranging from raunchy, laugh-out-loud humor, to deep and devastating pathos.
I'm always a fan of good, honest stories about interracial romance, friendship, allyship, etc. But it's so refreshing and urgently important for readers and audiences to experience the kinds of intimate, almost exclusively Black social spaces August Wilson shares with us here.
These are honest, difficult, sometimes even cruel conversations between Black men about what it means to be a man in the world, and more importantly, what it means to be a Black man pursuing the "American Dream" - conversations taking place with relatively little interruption or undue influence from anyone white in the room.
Although written decades earlier, this at times reminded me of One Night In Miami, the new movie (based on a play) directed by Regina King and now streaming on Amazon Prime, in the way it showcases similarly deep and intimate conversations between Black men in a private and uncensored social space.
All of these characters are distinct and interesting in their own ways, but it's the character of "Levee" who embodies the raw, wounded heart of this story. A young, hot-headed trumpet player with a tragic past, Levee aspires to follow in Ma Rainey's footsteps and achieve his own version of fame and success.
I don't want to spoil too much for those unfamiliar with the story, but Levee's almost unbearably intense and heartbreaking soliloquy near the end of Act One, and his delirious, rage-fueled rants against God and Christianity in Act Two, are among this play's most revelatory and haunting moments.
I can't wait to see what the late Chadwick Boseman did with this juicy role in his last screen appearance!
Updated 2/1/21: I’m bumping up my rating from a 4 to a 4.5 after seeing the fantastic Netflix adaptation, which beautifully brings this play to life and helped me appreciate its greatness even more.
Initial impressions: Ma Rainey wasn’t nearly as striking or memorable to me when reading the play, but my goodness, Viola Davis infuses EVERY....SINGLE....LINE....with so much power and magnetism and depth.
And the character of Levee, already so vibrant and heartbreaking on the page, is absolutely devastating as played by Chadwick Boseman in the final and arguably best performance of his career. The world lost such a bright and irreplaceable creative force when he died!
Reading the first two plays in this series left me wanting more, but this one left me breathless and reeling and tempted to re-read right away. Every scene, every interaction, every line of dialogue in this claustrophobic ensemble drama pulsates with wisdom and humor and barely repressed rage.
Set in Chicago in 1927 (apparently the only play in the series not set in Pittsburgh), this entire play takes place on the same chilly, late-winter afternoon in a small recording studio where the legendary Blues singer "Ma Rainey" (known as the "Mother of the Blues") meets up with her band (and a couple white producers) to record a new album.
Ma Rainey makes a flamboyant and magnetic appearance here as an independent Black female singer (what we'd no doubt call a "diva" today) shrewdly navigating the perks and limitations of "fame" for an African-American woman in 1927.
On the one hand, she wields the power of her popularity (i.e., huge profits for the white-owned record label) to preserve the artistic integrity of her music, indulge in a little nepotism for her comically unqualified nephew, keep a young, pretty (female) plaything at her side, and make shady white music producers grovel and beg at her feet.
But she's not naive about the fickle fragility of her fame either. She knows all too well that once her album is recorded and the paperwork signed, she's just another Black woman in America, unable to hail a cab or avoid harassment from racist police.
Despite her mesmerizing presence every time she appears on the stage, Ma Rainey is surprisingly enough more of a supporting, dare I say even "minor" character here. The real stars turn out to be the four men in her band.
Long, rambling stretches of this play consist of these characters joking around, swapping stories, philosophizing, and bruising each others' egos while they rehearse and wait for the recording session to start. The banter here is rich with the authentic rhythms of casual, everyday conversation, ranging from raunchy, laugh-out-loud humor, to deep and devastating pathos.
I'm always a fan of good, honest stories about interracial romance, friendship, allyship, etc. But it's so refreshing and urgently important for readers and audiences to experience the kinds of intimate, almost exclusively Black social spaces August Wilson shares with us here.
These are honest, difficult, sometimes even cruel conversations between Black men about what it means to be a man in the world, and more importantly, what it means to be a Black man pursuing the "American Dream" - conversations taking place with relatively little interruption or undue influence from anyone white in the room.
Although written decades earlier, this at times reminded me of One Night In Miami, the new movie (based on a play) directed by Regina King and now streaming on Amazon Prime, in the way it showcases similarly deep and intimate conversations between Black men in a private and uncensored social space.
All of these characters are distinct and interesting in their own ways, but it's the character of "Levee" who embodies the raw, wounded heart of this story. A young, hot-headed trumpet player with a tragic past, Levee aspires to follow in Ma Rainey's footsteps and achieve his own version of fame and success.
I don't want to spoil too much for those unfamiliar with the story, but Levee's almost unbearably intense and heartbreaking soliloquy near the end of Act One, and his delirious, rage-fueled rants against God and Christianity in Act Two, are among this play's most revelatory and haunting moments.
I can't wait to see what the late Chadwick Boseman did with this juicy role in his last screen appearance!
Updated 2/1/21: I’m bumping up my rating from a 4 to a 4.5 after seeing the fantastic Netflix adaptation, which beautifully brings this play to life and helped me appreciate its greatness even more.
Initial impressions: Ma Rainey wasn’t nearly as striking or memorable to me when reading the play, but my goodness, Viola Davis infuses EVERY....SINGLE....LINE....with so much power and magnetism and depth.
And the character of Levee, already so vibrant and heartbreaking on the page, is absolutely devastating as played by Chadwick Boseman in the final and arguably best performance of his career. The world lost such a bright and irreplaceable creative force when he died!
July 2, 2024
"It makes you feel good to be a fool. But it don't last long. It's over in a minute. Then you got to tend with the consequences" (Wilson 90).
I saw the 2020 Netflix film adaptation of Wilson's tragic play, and I enjoyed the Oscar Nominated performances of Viola Davis (as Ma Rainey) and Chadwick Boseman, who does leave his mark in the entertainment industry capped with an unforgettable performance as Levee.
I read this play because I might be teaching it next year to teenagers, and found that the play centered more on the conflict between Levee and Toledo- a metaphor of political ideas around race, privilege and what it means to be a black man. Levee is the same brash character as he was in the film, but here his honing anger is even more visceral.
In the film, Ma is a central character with beefed up scenes that seemed to enhance Viola Davis’ screen time. Ma Rainey is a much more a tertiary character this time around- the play focuses more on her band members.
Set in 1927 Chicago on the eve of the Great Depression, Ma Rainey and her bandmembers, Levee, Toledo, Slow Drag and Cutler are at a record studio about to partake in a session to record Ma Rainey's greatest hits. Ma has brought her nervous nephew Sylvester and her girlfriend Dussie Mae who catches Levee's eye, and buy a pair of fancy pink shoes in the hopes of seducing her away from Ma, while wearing them.
The play explores relevant themes such as racial profiling and police brutality, as Ma is pulled over by a policeman because she's accused of assaulting a cabbie- after trying to get a cab since Sylvester damaged her car in accident. Levee talks about his mother's horrifying gang rape by white men.
This is the second Wilson play I've read, and it definitely is a solid and biting one, with dialogue that cuts deep and burns from both Levee, Ma and Toledo.
I saw the 2020 Netflix film adaptation of Wilson's tragic play, and I enjoyed the Oscar Nominated performances of Viola Davis (as Ma Rainey) and Chadwick Boseman, who does leave his mark in the entertainment industry capped with an unforgettable performance as Levee.
I read this play because I might be teaching it next year to teenagers, and found that the play centered more on the conflict between Levee and Toledo- a metaphor of political ideas around race, privilege and what it means to be a black man. Levee is the same brash character as he was in the film, but here his honing anger is even more visceral.
In the film, Ma is a central character with beefed up scenes that seemed to enhance Viola Davis’ screen time. Ma Rainey is a much more a tertiary character this time around- the play focuses more on her band members.
Set in 1927 Chicago on the eve of the Great Depression, Ma Rainey and her bandmembers, Levee, Toledo, Slow Drag and Cutler are at a record studio about to partake in a session to record Ma Rainey's greatest hits. Ma has brought her nervous nephew Sylvester and her girlfriend Dussie Mae who catches Levee's eye, and buy a pair of fancy pink shoes in the hopes of seducing her away from Ma, while wearing them.
The play explores relevant themes such as racial profiling and police brutality, as Ma is pulled over by a policeman because she's accused of assaulting a cabbie- after trying to get a cab since Sylvester damaged her car in accident. Levee talks about his mother's horrifying gang rape by white men.
This is the second Wilson play I've read, and it definitely is a solid and biting one, with dialogue that cuts deep and burns from both Levee, Ma and Toledo.
October 15, 2023
"Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" is a play in August Wilson's ten-play Century Cycle with each work representing a decade of African-American life. African-Americans were migrating to Northern cities such as Chicago and New York in the 1920s. This play is set in a Chicago recording studio in 1927, and the historic Blues singer, Ma Rainey, is planning to record an album with her band members. The producer and agent are white, and Ma Rainey knows she has to get what she wants before signing any release forms. The title comes from a real Blues song, "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," about a popular dance of the era, the Black Bottom dance.
While the band members wait for Ma Rainey, they tell stories of their lives. Some of the older African-American men do what they can to survive. But a younger member, Levee, is restless and wants to play a newer style of music - a jazzy improvisatory version of the song. Levee also has more anger because of how his family was treated by some prejudiced white men. The play starts off slowly, but builds into a tragic moment of rage.
"White folks don't understand about the blues. They hear it come out, but they don't know how it got there. They don't understand that's life's way of talking. You don't sing to feel better. You sing 'cause that's a way of understanding life."
"Is you gonna be satisfied with a bone somebody done throwed you when you see them eating the whole hog?"
I'm rereading this play for a Buddy Read in the Catching Up On Classics group.
While the band members wait for Ma Rainey, they tell stories of their lives. Some of the older African-American men do what they can to survive. But a younger member, Levee, is restless and wants to play a newer style of music - a jazzy improvisatory version of the song. Levee also has more anger because of how his family was treated by some prejudiced white men. The play starts off slowly, but builds into a tragic moment of rage.
"White folks don't understand about the blues. They hear it come out, but they don't know how it got there. They don't understand that's life's way of talking. You don't sing to feel better. You sing 'cause that's a way of understanding life."
"Is you gonna be satisfied with a bone somebody done throwed you when you see them eating the whole hog?"
I'm rereading this play for a Buddy Read in the Catching Up On Classics group.
February 6, 2024
Chicago in 1927 is a rough city, a bruising city, a city of millionaires and derelicts, gangsters and roughhouse dandies, whores and Irish grandmothers who move through its streets fingering long, black rosaries. Somewhere a man is wrestling with the taste of a woman in his cheek. Somewhere a dog is barking. Somewhere the moon has fallen through a window and broken into thirty pieces of silver.
”One…two…You know what to do.”
If I had my way
If I had my way
If I had my way
I would tear this old building down.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is unique among August Wilson’s century cycle of plays, being the only one set somewhere other than Pittsburgh’s Hill District. Third in chronological order in the cycle, it takes place in a music studio in Chicago in 1927. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is one of Wilson’s most brilliant plays.
Legendary blues singer Ma Rainey is recording a record. Her band arrives before her and sets the mood of the play as they bicker and banter with each other as they attempt to rehearse. As always, Wilson’s dialogue is outstanding, moving with natural rhythms as it reveals the characters. Their talk is needling, funny, angry, as they one up each other and wrangle for position. When Ma arrives she bursts on the scene with a commanding energy that brooks no opposition, either from her band members, or from her white manager and recording technician. She is a force to be reckoned with that accelerates the energy of the play.
This is a play about power and adjustments to power. It’s about Southern Blacks learning to navigate the North, and adjusting to the disappointment of its failed promise. It’s about white exploitation of Black entertainers, and about the wiles clever performers like Ma Rainey used to balance the scales. It’s about the deeply buried rage of Black men humiliated by the white power structure, and how that rage could be misdirected. It’s brilliantly clever, darkly humorous, and ultimately tragic. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a truly great American play.
”One…two…You know what to do.”
If I had my way
If I had my way
If I had my way
I would tear this old building down.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is unique among August Wilson’s century cycle of plays, being the only one set somewhere other than Pittsburgh’s Hill District. Third in chronological order in the cycle, it takes place in a music studio in Chicago in 1927. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is one of Wilson’s most brilliant plays.
Legendary blues singer Ma Rainey is recording a record. Her band arrives before her and sets the mood of the play as they bicker and banter with each other as they attempt to rehearse. As always, Wilson’s dialogue is outstanding, moving with natural rhythms as it reveals the characters. Their talk is needling, funny, angry, as they one up each other and wrangle for position. When Ma arrives she bursts on the scene with a commanding energy that brooks no opposition, either from her band members, or from her white manager and recording technician. She is a force to be reckoned with that accelerates the energy of the play.
This is a play about power and adjustments to power. It’s about Southern Blacks learning to navigate the North, and adjusting to the disappointment of its failed promise. It’s about white exploitation of Black entertainers, and about the wiles clever performers like Ma Rainey used to balance the scales. It’s about the deeply buried rage of Black men humiliated by the white power structure, and how that rage could be misdirected. It’s brilliantly clever, darkly humorous, and ultimately tragic. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a truly great American play.
March 31, 2022
The dialogue in this play is soooo damn good. August Wilson really captures these characters and their voices. The first 1/4 is pretty slow, but once things get moving, watch out. Also the ending is just jaw dropping good.
January 22, 2020
گفتگوی طنز چند نوازنده موسیقی بلوز سیاه پوست در استودیو ضبط موسیقی هستش. کتاب در بازه ی زمانی از تاریخ آمریکاست که سیاهپوستها حتی حق رفتن به دستشویی سفیدپوستها رو نداشتند!
ترجمه حرف نداره.
ترجمه حرف نداره.
May 12, 2019
کلکل و جروبحث بانمک و تموم نشدنی چندتا نوازندۀ سبک بلوز سیاهپوست که پایانی غمانگیز پیدا میکنه.
نمایشنامه پر از اسلنگ و ضربالمثله؛ کلاً هم مثه اینکه ویلسون تو کارهاش تأکید داره زبان خاص آفریقایی-امریکاییها رو دربیاره، پس ترجمۀ این کار خیلی نباید راحت باشه. مترجم یه جاهایی معادلهای خوبی پیدا کرده و روونه، به جاهایی هم نمیتونی بفهمی چی به چیه و معادلهای فارسی گمراهکننده میشن.
در کل خوندنش بد نیست. کلی میخندی، یه کم با وضعیت ناجور سیاهپوستها تو امریکای دهۀ بیست و سی از نزدیک آشنا میشی و آخرش هم ممکنه گریهت بگیره.
نمایشنامه پر از اسلنگ و ضربالمثله؛ کلاً هم مثه اینکه ویلسون تو کارهاش تأکید داره زبان خاص آفریقایی-امریکاییها رو دربیاره، پس ترجمۀ این کار خیلی نباید راحت باشه. مترجم یه جاهایی معادلهای خوبی پیدا کرده و روونه، به جاهایی هم نمیتونی بفهمی چی به چیه و معادلهای فارسی گمراهکننده میشن.
در کل خوندنش بد نیست. کلی میخندی، یه کم با وضعیت ناجور سیاهپوستها تو امریکای دهۀ بیست و سی از نزدیک آشنا میشی و آخرش هم ممکنه گریهت بگیره.
May 15, 2013
On its face, Ma Rainey is about jazz and its players during the 1920s. At its heart, Ma Rainey is about power. The whole play bleeds over with hierarchies, personal power politics, and larger systems of race-based power. It is filled with pitched battles for control, to combat powerlessness, and to dress powerlessness as power. Those without power pushed against those with even less; and those with none seethed beneath their constraints. And so developed the storm that brewed from the first scene.
Ma Rainey follows a day's recording session at a Chicago studio (this is the only play in Wilson's Century Cycle to be set outside of Pittsburgh, I believe) by Ma Rainey, a successful jazz singer who may be on her way out, but who has no intention of giving up the position of power she has carved for herself. Most of the play focuses on her band, whose members have varying levels of loyalty to Ma and each other. The newest member, the least loyal, the one most fixated on his own dreams of music stardom, and the one least willing to recognize Ma Rainey's authority/power, is Levee, who is certain the white executive will give him an opportunity to headline his own band. Watching over the recording session are two white executives, who "handle" but do not respect the musicians. Their presumptive, dismissive approach to the power they thoughtlessly hold plays in stark contrast to Levee, whose mirage of power crumbles beneath him by play's end, and who is by necessity fixated on the power he yearned to obtain. Toledo, a member of the band, is our Greek Chorus. He connects the characters' individual struggles for power in a larger conversation about power(lessness) in America.
It is a darkly funny play at times, and as usual Wilson excels in the details: a seemingly throwaway line, a character quirk, a part of the scenery turn out to be saturated with import and meaning. Two examples spring immediately to mind: Ma Rainey's demand for coca-cola, and Levee's shoes. It all matters, the shoes and coke as much as the scene with the police officer. And as usual, Wilson's character development is impressive. He gives depth and shade in only a few lines, creating multidimensional characters in 92 pages. All his characters come to life. While Levee's arc ends up moving toward the forefront, it gains its meaning from the way in which all the other characters, most notably Ma Rainey, themselves struggle to assert power.
Wilson pulls no punches with this play. Personal disillusionment is not the only thing that wore the sparkle off the jazz age. The age was also tainted (defined by) by our country's violent bigotries and widescale oppression. In Wilson's hands, the feeling of powerlessness became visceral and overwhelming. The physical staging of the play started to feel claustrophobic and mirrored--indeed, heightened--the metaphoric walls that pressed in on Levee. And in his hands, the play's climax was shocking but, upon reflection, inevitable. It was the necessary end to a brilliant, hurricane-force play.
Ma Rainey follows a day's recording session at a Chicago studio (this is the only play in Wilson's Century Cycle to be set outside of Pittsburgh, I believe) by Ma Rainey, a successful jazz singer who may be on her way out, but who has no intention of giving up the position of power she has carved for herself. Most of the play focuses on her band, whose members have varying levels of loyalty to Ma and each other. The newest member, the least loyal, the one most fixated on his own dreams of music stardom, and the one least willing to recognize Ma Rainey's authority/power, is Levee, who is certain the white executive will give him an opportunity to headline his own band. Watching over the recording session are two white executives, who "handle" but do not respect the musicians. Their presumptive, dismissive approach to the power they thoughtlessly hold plays in stark contrast to Levee, whose mirage of power crumbles beneath him by play's end, and who is by necessity fixated on the power he yearned to obtain. Toledo, a member of the band, is our Greek Chorus. He connects the characters' individual struggles for power in a larger conversation about power(lessness) in America.
It is a darkly funny play at times, and as usual Wilson excels in the details: a seemingly throwaway line, a character quirk, a part of the scenery turn out to be saturated with import and meaning. Two examples spring immediately to mind: Ma Rainey's demand for coca-cola, and Levee's shoes. It all matters, the shoes and coke as much as the scene with the police officer. And as usual, Wilson's character development is impressive. He gives depth and shade in only a few lines, creating multidimensional characters in 92 pages. All his characters come to life. While Levee's arc ends up moving toward the forefront, it gains its meaning from the way in which all the other characters, most notably Ma Rainey, themselves struggle to assert power.
Wilson pulls no punches with this play. Personal disillusionment is not the only thing that wore the sparkle off the jazz age. The age was also tainted (defined by) by our country's violent bigotries and widescale oppression. In Wilson's hands, the feeling of powerlessness became visceral and overwhelming. The physical staging of the play started to feel claustrophobic and mirrored--indeed, heightened--the metaphoric walls that pressed in on Levee. And in his hands, the play's climax was shocking but, upon reflection, inevitable. It was the necessary end to a brilliant, hurricane-force play.
April 2, 2017
"Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" is the third play in August Wilson's Century Cycle. I have already read the first two and this play is the best (so far). This play is set sometime in the 1920s. It takes place one afternoon in a recording studio where Ma Rainey the legendary Blues singer and her band record some of her hits with her manager and record company owner overseeing the session. Tension erupts among all that are involved. This was a very good play. Three plays down, seven more to go. Up next: The Piano Lesson.
February 7, 2021
When Ma Rainey
Comes to town,
Folks from anyplace
Miles aroun’,
From Cape Girardeau,
Poplar Bluff,
Flocks in to hear
Ma do her stuff;
Comes flivverin’ in,
Or ridin’ mules,
Or packed in trains,
Picknickin’ fools. . . .
That’s what it’s like,
Fo’ miles on down,
To New Orleans delta
An’ Mobile town,
When Ma hits
Anywheres aroun’.
Dey comes to hear Ma Rainey from de little river settlements,
From blackbottorn cornrows and from lumber camps;
Dey stumble in de hall, jes a-laughin’ an’ a-cacklin’,
Cheerin’ lak roarin’ water, lak wind in river swamps.
An’ some jokers keeps deir laughs a-goin’ in de crowded aisles,
An’ some folks sits dere waitin’ wid deir aches an’ miseries,
Till Ma comes out before dem, a-smilin’ gold-toofed smiles
An’ Long Boy ripples minors on de black an’ yellow keys.
O Ma Rainey,
Sing yo’ song;
Now you’s back
Whah you belong,
Git way inside us,
Keep us strong. . . .
O Ma Rainey,
Li’l an’ low;
Sing us ’bout de hard luck
Roun’ our do’;
Sing us ’bout de lonesome road
We mus’ go. . . .
I talked to a fellow, an’ the fellow say,
“She jes’ catch hold of us, somekindaway.
She sang Backwater Blues one day:
‘It rained fo’ days an’ de skies was dark as night,
Trouble taken place in de lowlands at night.
‘Thundered an’ lightened an’ the storm begin to roll
Thousan’s of people ain’t got no place to go.
‘Den I went an’ stood upon some high ol’ lonesome hill,
An’ looked down on the place where I used to live.’
An’ den de folks, dey natchally bowed dey heads an’ cried,
Bowed dey heavy heads, shet dey moufs up tight an’ cried,
An’ Ma lef’ de stage, an’ followed some de folks outside.”
Dere wasn’t much more de fellow say:
She jes’ gits hold of us dataway. - Ma Rainey by Sterling A. Brown
I've been thinking of what James Baldwin once said about artists being in-service to the people they represent. It is something that is often taken for granted, but such a responsibility exacts a great toll. This toll is even greater for black artists in the United States where one is so much more exploited and looked down upon than others. This play is about a black artist and her band coming to grip with this apartheid-exploitation, while at a recording session. The play takes place 100 years ago and was written in 1984, but all the complaints and debates of the band have been in the news for the last decade.
The band is made up of a very diverse group of characters: a devout trombone player leads them, a philosophically-minded intellectual piano player, a nihilistic trumpeter that is convinced that he is the greatest artist of all of them there (including Ma Rainey) and the bass player who is the audience-surrogate and just wants to get this day over with. They are the backing band for Gertrude "Ma" Rainey one of the first professional blues singers and mentor to Bessie Smith. They spend the day of the recording session engaging in dialogues about their fates as black musicians and Rainey and her hot-headed trumpet player duel back-and-forth over everything including a chorus girl that Rainey is involved with (Rainey was bisexual). The setting of the play is Chicago rather than Pittsburgh where August Wilson's Century Cycle usually takes place. The setting does a great job at adding a layer of claustrophobia to the tensions that unfold at the recording session and the tensions between the trumpeter and everybody else ensures what type of play this will be (Chekhov would've been proud of how well Wilson executed everything). Historical fiction is always going to have its own complications, but I think August Wilson does an excellent job at it here.
I can't wait to read more Wilson and this is a great commentary on artistry and society.
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (The actual song.)
Comes to town,
Folks from anyplace
Miles aroun’,
From Cape Girardeau,
Poplar Bluff,
Flocks in to hear
Ma do her stuff;
Comes flivverin’ in,
Or ridin’ mules,
Or packed in trains,
Picknickin’ fools. . . .
That’s what it’s like,
Fo’ miles on down,
To New Orleans delta
An’ Mobile town,
When Ma hits
Anywheres aroun’.
Dey comes to hear Ma Rainey from de little river settlements,
From blackbottorn cornrows and from lumber camps;
Dey stumble in de hall, jes a-laughin’ an’ a-cacklin’,
Cheerin’ lak roarin’ water, lak wind in river swamps.
An’ some jokers keeps deir laughs a-goin’ in de crowded aisles,
An’ some folks sits dere waitin’ wid deir aches an’ miseries,
Till Ma comes out before dem, a-smilin’ gold-toofed smiles
An’ Long Boy ripples minors on de black an’ yellow keys.
O Ma Rainey,
Sing yo’ song;
Now you’s back
Whah you belong,
Git way inside us,
Keep us strong. . . .
O Ma Rainey,
Li’l an’ low;
Sing us ’bout de hard luck
Roun’ our do’;
Sing us ’bout de lonesome road
We mus’ go. . . .
I talked to a fellow, an’ the fellow say,
“She jes’ catch hold of us, somekindaway.
She sang Backwater Blues one day:
‘It rained fo’ days an’ de skies was dark as night,
Trouble taken place in de lowlands at night.
‘Thundered an’ lightened an’ the storm begin to roll
Thousan’s of people ain’t got no place to go.
‘Den I went an’ stood upon some high ol’ lonesome hill,
An’ looked down on the place where I used to live.’
An’ den de folks, dey natchally bowed dey heads an’ cried,
Bowed dey heavy heads, shet dey moufs up tight an’ cried,
An’ Ma lef’ de stage, an’ followed some de folks outside.”
Dere wasn’t much more de fellow say:
She jes’ gits hold of us dataway. - Ma Rainey by Sterling A. Brown
I've been thinking of what James Baldwin once said about artists being in-service to the people they represent. It is something that is often taken for granted, but such a responsibility exacts a great toll. This toll is even greater for black artists in the United States where one is so much more exploited and looked down upon than others. This play is about a black artist and her band coming to grip with this apartheid-exploitation, while at a recording session. The play takes place 100 years ago and was written in 1984, but all the complaints and debates of the band have been in the news for the last decade.
The band is made up of a very diverse group of characters: a devout trombone player leads them, a philosophically-minded intellectual piano player, a nihilistic trumpeter that is convinced that he is the greatest artist of all of them there (including Ma Rainey) and the bass player who is the audience-surrogate and just wants to get this day over with. They are the backing band for Gertrude "Ma" Rainey one of the first professional blues singers and mentor to Bessie Smith. They spend the day of the recording session engaging in dialogues about their fates as black musicians and Rainey and her hot-headed trumpet player duel back-and-forth over everything including a chorus girl that Rainey is involved with (Rainey was bisexual). The setting of the play is Chicago rather than Pittsburgh where August Wilson's Century Cycle usually takes place. The setting does a great job at adding a layer of claustrophobia to the tensions that unfold at the recording session and the tensions between the trumpeter and everybody else ensures what type of play this will be (Chekhov would've been proud of how well Wilson executed everything). Historical fiction is always going to have its own complications, but I think August Wilson does an excellent job at it here.
I can't wait to read more Wilson and this is a great commentary on artistry and society.
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (The actual song.)
December 13, 2020
2.5, rounded up.
I've never much cottoned to Wilson's plays, usually finding them overwritten and his dialogues/characters not bearing much resemblance to how people actually speak or act (and this is not due to any racial/cultural disconnect, but rather verisimilitude to recognizable human behavior; I often find the same problem in the plays of Tennessee Williams). And most resort to some sort of melodramatic final event to lend some sort of phony catharsis.
But the trailers of the new film version of this early play looked intriguing, and seemed to sidestep these issues by virtue of some world-class actors ... and also by the screenplay adapter cutting a good third of the play's excess verbiage (the play originally ran two and a half hours on Broadway, the film is 94 minutes. In Rich's introduction, he talks of seeing an early draft that ran over four hours, which most people left halfway through!).
Unfortunately, I made the mistake of listening to the original Broadway cast recording while reading along in the printed text, which did the play no favors. Much of the dialogue, as I indicated, rings false, particularly in some longwinded, lyrical soliloquies. And that melodramatic ending seems forced and unearned also. I'll still take a look at the new film, but as a play script, this leaves a lot to be desired.
I've never much cottoned to Wilson's plays, usually finding them overwritten and his dialogues/characters not bearing much resemblance to how people actually speak or act (and this is not due to any racial/cultural disconnect, but rather verisimilitude to recognizable human behavior; I often find the same problem in the plays of Tennessee Williams). And most resort to some sort of melodramatic final event to lend some sort of phony catharsis.
But the trailers of the new film version of this early play looked intriguing, and seemed to sidestep these issues by virtue of some world-class actors ... and also by the screenplay adapter cutting a good third of the play's excess verbiage (the play originally ran two and a half hours on Broadway, the film is 94 minutes. In Rich's introduction, he talks of seeing an early draft that ran over four hours, which most people left halfway through!).
Unfortunately, I made the mistake of listening to the original Broadway cast recording while reading along in the printed text, which did the play no favors. Much of the dialogue, as I indicated, rings false, particularly in some longwinded, lyrical soliloquies. And that melodramatic ending seems forced and unearned also. I'll still take a look at the new film, but as a play script, this leaves a lot to be desired.
April 10, 2021
There's a deep rage simmering beneath the surface during the entirety of this play. And you're just waiting for that moment when it erupts with a vengeance. Themes touch on the various degrees of racism. In the film adaptation, Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman play the two most compelling characters, and I can't wait to see how they bring these firecrackers to life.
December 2, 2023
The third August Wilson play if you are following his century cycle plays of the African American experience of the 1900's. This play is set in 1927. It is the only one of the ten to be set outside of the Pittsburgh area. Since it is a play largely about people making blues music, it makes sense that the locale was shifted to Chicago for this to be historically more accurate. Ma Rainey, a legendary blues singer of the time is one of the main characters in the play.
The play starts out with Ma's band arriving at the recording studio as they await Ma's appearance to lay down some recordings to satisfy the record producer, named Sturdyvant. The band is made up of Cutler, the guitarist and unofficial leader of the band; Toledo, the piano player and an intellectual who enjoys books more than he does people; and Slow Drag, the bassist, who is mild mannered and attempts to get along with everyone. Finally there is a new member of the band, Levee, who is younger than the others and has written some new songs of his own. Levee is convinced that the blues sound is changing. Ma Rainey and the other musicians in the band have been playing ragtime with an emphasis on sentimental numbers. This has led to Ma and the record company being quite successful. Levee wants to play swing music, which is the new direction that he thinks blues is headed in. Levee has convinced Sturdyvant to let him record some of the new numbers later, as he has shown him some of the songs he wrote.
It turns out that Levee is pretty headstrong and has had to overcome a lot of adversity in his upbringing (which will come out in the play). The other members of the band don't necessarily want to defer to Levee in his desire to change the direction of the band. They have been successful doing what Ma has built her legacy on. Ma takes a while to get to the recording studio, and there has been plenty of time to see the contrast between the sides that Toledo and Cutler have taken up against Levee in musical outlook but also their basic philosophies on life in general.
When Ma finally shows up, she is not too keen on the changes that Levee wants to implement. After all, who is he to come in and announce changes to a winning formula? Ma also wants her nephew Sylvester to be included on the new recording as her announcer, a role that strikes the others as coming down solely to nepotism. Ma has also brought along a young protege named Dussie Mae, who is not a musician, but who Levee thinks is very sexy. It turns out that Levee is right about the direction of blues music, but how will that play out in the play?
I have been learning about this time period in a graduate history class that I just happened to be taking as I read this play. It is a very interesting time period, as it coincided with the Harlem Renaissance, and this was a vibrant time in the growth of the blues music of this time. Not just Ma Rainey, but Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, and Louis Armstrong were making great music, amongst others. Blues music was extremely important in the black community. Wilson has captured all of this in this play.
This is an excellent play. The tension grows during the course of the play, and the personalities are distinct and strong. The conflict is well set up and the ending is memorable and moving. It is a profound play. Of the three plays I have read in the cycle so far, I would rank this one second of the three, just below Joe Turner's Come and Gone, but much better than Gem of the Ocean. The reason that I liked Joe Turner better was that it was a bit more optimistic in its conclusion. This play packs an emotional wallop, and I certainly look forward to reading the other seven plays in this cycle, especially if they can maintain the level of the last two Wilson plays I've read.
The play starts out with Ma's band arriving at the recording studio as they await Ma's appearance to lay down some recordings to satisfy the record producer, named Sturdyvant. The band is made up of Cutler, the guitarist and unofficial leader of the band; Toledo, the piano player and an intellectual who enjoys books more than he does people; and Slow Drag, the bassist, who is mild mannered and attempts to get along with everyone. Finally there is a new member of the band, Levee, who is younger than the others and has written some new songs of his own. Levee is convinced that the blues sound is changing. Ma Rainey and the other musicians in the band have been playing ragtime with an emphasis on sentimental numbers. This has led to Ma and the record company being quite successful. Levee wants to play swing music, which is the new direction that he thinks blues is headed in. Levee has convinced Sturdyvant to let him record some of the new numbers later, as he has shown him some of the songs he wrote.
It turns out that Levee is pretty headstrong and has had to overcome a lot of adversity in his upbringing (which will come out in the play). The other members of the band don't necessarily want to defer to Levee in his desire to change the direction of the band. They have been successful doing what Ma has built her legacy on. Ma takes a while to get to the recording studio, and there has been plenty of time to see the contrast between the sides that Toledo and Cutler have taken up against Levee in musical outlook but also their basic philosophies on life in general.
When Ma finally shows up, she is not too keen on the changes that Levee wants to implement. After all, who is he to come in and announce changes to a winning formula? Ma also wants her nephew Sylvester to be included on the new recording as her announcer, a role that strikes the others as coming down solely to nepotism. Ma has also brought along a young protege named Dussie Mae, who is not a musician, but who Levee thinks is very sexy. It turns out that Levee is right about the direction of blues music, but how will that play out in the play?
I have been learning about this time period in a graduate history class that I just happened to be taking as I read this play. It is a very interesting time period, as it coincided with the Harlem Renaissance, and this was a vibrant time in the growth of the blues music of this time. Not just Ma Rainey, but Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, and Louis Armstrong were making great music, amongst others. Blues music was extremely important in the black community. Wilson has captured all of this in this play.
This is an excellent play. The tension grows during the course of the play, and the personalities are distinct and strong. The conflict is well set up and the ending is memorable and moving. It is a profound play. Of the three plays I have read in the cycle so far, I would rank this one second of the three, just below Joe Turner's Come and Gone, but much better than Gem of the Ocean. The reason that I liked Joe Turner better was that it was a bit more optimistic in its conclusion. This play packs an emotional wallop, and I certainly look forward to reading the other seven plays in this cycle, especially if they can maintain the level of the last two Wilson plays I've read.
January 4, 2021
As with other August Wilson plays, the racism and respective history covered in the play is powerfully portrayed. In particular, the rage comes through and sweeps us away. I'm going to be reading and re-reading all of his plays this next year, so this was a good way back in!
February 10, 2011
A double entendre so blatant you can disregard the pretense of the tame half of the entendre. The black bottom was a dance and, on the surface, the title refers to Ma Rainey’s take on that dance. More to the point, if you don’t like Ma Rainey you can just kiss her… Set in the late 1920s in a Chicago recording studio and its downstairs rehearsal space, August Wilson’s brilliant play captures events related to one recording session involving Ma Rainey, her band (more so than her even), and two white men, her manager and the record label owner.
In this small tale, Wilson packs a lot about race in America, and about power, business, and violence too. The relationships among band members shift, collegial to contentious, friend to enemy, as circumstances and participants change. When it’s just the band members Levee is a disruptive voice, challenging Cutler’s leadership and the musicianship of his mates. Toledo represents a political voice that is another kind of challenge and he and Levee find themselves in opposition. Levee’s ambitions have him bold and aggressive with his peers and humble and solicitous to the two white men who might give him his break. His success with them leads to resentment with the band and angers Rainey, who puts him in his place as a sidebar to her battles with her manager and the label owner, recognizing her limited power in unjust society but not hesitating to use all her power with brash aggression and no fear because she owns the playing field that is her talent. It is a tragedy with crackling dialogue and salted with bitterly funny moments.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is the third play chronologically in Wilson ten play sequence (all but this one set in Pittsburgh, I believe) so now I have to go read the first two and follow the sequence through, each play set in a decade of the 20th Century. If the others are as sharp and insightful as this, it’s going to be a literary treat.
In this small tale, Wilson packs a lot about race in America, and about power, business, and violence too. The relationships among band members shift, collegial to contentious, friend to enemy, as circumstances and participants change. When it’s just the band members Levee is a disruptive voice, challenging Cutler’s leadership and the musicianship of his mates. Toledo represents a political voice that is another kind of challenge and he and Levee find themselves in opposition. Levee’s ambitions have him bold and aggressive with his peers and humble and solicitous to the two white men who might give him his break. His success with them leads to resentment with the band and angers Rainey, who puts him in his place as a sidebar to her battles with her manager and the label owner, recognizing her limited power in unjust society but not hesitating to use all her power with brash aggression and no fear because she owns the playing field that is her talent. It is a tragedy with crackling dialogue and salted with bitterly funny moments.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is the third play chronologically in Wilson ten play sequence (all but this one set in Pittsburgh, I believe) so now I have to go read the first two and follow the sequence through, each play set in a decade of the 20th Century. If the others are as sharp and insightful as this, it’s going to be a literary treat.
December 20, 2020
Taking place in the 1920s, this is the the third play in August Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle, a ten-play cycle documenting the African-American experience during the 20th century. However, I find it more useful to read Wilson's plays in the order in which he wrote them, not their chronological order. This is his very first play, and also the only one of his to not take place in Pittsburgh (it's set in Chicago). Definitely groundbreaking for its time, Ma Rainey's contains many of Wilson's trademarks that he would continue to use and develop throughout his career. The dialogue between characters is truly poetic, at times. However, being his very first play, it can be a little rough around the edges. I found the tragedy of Levee's past and the play's ultimate conflict to really come out of left field. Wilson would go on to write much better—his next play, Fences, would win a Pulitzer—but Ma Rainey's is a classic for breaking new ground in African American theater and launching the career of one of the most important voices in modern drama.
July 8, 2013
Full review to come.
Mr. Wilson sure does know how to write an ending. This one wasn't as good as Joe Turner's Come &Gone, but it was still a good play. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants a quick and easy read or who loves African-American Literature or Blues' novels.
Mr. Wilson sure does know how to write an ending. This one wasn't as good as Joe Turner's Come &Gone, but it was still a good play. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants a quick and easy read or who loves African-American Literature or Blues' novels.
December 16, 2018
A blow to the solar plexus would leave you able to breath easier than does the climax of this play. Cutting insight into the characters plunges deep within their bare surface words. Devastating. www.theliterarychick.com
January 25, 2021
They don't care nothing about me. All they want is my voice. Well, I done learned that, and they gonna treat me like I want to be treated no matter how much it hurt them. They back there now calling me all kinds of names...calling me everything but a child of god. But they can't do nothing else. They ain't got what they wanted yet.
4.5
My first experience with the work of August Wilson was with the captivating 2017 adaptation of Fences starring Viola Davis and Denzel Washington, and my interest was again peaked with the release of another adaptation in 2020, again starring Davis, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. After watching the trailer, I decided I'd pick up the play and read that first this time.
It sounds strange to call a play that takes place in a recording studio and mostly involves characters conversing with one another thrilling but that's exactly what this was. Electricity crackles in the dialogue as these characters rub each other up the wrong way over and over again - toes are stepped on, tongues are sharp, trouble is brewing - and it's impossible to look away.
Wilson examines how racism has influenced and dictated the lives of these various Black musicians. He dissects these characters to their smallest, most vulnerable parts, particularly the character of Levee, the youngest member of the band who is leaning more into the jazz sound and is feeling chafed by the constraints of the blues. The portrait Wilson paints of Ma Rainey is phenomenal - I've been a lover jazz and blues music for years so I was familiar with her name but I'm now intrigued to learn more about her because her presence in this play was fierce yet also tired. She knows she isn't respected as a human being, she is only tolerated by the white men, Irvin and Sturdyvant because her voice is profitable to them, a fact she's worked against all of her career and is now exhausting her.
The ending of this play is like a thunderclap that boxes you on the ears and leaves them ringing - I can't wait to read Fences now and explore more of Wilson's work because this such a striking, powerful piece.
4.5
My first experience with the work of August Wilson was with the captivating 2017 adaptation of Fences starring Viola Davis and Denzel Washington, and my interest was again peaked with the release of another adaptation in 2020, again starring Davis, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. After watching the trailer, I decided I'd pick up the play and read that first this time.
It sounds strange to call a play that takes place in a recording studio and mostly involves characters conversing with one another thrilling but that's exactly what this was. Electricity crackles in the dialogue as these characters rub each other up the wrong way over and over again - toes are stepped on, tongues are sharp, trouble is brewing - and it's impossible to look away.
Wilson examines how racism has influenced and dictated the lives of these various Black musicians. He dissects these characters to their smallest, most vulnerable parts, particularly the character of Levee, the youngest member of the band who is leaning more into the jazz sound and is feeling chafed by the constraints of the blues. The portrait Wilson paints of Ma Rainey is phenomenal - I've been a lover jazz and blues music for years so I was familiar with her name but I'm now intrigued to learn more about her because her presence in this play was fierce yet also tired. She knows she isn't respected as a human being, she is only tolerated by the white men, Irvin and Sturdyvant because her voice is profitable to them, a fact she's worked against all of her career and is now exhausting her.
The ending of this play is like a thunderclap that boxes you on the ears and leaves them ringing - I can't wait to read Fences now and explore more of Wilson's work because this such a striking, powerful piece.
January 31, 2021
Music is “life’s way of talking. You don’t sing to feel better. You sing to understand life.” (Ma Rainey)
August Wilson sings on every page of this incredible play. From the first character description to the final note (literally), Wilson helps us better understand life, with all of its pleasure and pain, hope and disappointment, humor and seriousness, beauty and ugliness. The setting is a simple one — primarily four African-American men passing time together one afternoon in 1927 in a room adjacent to a recording studio. But I found myself never wanting to leave that room as these men wrestled with life and each other.
August Wilson sings on every page of this incredible play. From the first character description to the final note (literally), Wilson helps us better understand life, with all of its pleasure and pain, hope and disappointment, humor and seriousness, beauty and ugliness. The setting is a simple one — primarily four African-American men passing time together one afternoon in 1927 in a room adjacent to a recording studio. But I found myself never wanting to leave that room as these men wrestled with life and each other.
January 27, 2023
There’s more to life than having a good time. If there ain’t, then this is a piss-poor life we’re having . . . if that’s all there is to be got out of it.
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom takes place in 1920s Chicago, and follows Ma Rainey and her band members, while also tackling issues like racism.
Beautifully written, with very engaging dialogues and incredible characterisation, the play succeeds in everything it's trying to achieve.
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom takes place in 1920s Chicago, and follows Ma Rainey and her band members, while also tackling issues like racism.
Beautifully written, with very engaging dialogues and incredible characterisation, the play succeeds in everything it's trying to achieve.
January 28, 2021
Very powerful and incendiary, like a mix between James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" and a Toni Morrison novel. Wilson zeroes in on a group of musicians who back up the legendary Ma Rainey, "Mother of the Blues," who each yearn for significance and meaning, yet are always pushing back against the existing power structures of the white world, represented in the play by the studio owner, Sturdyvant, Ma's manager, Irvin, and a police officer who makes an appearance halfway through the work.
Most tortured of all is the horn player, Levee, who was traumatized by a horrific act of racial violence enacted against his family when he was younger and whose bitterness at the unfairness of the world is like a raw, open wound. Seems at times as if he was channeling the rage of Walter Younger from "A Raisin in the Sun" when Walter complains "Bitter! I'm a volcano! Here I am a giant---surrounded by ants! Ants who can't even understand what it is the giant is talking about." Each of the black characters must find his or her most effective way of surviving and having his or her voice heard in such a world. Some, like Toledo and Cutler, have made a kind of peace with the injustice of their situation, taking solace in being able to earn some money as entertainers and not drawing too much unwanted attention to themselves. Yet in their most honest moments, they still feel that's not enough. Toledo claims at one point that "[w]e done sold ourselves to the white man in order to be like him. Look at the way you dressed...That ain't African. That's the white man. We trying to be just like him. We done sold who we are in order to become someone else. We's imitation white men." Ma Rainey exerts a kind of influence and power within the recording studio but can't even hail a cab to get from one end of town to the other. Meanwhile, Levee's bitterness continues to build to a volcanic degree throughout the play as he demands respect from the white man and from his fellow black musicians and whose complaint at times reaches to heaven itself. There are moments when his tirade against God begins to sound like Macduff in Shakespeare's "Macbeth" who laments the incomprehensible unfairness of the murder of his family, "Did heaven look on, / And would not take their part?"
Most tortured of all is the horn player, Levee, who was traumatized by a horrific act of racial violence enacted against his family when he was younger and whose bitterness at the unfairness of the world is like a raw, open wound. Seems at times as if he was channeling the rage of Walter Younger from "A Raisin in the Sun" when Walter complains "Bitter! I'm a volcano! Here I am a giant---surrounded by ants! Ants who can't even understand what it is the giant is talking about." Each of the black characters must find his or her most effective way of surviving and having his or her voice heard in such a world. Some, like Toledo and Cutler, have made a kind of peace with the injustice of their situation, taking solace in being able to earn some money as entertainers and not drawing too much unwanted attention to themselves. Yet in their most honest moments, they still feel that's not enough. Toledo claims at one point that "[w]e done sold ourselves to the white man in order to be like him. Look at the way you dressed...That ain't African. That's the white man. We trying to be just like him. We done sold who we are in order to become someone else. We's imitation white men." Ma Rainey exerts a kind of influence and power within the recording studio but can't even hail a cab to get from one end of town to the other. Meanwhile, Levee's bitterness continues to build to a volcanic degree throughout the play as he demands respect from the white man and from his fellow black musicians and whose complaint at times reaches to heaven itself. There are moments when his tirade against God begins to sound like Macduff in Shakespeare's "Macbeth" who laments the incomprehensible unfairness of the murder of his family, "Did heaven look on, / And would not take their part?"
February 7, 2021
Reading this play I yearned for a soundtrack. Wilson does a brilliant job of taking a confined situation and using it to develop big ideas.
April 20, 2014
I saw this play in 2003 with my Dramaturgy II class at Sarah Lawrence College. It was at the Classical Theatre of Harlem, where we saw another great play: THE BLACKS by Jean Genet. I remember really liking the production and we had read the play before we saw it...so I just re-read the play today in preparation for my U.S. History class' August Wilson Century Cycle project.
Summary: From Huntington Theatre Company's 2012 production: "Legendary 1920s blues singer Ma Rainey and her musicians gather in a run-down Chicago studio to record new sides of old favorites when generational and racial tensions suddenly explode. The Huntington completes Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner August Wilson's Century Cycle with this searing drama, Wilson's first Broadway hit."
My favorite quote: Now, I'm gonna show you how this goes...where you just a leftover from history. Everybody come from different places in Africa right? Come from different tribes and things. Soonawhile they began to make one big stew. You had the carrots, the peas, and potatoes and whatnot over here. And over there you had the meat, the nuts, the okra, corn...and then you mix it up and let it cook right through to get the flavors flowing together...then you got one thing.
You got a stew.
Now you take and eat the stew. You take and make your history with that stew. All right. Now it's over. Your history's over and you done at the stew. But you look around and you see some carrots over here, some potatoes over there. That stew's still there. You done made your history and it's still there. You can't eat it all. So what you got? You got some leftovers. That's what it is. You got leftovers and you can't do nothing with it. You already making you another history...cooking you another meal, and you don't need them leftovers no more. What to do?
See, we's the leftovers. The colored man is the leftovers. Now, what the colored man gonna do with himself? That's what we waiting to find out. But first we gotta know we the leftovers. Now, who knows that? You find me a nigger that knows that and I'll turn any whichaway you want me to. I'll bend over for you. You ain't gonna find that. And that's what the problem ain't with the white man. The white man knows you just a leftover. 'Cause he the one who done the eating and he know what he done ate. But we don't know that we been took and made history out of. Done went and filled the white man's belly and now he's full and tired and wants you to get out the way and let him be by himself. Now, I know what I'm talking about. And if you wanna find out, you just ask Mr. Irvin what he had for supper yesterday. And if he's an honest white man...which is asking for a whole heap of a lot...he'll tell you he done ate your black ass and if you please I'm full up with you...so go on and get off the plate and let me eat something else."
Summary: From Huntington Theatre Company's 2012 production: "Legendary 1920s blues singer Ma Rainey and her musicians gather in a run-down Chicago studio to record new sides of old favorites when generational and racial tensions suddenly explode. The Huntington completes Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner August Wilson's Century Cycle with this searing drama, Wilson's first Broadway hit."
My favorite quote: Now, I'm gonna show you how this goes...where you just a leftover from history. Everybody come from different places in Africa right? Come from different tribes and things. Soonawhile they began to make one big stew. You had the carrots, the peas, and potatoes and whatnot over here. And over there you had the meat, the nuts, the okra, corn...and then you mix it up and let it cook right through to get the flavors flowing together...then you got one thing.
You got a stew.
Now you take and eat the stew. You take and make your history with that stew. All right. Now it's over. Your history's over and you done at the stew. But you look around and you see some carrots over here, some potatoes over there. That stew's still there. You done made your history and it's still there. You can't eat it all. So what you got? You got some leftovers. That's what it is. You got leftovers and you can't do nothing with it. You already making you another history...cooking you another meal, and you don't need them leftovers no more. What to do?
See, we's the leftovers. The colored man is the leftovers. Now, what the colored man gonna do with himself? That's what we waiting to find out. But first we gotta know we the leftovers. Now, who knows that? You find me a nigger that knows that and I'll turn any whichaway you want me to. I'll bend over for you. You ain't gonna find that. And that's what the problem ain't with the white man. The white man knows you just a leftover. 'Cause he the one who done the eating and he know what he done ate. But we don't know that we been took and made history out of. Done went and filled the white man's belly and now he's full and tired and wants you to get out the way and let him be by himself. Now, I know what I'm talking about. And if you wanna find out, you just ask Mr. Irvin what he had for supper yesterday. And if he's an honest white man...which is asking for a whole heap of a lot...he'll tell you he done ate your black ass and if you please I'm full up with you...so go on and get off the plate and let me eat something else."
July 1, 2018
In even the simplest of scenes legendary playwright August Wilson gives us a lesson in Black American history. In two acts he tackles the culture and social structures that made us who we’ve become in this country. Each book in The Century Cycle collection peeks into a window giving just a birds eye view into the world of the African Americans of the time. In Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom we find that Mr. Wilson has taken us on a trip. We his eager readers don’t find ourselves in the usual setting of his beloved hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania this time. To my own personal disappointment, he’s taken me from my home in the Steel City and dragged me up to Chicago for Ma Rainey’s studio recording session.
It’s 1927 and we find Ma Rainey’s band arriving at Mr. Sturdyvant’s recording studio to record a few songs. They are met by her manager Mr. Irvin. The band members Toledo, Cutler, Slow Drag and Levee are quite an interesting group of men. They all have a different story to tell in August’s expert way of directing narrative, dialogue and action fluidly. Add in the addition of Diva Ma Rainey, when she arrives with nephew Sylvester and girlfriend Dussie May riding her fur coattails.
This is a simple play but within there is meat to digest.
This may be my least favorite August Wilson play. So what! I’m biased. I love them more because they usually take place in my hometown. But it being an August Wilson of course I was still planning to read it. The ending was surprising and yet not surprising. To be honest I have heard of many such stories like this happen during the 20’s & 30’s. Sadly our community suffered and does still continue to be plagued by the PTSD of slavery and racism in a country where we are technically NOT the minority and never have been but have been continually treated as such. August saw this, experienced it and told these stories. This is what I love about his plays. They are funny. They always have the banter and lingo of the community. But deep inside they tell a story that needs to be told. Not necessarily for some positive, happy, washed, “we shall overcome”, feel good philosophy. But to just tell it. The bad and good. Even the grit. More like a “this is us”. It might make you laugh or make you sad or angry but it’s the truth. The truth doesn’t set you free. It opens your eyes so that you can see clearly where you stand based on where you stood. And hopefully by seeing the past and the present, you have some idea on how to tackle the future.
It’s 1927 and we find Ma Rainey’s band arriving at Mr. Sturdyvant’s recording studio to record a few songs. They are met by her manager Mr. Irvin. The band members Toledo, Cutler, Slow Drag and Levee are quite an interesting group of men. They all have a different story to tell in August’s expert way of directing narrative, dialogue and action fluidly. Add in the addition of Diva Ma Rainey, when she arrives with nephew Sylvester and girlfriend Dussie May riding her fur coattails.
This is a simple play but within there is meat to digest.
This may be my least favorite August Wilson play. So what! I’m biased. I love them more because they usually take place in my hometown. But it being an August Wilson of course I was still planning to read it. The ending was surprising and yet not surprising. To be honest I have heard of many such stories like this happen during the 20’s & 30’s. Sadly our community suffered and does still continue to be plagued by the PTSD of slavery and racism in a country where we are technically NOT the minority and never have been but have been continually treated as such. August saw this, experienced it and told these stories. This is what I love about his plays. They are funny. They always have the banter and lingo of the community. But deep inside they tell a story that needs to be told. Not necessarily for some positive, happy, washed, “we shall overcome”, feel good philosophy. But to just tell it. The bad and good. Even the grit. More like a “this is us”. It might make you laugh or make you sad or angry but it’s the truth. The truth doesn’t set you free. It opens your eyes so that you can see clearly where you stand based on where you stood. And hopefully by seeing the past and the present, you have some idea on how to tackle the future.
April 2, 2013
I liked the play as a whole, though I didn't like Ma Rainey as a character. I am not sure whether Wilson wanted me as a reader/viewer to sympathize with Ma, but I found her off-putting. I understand the argument that white people only need to treat her with respect until they've gotten the money her music can earn for them, but then Ma treats the members of her band as though she is a petty potentate. I see her as very similar to Levee.
September 16, 2019
This was my second play in Wilson's century cycle and though I have not seen it performed, it reads like a dream with significant conflict between races and between members of the same race with the more general themes of power,control, and respect addressed. I most liked Wilson's choice of a real life blues singer, depicting certain characteristics of her life, as a vehicle to address themes of the play. It is too early to pick my favorite plays in the cycle, but this gets high marks.
October 19, 2016
August Wilson wrote a wonderful set of plays, all of which give great insight into different eras of African American culture. That being said--read all of the plays together. This is a great play, but perhaps not the "best" of the bunch.
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