The True Story Behind Viola Davis Character in Ma Rainey s Black Bottom yahoo.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from yahoo.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The True Story Behind Viola Davis Character in Ma Rainey s Black Bottom Kayla Keegan
On December 18, Netflix released the new film
Ma Rainey s Black Bottom, a drama adapted from a play of the same name, written by late Pulitzer-winning playwright
August Wilson. Produced by
Viola Davis, the movie centers around real-life blues pioneer
Gertrude Ma Rainey, on the day that she and her band record a song called Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.
Watching Viola depict Ma, it s clear the Oscar-winning actress did a lot of preparation to portray the powerful, bawdy, and charismatic singer. Although Viola worried she wouldn t be able to sing well enough to play the iconic Mother of Blues, after reading the script she knew she had to get involved.
Listen /
It’s Chadwick Boseman’s last onscreen performance and Viola Davis is already generating Oscar buzz. And that’s before you even know anything about the plot. The film adaptation of “‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” August Wilson’s 1982 play has come to Netflix and select theaters. It follows a Chicago recording session for Ma Rainey and her band in 1927.
Pop Culture Happy Hour’s Aisha Harris reviewed the movie for NPR:
As Ma, Davis is up to the task of portraying this tempestuous, flamboyant figure; the actress inhabits the singer’s body fully, carrying the weight of a hard life lived in her proud gait, the creases of her makeup-smeared face and the weariness in her eyes. (Most of the musical scenes are sung by veteran soul singer Maxayn Lewis; Davis lends her own vocals to one song, “Those Dogs of Mine.”) She’s facing pressure from her white manager, Irvin (Jeremy Shamos), and white recording studio owner Sturdyvant (Jonny Coyne) to sign th
Ma Rainey s Black Bottom Is a Vibrant, Devastating Work of Art David Lee/NETFLIX
The hardships, repressed frustration, and vulnerabilities that come with suffocating under systemic oppression are ever-present in the work of the late, great playwright August Wilson. He intimately understood the experience of Black Americans; the tone and cadence, the mannerisms and use of AAVE (African-American vernacular) in his plays specify that his theatrical experiences are meant
for Black audiences. In
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, the third of Wilson’s works to be adapted for the screen, rhythm and blues are the vehicle through which our characters deal with daily exposure to white supremacy.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020)
George C. Wolfe,
IN 1929, two years after the setting of
Ma Rainey
’s Black Bottom and about seven months after Rainey, the “Mother of the Blues,” made her last recordings, another stylish Southern blues singer the “Queen” of the genre cut a song with her new husband. On “When the Levee Breaks,” Memphis Minnie looses her guitar on Kansas Joe McCoy, who starts to sing:
If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s going to break
If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s going to break
And the water gonna come in, have no place to stay