Ma Rainey's Black Bottom Themes

The Blues are a much discussed topic in Wilson’s drama, taking center stage in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, yet also playing an equally important role in The Piano Lesson and Seven Guitars. From the first time Wilson heard a recording of Bessie Smith, singing “Nobody in Town Can Bake a Jelly Role Like Mine,” the Blues “had a profound influence on the Wilson; it was a cultural medium that helped define him and his race.” He recalls upon listening to the record, “For the first time some one was speaking directly to me about myself and the cultural environment of my life. I was stunned. By its beauty. By its honesty. And most important by the fact that it was mine” (qtd. in Herrington 1). Indeed, the Blues became an emblem of the African-American

As Ma Rainey says in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, 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…You get up knowing whatever your troubles is you can get a grip on them ‘cause the blues done give you an understanding of life” (66). In a culture which asks African-Americans to leave their Africanness at the door, Ma Rainey will not give up her voice, because the Blues is what prevents her culture from disappppearing. She laments, “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 ain’t got what they wanted yet” (63). The Blues cannot be taken away or assimilated into the dominant culture: as Wilson says, there is something in the Blues “that breathes and touches, that connects. That is in itself a way of being, separate and distinct from any other” (Taylor 23). As Susan Abbotson has said, “Ma’s blues have value beyond entertainment – they can give her and others strength and an understanding of their roots and connections” (101). Not only do the Blues sustain the culture, but also they help African-Americans to cope with the situation they are in. As Ma says, “White folks don’t understand the blues…They don’t understand that’s life’s way

The language in August Wilson’s plays has been demonstrated by critics and linguists alike to be a variant of a Blues rhythm and tone. As Herrington says, “Like the musical forms and images which inspire them, Wilson’s plays are metaphorical, lyrical, and loosely organized. Listening to Wilson’s dialogue, one hears the repartee of jazz in the carefully orchestrated quick exchanges of dialogue, the soulfulness of the blues in the long speeches of the characters” (25). As his long time musical director Dwight Andrews has said: “He is a musician in the sense that I think he has internalized how music works. He listens attunely not just to the words, but to the music; he’s much more tied to the blues because it does have a text. But in the sense that he has been able to internalize that language, I think he is very much like a musician. There’s a level of humor; there’s part of the reality; it’s not masking anything but at the same time there’s a level of anger and truth that’s also kind of equally present” (Morales