Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Due out December 18th on Netflix after a brief theatrical run (most likely to qualify for awards), Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is Chadwick Boseman’s final film, but it is also of course much more. Gertrude “Ma” Rainey (1886-1939) is known as the “Mother of the Blues”; this biopic how Ma Rainey (Viola Davis—in extraordinarily convincing makeup) spars with white management in the pursuit of control over her artistic output as one of the first recorded blues artists.

Set around an afternoon recording session in 1927 in Chicago, the film is director George C. Wolfe’s adaptation of one instalment from the ten-play “Pittsburgh Cycle” by playwright August Wilson, designed as a dramatic survey of the African-American experience in the 20th-century.

Boseman plays a trumpeter, Levee, who appears to instigate some turmoil—stemming in part from his own career ambitions—as the musicians wait for Ma Rainey to arrive and cooperate. Multiple levels of conflict arise: Levee and Ma share in their struggle from exploitation in the recording industry by white management, but they also clearly have creative differences—not to mention the added complication of Levee’s romantic interest in Dussie Mae, Ma’s friend.

Before any title cards or anything else can get in the way, the first shot is of a recording needle carefully brought down—an assiduous reminder that not only was this well before digital recording, but it was also even well before the so-called “magnetic era” of tape. The whole trailer revolves around the recording session for “Deep Moanin’ Blues” from June 1928 with “Her Tub Jug Washboard Band”, albeit as re-recorded pieces in order to heighten the fidelity. We are reminded intermittently that it’s a live, recorded session; notice at 0:48 how the level for the music track is raised just for that second, exactly in the shot where we see the trombone and trumpet hit a high note. It’s subtle, and it becomes more prominent at 0:52 when we see Ma Rainey at the microphone.

At 0:58 we get a sudden, intense amount of reverb—as if the moment faded out from memory, a reminder that this moment at first occurred nearly a century ago (and on that note, it is interesting that the era of recorded music is now stretching out comfortably past the century mark). This next segment of the trailer focuses on Levee’s arguments while the boisterous band plays hit notes with this added reverb, with an elevated sense of theatricality that is matched by snippets of a stage show.

By 1:25 we are into the next iteration of the blues vamp, and the drums enter the front of the mix; accordingly, at this point we see some confrontations that Ma Rainey had with her management and bandmates as she advocated for herself. Her voice, whether singing or speaking, is centred at this point. Notice how at 2:10, the main title card is cut off by a scene afterwards indicating the end of the recording session with chatter in the audio that would follow it. It lends an additional sense of immersion, and it makes sense as a bookend to the beginning of the trailer which focused on the beginning of, presumably, that same session. The trailer effectively functions in the guide of a session, and the needs of the trailer-as-form are occasionally usurped by the need to convey a sense of just what it may have been like to sit in on one of Ma’s legendary sessions long ago.

— Curtis Perry