Ma Rainey's Black Bottom: A Play

Enjoyed reading this play, rather than seeing it performed. I've seen it performed several times, but each actor usually tries to over act the part. I didn't know this play was so good--until I read it.

Excellent product!

This is the second August Wilson play I've read. While not as moving as Fences, it is quite good. It ended in a surprise, if only because it seemed a little too abrupt and forced.

Sometimes when questions about the oppression of blacks in the United States arise, certain skeptics evoke counter-examples of athletes or entertainers that pull in salaries in the countless millions. One can then presumably ask: how do these people count as oppressed? And how can anyone say that the United States oppresses such people with all of these obvious examples to the contrary? After all, they have incalculable wealth, celebrity and adoration. Many less well-off or struggling non-blacks may feel resentment upon hearing groups of blacks complaining about their neglected condition while simultaneously watching fabulously wealthy black sports figures or singers flaunting their luxuries in the media. To someone not possessing a broad perspective, the situation can seem rather incongruent and unjust. In response, anyone can object that these extravagantly wealthy figures make up a tiny proportion of the total population of blacks. Second, one can ask the question, even for those who do make it to those coveted positions, who makes the real money? If someone receives an annual salary of five million dollars then someone else must already possess far more than that five million dollars to pay out. An owner of a sports team may need to cover several players on a team with multi-million dollar contracts. Likewise, owners of an entertainment company have enough money to enrich themselves and pay off all of the wealthy celebrities that they manage. In short, the owners make the real money. True, the people on their payrolls do receive hefty sums, but immense salaries often come at a price that can entail a loss of control over facets of one's own life. In another sense, the seemingly exploited can gradually accumulate a power of their own and demand their own terms. Though such counter-exploitation only seems to exist within an already exploitative context within which both sides unceasingly feed upon each other. In the long run, owners tend to win out despite their vulnerabilities to dependencies. With ownership comes absolute power.

August Wilson's 1982 play, "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," with its evocative and suggestive title, perfectly depicts such power relations. These can arise especially when one social group economically exploits another social group that it considers unequal. The piece brilliantly optimizes the dramatic potential and gripping tensions of the interactions between its characters, while simultaneously presenting a horrifying snapshot of 1920s American. Ma Rainey, of course, really did exist and hold the title "Mother of the Blues." She also recorded the song performed in Act Two in 1927 with the same spoken introduction (along with other spoken parts that don't appear in the play). Apparently, the play does not attempt a historically accurate portrayal of Rainey, but it does preserve many cultural aspects of the period. At that time, recordings did bestow money and fame, but musicians could also make a sizable income solely from touring. The real Rainey apparently made plenty of money from both sources, but record companies considered her unfashionable by 1928. Racism was then overt, violent, terrifying and pretty much unenforced and often openly encouraged. Legal slavery lingered only some 60 years in the past and race resentment continued to smolder, as it does today. Blacks were no longer enslaved, but their condition left them anything but free. Black musicians such as Rainey possessed some privileges, but always with severe limitations and sometimes humiliating constraints. Reflecting these elements, Wilson's play features two white entrepreneurs, Irvin and Sturdyvant, representing both ownership and "real money" within the highly segregated United States. Opportunists through and through, they clearly tolerate Ma Rainey and her entourage due to economic need alone. Irvin even "prides himself on his knowledge of blacks and his ability to deal with them," which makes him seem more like a distant anthropologist than any kind of trusted business partner. Together they try to record and cash in on Rainey, but her persistent demands constantly thwart their greed. Rainey's demands add up to nothing more than a desire for a modicum of respect, something few blacks received from any whites at the time. After all, peer pressure helps to fuel white racism. Rainey exploits the situation to the fullest extent, demanding a Coke, complaining about the studio's temperature and insisting that her stuttering nephew Sylvester deliver the opening lines to her signature song. All counter-complaints from Sturdyvant or Irvin get squashed with Rainey's threats to "walk out of this studio and go back to my tour." She even claims that she doesn't need them. These threats work to perfection every time and Irvin and Sturdyvant persistently cower and back down at her rants. Such inverted power relations between black women and white men in 1920s America probably didn't occur with great frequency. Despite this, a member of her band points out, "you let her go to one of them white-folks hotels and see how big she is." Not only that, upon her entry Rainey faces imprisonment for assault and battery charges by a policeman, who Irvin needs to bribe to "clear things up," which also suggests that her supposed power only holds within the strict confines of the recording studio.

Ma Rainey herself, who doesn't even appear until the play's midpoint, provides the thematic epicenter for the core drama involving the members of her band. Cutler, Toledo and Slow Drag share the same middle-age demographics. Perhaps weary from their upbringing in some of the worst times for "free" blacks in United States history, they appear to "know their place," complain only to each other and act deferentially towards whites. They even know their place within the band and endlessly repeat that "Ma" calls all of the shots. A much younger and rebellious Levee, injected for absolute tension, claims that he knows how to handle whites and has ambitions, reckless ones given his situation, for magnifying his own power through music a la Ma Rainey. His delusion doesn't take long to detect, though a chilling childhood story about the revenge his father enacted against white men attempting to rape his mother adds a sympathetic dimension to his otherwise obnoxious braggadocio personality. This man has clearly suffered and he will likely continue to suffer from the trauma and rage stirring inside him. He calls Rainey's music outdated and "jug-band" and insists that his dance-oriented arrangements will spice up the old-fashioned tunes. Sturdyvant seems to agree and he asks about Levee's new dance songs throughout the play. This only energizes Levee towards more hopeless behavior, including making more than a subtle play for the self-consciously sensual Dussie Mae, one of "Ma's gals" (perhaps the play's only allusion to the real Ma Rainey's supposed lesbianism). Levee even provokes Cutler to physically attack him after calling "his God" a "white man's God." One of the play's most poignant moments follows as Levee stabs skyward and invokes the memory of his screaming mother while wailing "Come on, turn your back on me! I'll cut your heart out!" His world shatters after Rainey fires him and his realization that Sturdyvant plans to manipulate him out of his songs for a pittance. A second person stepping on his new expensive shoes proves too much for him and Levee once again brandishes the knife. Unfortunately, this time the blade doesn't plunge into a metaphysical being. Cutler asks Slow Drag to "get Mr. Irvin down here," a final appeal to white authority.

The other male band members also engage in intriguing conversation throughout the play. Toledo, the only literate member, speaks very philosophically and evokes African customs when analyzing his group's interactions, such as how Slow Drag negotiates with Cutler for a reefer. Levee and Slow Drag have little patience for Toledo's cerebral ruminations, but Cutler shows a silent curiosity. Toledo doesn't always succeed in making his intellectual observations articulate to others, but he nonetheless provides some interesting thoughts, such as blacks as the "leftovers" of civilization and how everything changes, even the air, and how always wanting to have a good time has caused more harm than good for blacks. He provides a bookish moral perspective, also citing responsibilities to future generations and how blacks shouldn't let whites define them. His wife of long ago also left him after seeing the religious gulf between them. Stoically, he claims, "that's part of making life." He also tries in vain to convince Levee how good he has it as a musician rather than as a laborer, but Slow Drag protests that labor represents "honest work." Cutler plays the pragmatist and doesn't really make waves except when it comes to getting paid with cash rather than with a check or with what he considers blasphemous pronouncements. He obsequiously carries out Ma Rainey's orders and does just what he needs to do, no more. Slow Drag seems mostly along for the ride and appears to represent the ethos of the working class. Together, these four share fascinating stories about life as a black man in their time, complete with differing perspectives and opinions on the implications of each story. They embody a continuum of the different life experiences of 1920s America, with all its contradictions, self-delusions, happy moments, depressions, horrors and everything else possible within the context of a two-act play. All of this interwoven with recording studio politics and Ma Rainey's ominous presence makes for an incredible and unforgettable dramatic experience. Performed live, it has great music, too.

"Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" serves as the third installment of Wilson's "Pittsburgh Cycle," a series of ten plays depicting black experience in America from the 1900s to the 1990s. Wilson hoped that whites would see a reflection of themselves in his black characters and thus empathize and identify with them. Those possessing adequate empathetic imagination will likely experience this transformation, or at least a reinforcement of it, while watching or reading Wilson's excellent plays. The tumultuous and often violent times of the early twenty-first century beg desperately for empathy and Wilson's plays could provide a valuable antidote for hatred, racism and violence. Similar to the excellent 2016 film adaptation of Wilson's "Fences," "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" would likely translate well to the cinema, which could spread its message further than the sadly often under-attended and increasingly more costly live theater scene. Time will tell, but for now, "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" remains an amazing piece of substantial theater that shows effectively the endless possibilities of its increasingly under-appreciated medium. It may also help elucidate the ineffable and exploitative relationships that can form between celebrities and business owners as well as suggest that such relationships may not be as they appear and contain additional unappealing elements that often get romanticized away or outright ignored. For reference and reminder, always remember Sturdyvant, Irvin and Ma Rainey. The world often works in mysterious, and frequently in aggravating, ways.

I enjoyed this book as well!

Amazing play. You knew something was gonna happen to poor Levee. They just picked on him for hoping to get something better and they got what they asked for.

"Ah-One. Ah-Two. You know what to do."

I really loved this book! The characters are so real, and their dialogues are so powerful! Ma is just a figure all unto herself, and poor, poor Levee, so angry and confused. And that ending, just - POW! I'd sure like to see this performed onstage someday!

"All right boys, you done seen the rest...now, I'm gonna show you the best. Ma Rainey's gonna show you her black bottom."

August Wilson is a great American writer!!!

In my English class of my sophomore year in high school, I had a teacher who was extremely interested in black history. Most of the book we read was based in the late 1920's and so on. I thought I wouldn't be interested in this book but when I read the book and watched the movie for school, and I loved it. The setting really grabbed my attention. Normally the books I have to read for school take a while to get me interested, but there was something about this book. This was my first time reading a book that based itself on black history, which was probably the reason I was so interested. I always wanted to know what the blues were and where they came from. By reading the book I learned more about racism and more about Black history. the book showed me how back the black had a lot of self-hatred and hatred for white men. It showed me that they went through a lot. Ma Rainey went through a lot to get where she was too. The way blacks were treated in the book is showed perfectly and along with the imagery, how August gave us tools to paint our picture of the book. Basically what I'm trying to say is that I would read this book 100 times more if I had to.​

Great book if you love Wilson's work.