Ma Rainey’s Black
Bottom—the magnificent, must-see film directed by George C. Wolfe, starring Chadwick Boseman and Academy Award–winner Viola Davis—would come out in 2020. Because if ever there was a Year of Our Lord that knows something about the blues, 2020 would be it.
The story centers around a recording session in Chicago in the summer of 1927. Mother of the Blues Gertrude “Ma” Rainey—played masterfully by a damn-near-unrecognizable Davis—has come North from her tour down South to record an album; her accompanying band (Glynn Turman, Colman Domingo, Michael Potts and then-17-year-old Dusan Brown) awaits her late arrival, as do her manager and the studio owner. Ma lives by her own rules, and she has a deep understanding of the power she possesses, both as a Black artist and a Black woman.