Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

 Ma Rainey by Sterling 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.

 Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (The actual song.)

As to the film itself: it was a very vibrant film given the tension in it. Every single actor nailed it and the costume designer is to be commended. I expected the adaptation to be well given that this movie was produced by August Wilson acolyte Denzel Washington.  Viola Davis, Glynn Turman, and of course the late-Chadwick Boseman (in his final film performance) give spell-binding performances here. Though I can only imagined what this would've looked like on the big screen, I am still glad to have seen it.