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Modern Drama, Volume 43, Number 1, Spring 2000, pp. 100-108 (Article)

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From Jug Band to Dixieland: The Musical Development behind August Wilson's

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

SUSAN C.W. ABBOTSON

Ma Rainey takes place in 1927 and introduces us to a fictionalized version of the real blues singer Ma Rainey, spending an afternoon in the recording studio with her backup band. The latter dominates the action, and we watch as Cut-ler, Slow Drag, Toledo, and Levee practise a few tunes, chat about their lives, and squabble over their differences while being overseen by the people who have the real control: the white producer, Sturdyvant, and the band's agent, Irvin. Ma, with her entourage, appears late in the play to make her recording, and although she is a powerful symbol, it is Levee who dominates the action of the play and provides the shocking denouement in which he kills Toledo.

One question the play raises is, Whom should we support - Ma or Levee? The play's title attests to the ambivalence of Wilson's answer. Although it names Ma, it actually refers to the song rather than to the person, and it is a song that Levee is trying to claim for his own. The similarities between the characters ensure that we cannot easily dismiss the claims of either one. Ger-ald Weales suggests that Levee's "sense of self' is "not unlike Ma's" and that she fires him because she sees him as a personal threat. I Both characters "appreciat[e] ... the material" things that money can buy, particularly clothes and shoes. Both arrive late, "accentuat[ing] their similarity" to each other and their difference from the rest. Their late arrival, James C. McKelly points out, indicates that they "have lives beyond the world of the studio," and they both "share the requisites of genius: a fierce need for uncompromising, undiluted self-expression. and for unequivocal artistic control over perfonnance. Levee even identifies Ma as his model for producing art in a white-dominated indus-try."2 Levee's attitude toward Ma mixes contempt and admiration. While he seems dismissive of her "jug-band music,"3 he clearly admires her ability to push around whites. Ma's attitude toward Levee is only contemptuous.

Ma is a complicated figure. Her music has definite benefits; it acts as a balm to soothe - illustrated by the way she quite literally sings to make her

Modern Drama, 43:1 (Spring 2000) 100

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom tOt

feet feel better (59). However, she refuses to help Levee by singing his version of "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," though she agrees to help her nephew, Sylvester, by having him speak the introduction. Ma's version helps Sylvester to find his voice momentarily, but it effectively silences Levee. Ma's decision is rooted in her narrow concept of community - as she says, she sings only for herself and will, therefore, sing only her songs and use only her arrangements (78-79,62). Sylvester is "family," and Dussie Mae is her lover, so she will embrace them within her personal realm of care, but characters beyond an immediate relationship are left to fend for themselves.

Ma's blues have value beyond entertainment - they can give her and others strength and an understanding of their roots and connections. Ma tells us, "You sing 'cause that's a way of understanding life. [ ... ] This be an empty world without the blues" (82-83, intervening dialogue omitted), and she is right. However, Levee's music does not deny this, but tries to build on it. Most jazz forms, including Levee's Dixieland swing, have developed from the blues, and so contain the same intrinsic cultural encoding that we find within the blues, even though they sound different. We should not dismiss his work as empty of content just because it is dance music. Levee's tunes may be more polished than Ma's music, but they are no less authentic in their own way. Paul Carter Harrison considers Levee's name as "signifying a possible kinship with the new music soundings of jazz being created along the Mississippi Levees of New Orleans during the period" and suggests that Levee is "us[ing I the music ... to impose order on [a chaotic worldJ";4 thus, Levee's music also clearly has value beyond entertainment.

"[B]y his introduction of ... Levee ... into [Ma's traditional band]," McKelly suggests, " Wilson is exploring whether" or not Ma "can accommodate the shifting ... values, assumptions, and needs of the new generation of African-American artist which Levee represents.'" Though Ma may be the acknowl-edged "Mother of the Blues," at some time her child, represented by Levee, will need to grow and develop. However, Ma resisls any development of her music, and she criticizes Levee when he attempts La improvise. While Ma's older form of music has value, it fails, in the modem world, to give its musi-cians sufficient control of their own lives. Levee, on the other hand, represents a new form of music, grown from the same roots, but less constricted and so able to offer a potentially new deal whereby African-Americans can gain a lit-tle more self-control.

Wilson has never made any distinction between blues and jazz. and although he most often talks of his allegiance to the blues, he seems to use the term generically to refer to any African-American music. As he tells Bill Moyers, whenever he writes a play he "Iisten[s] to the music ... that blacks are making" to "find out what their ideas and attitudes are," as "[i]nside the music are clues to what is happening with the people.,,6 What he sees as most impor-tant is that the "black" song continues to be sung by the black community. In

102 SUSAN C.W. ABBOTSON

Ihis light, both blues and jazz forms have importance, as both are rooted in authentic African-American experience; however, music has power only as long as it maintains its audience, and so, in the context of this play, Levee's Dixieland swing jazz becomes preferable to Ma's blues.

Wilson intentionally sets this play near the end of Ma's career, at a time when she began a swift decline in popularity because of her refusal to keep up with the times. As Bessie Smith' s fame increased, so the real-life Ma Rainey's fame dwindled until she became a virtual unknown, though she did not fully retire until 1935. Levee understands the attraction of Bessie Smith's style, as indeed does Wilson, who has often commented on his admiration of Bessie Smith's music. Levee knows how to write the kind of music that will soon be dominating the musical scene and pushing Ma Rainey into the background. A young Louis Armstrong played trumpet, as does Levee, on some of Ma Rainey's 19208 sessions; Armstrong certainly made a great success out ofthe same jazz music that Levee propounds. This should tell us that Levee's new style has a great potential and should not be so readily dismissed by his fellow musicians, nor by the audience. Wilson's Ma Rainey likes IO .ignore her own weaknesses, as well as Bessie Smith's strengths, in order to boost her own ego, but in reality she is an artist on the decline. Wilson offers proof of Bessie Smith's growing popularity, and suggests that people may be growing tired of Ma, by having the managers try to get her to record a Bessie Smith song, "Moonshine Blues." They also ask her to sing Levee's newer arrangement of her old theme tune; Ma refuses to change and will not comply with either sug-gestion. While this may be credited as the nobility of authenticity, it can also be seen as self-centered bloody-mindedness.

Ma's resistance to playing Levee's arrangement of her theme song is intended partly to show her control over him. It is also an attempt to assert control over Slurdyvant and Irvin, in order to maintain her dignity; however, it is really only Levee who is finally affected. Although Ma's version has a his-torical importance, with its tent-call opening and early blues feel, this impor-tance is depreciated by its overtly smutty overtones and by the ridiculous effect of Sylvester's stutter; Levee's version has more current relevance to contemporary African-Americans and is assigned more dignity, since Wilson presents it in the play with no deflating humor. Also, Levee's version does not allow Ma to take center stage. As Levee says, "She got to find her own way in" (38). In saying this, he emphasizes the whole group in its arrangement, rather than concentrating, as the older version did, on a solo singer. Thus, a collaborative community is privileged over an isolated individual. Wilson seems to suggest that the song should be more important than the singer, a les-son Ma might do well to learn.

Levee may be dismissive of Ma's music on the surface, calling it "old jug-band music" (25), but this is largely part of his "cool pose'" and is not deeply felt, as evidenced by his decision to rewrite rather than working on an entirely

Ma Rainey's Black Botlom 103

new song. In this way, Levee's arrangement of the old song, "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," becomes a tribute to the past rather than a rejection of all that it stands for. Levee does not really dismiss Ma's music, but tries to make it more relevant to its audience. He does not deny the past, but insists on a pro-gression toward the future. His music is a true reflection of his contemporary (and future) society, especially in the North. Amiri Baraka describes the newer jazz styles that developed from the blues in the late twenties as a more urgent music that "took its life from the rawness and poverty of the grim adventure of ' big city livin'.' It was a slicker, more sophisticated music, but the people, too, could fit these descriptions. The tenements, organized slums, gin mills, and back-breaking labors in mills, factories, or on the docks had to get into the music somehow.',8 Down South, in Memphis, Birmingham, and Atlanta, Ma's records still have a market (19), but the Harlem African-Ameri-cans need something that better refl ects their busier and more complex lives. Just because Ma sees Levee's version of her song as a personal attack, this does not mean that we should follow suit, and it is wrong to view Levee's music, as so many critics have done, as "a hodgepodge of new rhythms and changes made to suit a businessman who has no artistic feel for the music,'''} It is this kind of careless devaluation of his music that goads Levee into his final rage.

Ma enjoys displaying her power: deciding what tunes they will play; insist-ing that they use Sylvester (despite his evident unsuitability for the task); holding everything up by demanding a Coke; deliberately provoking Sturdy-vant because she knows that until he has recorded her she has an advantage over him. But to what end does she do all of this? It may help her to feel better about herself, but it does not help anyone else (apart from, maybe, Sylvester). Ma is as guilty of disempowering her musicians as the white studio bosses. She consistently tries to control and restrict the band, even when it may be against their own interests. In her attempt to remain dominant, she intimidates Cutler to keep him subservient and casually insists that Levee be fired as, among other things. a malicious revenge. She knows that her power is only temporary and that her populari ty is waning, but she stubbornly refuses to adapt to changing tastes.

Ma' s time is passing, and, despite her demands, even she knows that she is being used. As she says, "As soon as they get my voice down on them record-ing machines, then it's just like if I'd be some whore and they roll over and put their pants on. Ain't got no use for me then" (79). Despite Ma's power plays, she actually has very little control, which should be evident from her first entrance. As an African-American woman, she is unable to sati sfy the white police without the aid of Irvin, a while man. We are given a crash course in white prejudice: the taxi driver refuses to take an African-American farc; the police assume Ma is guilty because of her color, even suspecting her of stealing her own car, and the other whites involved take full advantage of this.

SUSAN C. W. ABBOTSON

The Policeman patronizingly allows Irvin to take responsibility for Ma and her entourage, implying that African-Americans cannot possibly take respon-sibility for themselves and must always be under the guidance of whites. Unable to get any respect from the Policeman, Ma tries to demand a more respectful "Madame" from Irvin, her manager. He simply ignores her request and continues to call her "Ma" (49), for he is prepared to accept her ego only up to a point, and he has no real respect for her. She is suffered for her ability to make him and Sturdyvant money.

Slurdyvanl is an ambitious white businessman; he is nol involved in blues in the same way the African-American musicians are; music does not define his life - but he knows what will sell. He sees that Ma's music is waning in popularity, and he recognizes the commercial potential in the music Levee is arranging; but Wilson wants us to see that Levee's music goes beyond mere economics. The mood of the time has altered since Ma's day; the people need a different kind of music to satisfy their changing lives. Soon Sturdyvant will have no further use for Ma, and it seems as though he is trying io manipulate Levee into a position where he may be able to use him as his next golden goose. Levee is as much aware as Ma of the way whites try to use African-American talents, but he hopes that his plan will allow him to do some of the using. Whether Levee will succeed or end up as another musical pawn for Sturdyvant remains ambiguous, but Wilson clearly admires his efforts to take control of his own life.

Toledo distorts Levee's desire to have his arrangement played by accusing him of capitulating to the whites, but this is unfair. Levee wants to play this arrangement for himself; the fact that Irvin and Sturdyvant approve is just luck. Levee expediently attempts to advance himself through the people in control. After all, who else can record his music? In 1927 African-Americans, unfortunately, had not yet developed an economically effective method of controlling the commercial distribution of.their own music. It was not uncom-mon for them to produce work that would be palatable to the dominant white culture, at least until they had established a good reputation. Some would say that this is still the case today. Therefore, we should not criticize Levee for accommodating his musical output to white tastes. Instead, we should recog-nize the astuteness and plausibility of his ambition. But this is also music Levee actually feels, as witnessed by his animation when the band finally practices his version; it is not just something he has written for a white audi-ence.

However, most critics tend to privilege Ma over Levee. Kim Pereira, for example, offers a confusing interpretation of Levee: he recognizes the charac-ter's heroic qualities, yet insists on depicting him as a negative figure next to what he sees as the positive values of Ma Rainey. He describes Levee as hav-ing "a mythical dimension," "rebellious ... creativity," and a strong "individ-ual will," but insists that he is a shallow, immature, utterly alienated

Ma Rainey's Black Bot/om 105

individual whose music has no value whatsoever. In contrast, Ma, and the rest of the band, are praised without censure of any kind. Pereira concludes that Levee eventually

turns ... against his own people and, in a very real sense, against himself ,_, ... Having lived so long in despair, he is incapable of shaping any definable goal for himself, and he finds meaning only in death.IO

Pereira ignores the fact that it is Levee's spirit that dominates the play, not Ma's, just as it will be his Dixieland swing jazz that will dominate the music scene in the ensuing years. It is unfair to can Levee's music worthless, espe-cially as it becomes clear that it is his kind of music that white and African-American audiences from the North prefer to Ma's old-fashioned tunes.

Ma's needling of Sturdyvant makes him so angry that he lashes out at Levee and snatches back his promise to let him record his songs. Though Stur-dyvant says, "I've thought about it and I just don't think the people will buy them. They're not the type of songs we're looking for" (107), he is clearly lying, as he still tries to buy them, though for only five dollars apiece. He pushes the money on Levee, who does not want to take it, for he does not want to sell his music but to play it himself. It is important that, unlike Ma, Levee never actually takes Sturdyvan!'s money but "throws it on the floor" in defi-ance ('09). Sturdyvant is a classic, devil-like figure of .empta.ion who lures people into signing away their lives, as in the tale the musicians tell of Eliza Cotter (43-45). The devil figure is a character who features in many of Wil-son's plays, like the loan agent from whom Troy buys his furniture in Fences," or like the white man who tries to buy the Charles's piano in The Piano Lesson; 12 sometimes the characters give in to temptation, and some-times they hold out. Ma signs with the devil when she puts her name on the release fonns for her music and passes them over to Sturdyvant for a meTe two hundred dollars. The title of the play ironically implies Ma's rights and own-ership of herself and her music, but we see her sign these away - an act Levee, significantly, never performs.

From the beginning, we see that Levee has great energy and an ability to take control. He is the only character who refuses to set any limitations on himself, which is surely a good thing. His very name, Levee Green, contains the idea of growth and fertility in its color and riverbank associations. Levee does have a strong sense of who he is - "Levee got to be Levee" (68) - and he is proud of his sense of self and of what Wilson would call his "warrior spirit" - but will that be enough for him to get what he needs? (To Wilson, "warrior spirits" are those who refuse to accept any limitations placed on them by a rac-ist society and who confidently insist upon defining themselves as people of worth.' 3) Levee's problem is, perhaps, one of consistency. He is young, and, although he is clearly talented, he needs more experience to understand and

106 SUSAN C. W. ABBOTSON

develop those talents fully, rather than wasting them in fruilless pursuits. His pride is positi ve, but a litlle too dominant, as it occasionally makes him put himself ahead of his community. He needs to strive toward a better balance between his own needs and those of his community, and he does have much to offer his community. However, he allows his pride to rest too much on exter-nals, like his shoes. This is not so much bad as dangerous, as they can be stepped on far too easily. He needs to build his pride on his more intangible assets. But Levee believes only in what he can physically see. It is fortunate that he has, at least, good vision. He recognizes that the room the band has been given to practice in is worse than the one they had last time, and righlly feels insulted by this; the others just ignore, and thus accept, such slights.

Levee's graphic tale of violence and rape produces a strong climax to Act One, and with it Wilson tries to ensure our sympathy and support for Levee. Levee is no buffoon, and certainly more than a fl ashily dressed "fly-boy" with no experience of hardship; he is a fighter from a family of fighters, as his fam-ily's history informs us. Levee stood up to the whites when they were gang-raping his mother and got knifed for his efforts. He now resis ts more cau-

' tiously because he is aware of the power of whites and realizes that they must be beaten wi th subtlety rather than with an overt display of force. Levee intends to act just as his father once did, smiling at one of the rapists to put them off guard before managing to kill fou r of them (69-70).

There were devastating floods along the MisSissippi Delta in 1927 when the levee holding back the river broke; this suggests that Wilson's choice of year may be significant. Many African-Americans suffered from these floods because whites barred them from the local hill country; in the same way, we know that only African-Americans will suffer from Levee's outburst, and that it will have little effect on the white community. McKelly points out that, " Ials his name suggests, Levee's ontological condition is that of containment: throughout the play, we witness his attempts to keep at bay the flood of pres-sures with which he is beset from every quarter." It is not surprising that by the end of the play "the levee finally breaks."'4 When Sturdyvant crushes Levee 's dreams and his plan in one swift blow, he is then quick to leave before Levee can retaliate. Levee's resulting anger has no direct outlet, and so he turns on Toledo and uses him as a kind of scapegoat. This is a reaction for which his fellow musicians have prepared him well, since they have been using Levee himself as a scapegoat throughout the play. Levee appears to lash out at Toledo simply for stepping on his shoes.

Yet Toledo is more than a scapegoat, and it is as much the way in which Toledo constantly treats Levee - reminiscent of the dismissive way in which whites tend to treat African Americans - that provokes Levee's violent response. Levee is not so much annoyed at having his shoes stepped on as upset by Toledo's subsequent refusal to acknowledge Levee and give him any attention. While Levee shouts, Toledo pl acidly turns his back and starts to

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom 107

pack his equipment away. It is this that finally goads Levee into stabbing him. John DiGaetani asks Wilson if Levee's violence is the "product of anger," and Wilson replies emphatically in the negative. He continues, "Anger implies that one is out of control. When Levee stabs Toledo at the end of Ma Rainey, it is a violent act; it is murder. Throughout the play, Toledo is presented as a stand-in for the white man."" In this light, the killing of Toledo becomes the murder of the restricting white man. Killing with control rather than with anger makes Levee's act a step toward freedom. However, although Wilson strongly admires Levee's "warrior spirit," he also admits that in killing Toledo, Levee "does a tremendous disservice to blacks ... because he's killing the only one who can read, he's killing the intellectual in the group. That's a loss we have to make up. We have to raise up another one to take Toledo's place.' But I still salute Levee's warrior spirit.... I salute his willingness to bat-tle. even to death.,,'6

Wilson does not portray Levee as a callous killer, for he wishes to retain our sympathy for his character. Levee is immediately shaken by what he has done and tries to help Toledo while the others stand by. Unnerved by Toledo's life-less eyes, Levee turns to Cutler for support. Cutler's response, however, is to send Slow Drag to fetch Irvin; he' offers no aid, even now, to his fellow Afri-can-American, and he calls for the white man to take control. Significantly, this scene ends with the sound of Levee's trumpet: "a muted trumpet strug-gling for the highest of possibilities and blowing pain and warning" (I I I). The trumpet emphasizes Wilson's belief that Levee's actions are justifiable, even though, and maybe even because, they lead to Toledo's death. We are shown that Levee and his music truly reflect the African-American experi-ence. Levee spoke his heart in his music, but he was denied a voice both by whites and his own fellow African-Americans, as neither group allowed him to record his own music. Wilson wants us to recognize that the catastrophe here is only marginally Levee's fault, as he has been unfairly restricted at every tum. Levee's music reflects the pain and potential of his existence, and his trumpet blast acts as a warning to whites of the violence that their disre-gard is engendering. Ma, meanwhile, has exited from the playa full five pages earlier, having given up her rebellion and signed over her music to white men. Though Wilson may have sympathy for a figure like Ma, it is clear that it is in figures like Levee that he sees a hope for the future.

NOTES

1 Gerald Weales, "American Theater Watch, 1984-1985," Georgia Review, 39:3 (1985),622-23.

2 James C. McKeJly, "Hymns of Sedition: Portraits of the Artist in Contemporary African-American Drama," Arizona Quarterly, 48:1 (1992), 103.

3 August Wilson, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom: A Play in Two Parts (New York: Pen-

108 SUSAN C.W. ABBOTSON

guin, New American Library, Plume, 1985), 25. Subsequent references appear par-enthetically in the text.

4 Peter Carter Harrison, "August Wilson' s Blues Poetics," in August Wilson: Three Plays (Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1991 ),307-8.

5 McKeJly, 103. See note 2. 6 August Wilson. "August Wilson' s America: A Conversation with Bill Moyers,"

American Theatre, 6 (198!r-1990) , 14. 7 In Cool Pose.- The Dilemmas of Black Manhood in America (New York: Mac-

millan, Lexington, 1992), Richard Majors and Janet Mancini Billson insist that to African-Americans "style" has taken on a deep personal significance, which they describe as part of their "cool pose" (71-72). In this light. we should not so readily dismiss Levee's concern with fashion as trivial; it is part of his "stylistic signature," whicp asserts "how he wishes to be perceived" by others, and is thus an act o(self-definition. See Majors and Billson, 71. It is the way in which Levee makes himself visible to a society which has traditionally kept African-Americans invisible.

8 Imamu Amiri Baraka [LeRoi Jones], Blues People: Negro Music in White America (Westport, Cf: Greenwood, 1980), 105.

9 Kim Pereira, August Wilson and the A/rican-American Odyssey (Urbana: U of Illi-nois P, 1995), 18. This is a fairly typical reaction of the majority of critics who have assessed Levee's worth up to this time.

TO Ibid., 15.22-24. I I August Wilson, Fences : A Play (New York: New American Library/Plume. 1986). 12 August Wilson, The Piano Lesson (New York: New American Library/Plume,

1990). 13 Wilson has referred to the concept of a "warrior spirit" in a number of interviews,

including Wilson, "August Wilson's America," 55 (see note 6). 14 McKeJly, 105-6. 15 August Wilson, interview by John DiGaetani, in A Search/or a Postmodern The-

ater: Interviews with Contemporary Playwrights (New York: Greenwood, 1991), 283.

16 Wilson, "August Wilson's America," 55.