Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

“Everybody got style. Style and nothing but keeping the same idea from beginning to end. Everybody got it.”

As he does throughout the play, Toledo takes a long view of history. He has educated himself and sees the big picture. He has also been in the music business for a long time. While Levee believes that his music will be revolutionary, Toledo recognizes that trends come and go. Where Ma Rainey was once a revelation, she is now phasing out of style. Style is a matter of consistency and trends are about those who imitate that consistency. Levee claims to have style as a confirmation that he is special, but Toledo points out that everyone has style.

“See, now…I’ll tell you something. As long as the colored man look to white folks to put the crown on what he say…as long as he looks to white folks for approval…then he ain’t never gonna find out who he is and what he’s about. He’s just gonna be about what white folks want him to be about. That’s one sure thing.”

After decades as a backup musician, Toledo understands that the music industry is owned and run by white people. He is criticizing Levee for seeking approval within a white system that will only accept him once he has been molded into what white people want to consume. Seeking the approval of the oppressor will force him to compromise himself, including the style that he believes is unique. Ultimately, Sturdyvant, as a representative of the white music business, determines that he wants Levee to be invisible.

“Levee’s confused about who the boss is. He don’t know Ma’s the boss.”

As long as Ma Rainey sells records, she has influence. Although Irvin and Sturdyvant attempt to impress their rules and requirements on her, ultimately her brand is based in her own style, which she has been cultivating for decades. Irvin and Sturdyvant allow her to forcefully make decisions because she brings in money. However, the play marks a point when they are starting to feel the need to change her, as they try to impose Levee’s arrangement of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” a song with her name in the title. Although she holds out on this point, the attempt to change her music indicates a change in her power.

“Any man who takes a whole week’s pay and puts it on some shoes—you understand what I mean, what you walk around on the ground with—is a fool! And I don’t mind telling you.”

While Levee holds the shoes up as a symbol of his impending success, Cutler recognizes that they are just shoes. They are the lowest part of the wardrobe, literally designed to be in contact with the ground. While the importance that Levee places on the shoes eventually becomes dangerous, at this point in the play, it represents his dreams. Cutler’s disapproval shows a refusal to allow Levee to dream. Levee’s assumption that he will achieve his dream manifests as arrogance and a hindrance to the work they are trying to do. In the end, Cutler’s attempt to dismantle the hold that the shoes have on Levee turns out to be a wise choice, but Levee is too stubborn to listen to his older bandmates.

“A man got to have some shoes to dance like this! You can’t dance like this with them clodhoppers Toledo got.”

For Levee, the shoes represent the fast, exciting life that he believes he is about to achieve. Toledo’s shoes are the shoes of someone who doesn’t care if he can dance or if anyone sees him as stylish. Levee wants to dance, impress women, and look wealthy until he is wealthy. They are a manifestation of his ambition. Toledo and the rest of the band don’t share Levee’s ambition. None of them need shoes to attract women, and therefore they see them as unnecessary. 

“That’s the trouble with colored folks…always wanna have a good time. Good times done got more niggers killed than God got ways to count. What the hell having a good time mean? That’s what I wanna know.”

Toledo criticizes Levee for focusing on his flashy ambitions rather than the actual social issues they face. Levee is seeking social advancement in the form of celebrity, but he isn’t interested in social change for African Americans. To him, a “good time” does not just represent fun, it represents living in the present with no eye on the future and acting on impulse rather than thought. When he says that “good times done got more niggers killed than God got ways to count” (30), he is unknowingly predicting his own death when Levee impulsively kills him. In 1927, the life of a black man in the United States is considered expendable with likely no legal intervention in crimes committed by white people against black people.

“The devil’s strong. The devil ain’t no pushover.”

When Cutler insists that anyone who sells his soul to the devil will eventually be punished and come to a bad end, Slow Drag disagrees. The thought that those who do evil to others will be subject to justice is a comforting one and is inherent to most religious systems. Slow Drag is pointing out the fact that evil people often succeed and life happy, selfish lives. The devil protects his own, and he is strong. Those who are good do not always, or even usually, win out.

“See, we’s the leftovers. The colored man is the leftovers. Now, what’s the colored man gonna do with himself? That’s what we waiting to find out.”

Toledo is observing that African Americans were brought to the United States with a purpose. As slaves, the white men consumed them and their bodies for profit. After emancipation, the survivors and their children are the leftovers from slavery. White men like Sturdyvant are still consuming the leftovers. In Sturdyvant’s case, he is repurposing them into a new meal, in which he consumes musical talent, leaving what is left when he is finished. Toledo suggests that as leftovers, they can repurpose themselves and create a new vision of life for African Americans.

“You talking out your hat. The man come in here, call you a boy, tell you to get up off your ass and rehearse, and you ain’t had nothing to say to him except, ‘Yessir.’”

Although Cutler, Slow Drag, and Toledo largely do what they are told, they don’t act deferential to Irvin or Sturdyvant. Cutler is responding to Levee, who has been mutinous all day until Sturdyvant came in to check on them. Levee, watching his behavior for the white man who he believes holds his career in his hand, becomes overly reverent. Cutler criticizes Levee for forfeiting his self-respect, allowing Sturdyvant to treat him like a slave. This instance illustrates Toledo’s earlier charge that looking to the white man for approval will only obliterate Levee’s sense of self as he is shaped and molded into what white society wants him to be. 

“Bessie what? Ain’t nobody thinking about Bessie. I taught Bessie. She ain’t doing nothing but imitating me. What I care about Bessie? I don’t care if she sell a million records. She got her people and I got mine. I don’t care what nobody else do. Ma was the first and don’t you forget it!”

In the 1920s, Bessie Smith, one of the most famous blues singers of all time, was on her way up while Ma Rainey’s career was on the decline. Smith was called the Empress of the Blues. Ma, who is known as the Mother of the Blues, is defending her legacy as one of the founding voices of the genre. In an industry that creates legends and then tosses them aside, Ma is reminding Cutler that she is the metaphorical mother of Bessie Smith and those who come after her. Even as the popular style of the blues shifts and changes, Ma Rainey is fighting her own erasure.

“I been doing this a long time. Ever since I was a little girl. I don’t care what nobody else do. That’s what gets me so mad with Irvin. White folks try to be put out with you all the time. Too cheap to buy me a Coca-Cola. I lets them know it, though. Ma don’t stand for no shit. Wanna take my voice and trap it in them fancy boxes with all them buttons and dials…and then too cheap to buy me a Coca-Cola.”

The fact that Ma waits until they are recording to stop and demand her Coke shows that she is railing against the exploitation and taking the minimum of what she deserves. According to Ma, Irvin and Sturdyvant know that she requires a Coke before she will sing. Therefore, they could have been prepared—something that they undoubtedly would have done for a famous white singer—but didn’t bother to do so. The Coke represents the basic respect that Ma deserves but has to force out of Irvin and Sturdyvant by holding their recording, their cash cow, hostage.

“They don’t care nothing about me. All they want is my voice. Well, I done learned that, and they gonna treat me like I wanna be treated no matter how much it hurt them. They back there now calling me all kinds of names…calling me everything but a child of God. But they can’t do nothing else. They ain’t got what they wanted yet. As soon as they get my voice down on them recording machines, then it’s just like if I’d been some whore and they roll over and put their pants back on.”

Ma’s demand to be treated like any star is a way of fighting back against racism. She knows that she is only a commodity to Irvin and Sturdyvant, but she possesses the leverage of having a voice and talent that people want to pay to hear. And yet, since as a black woman she is considered lesser, she is expected to be grateful for the opportunity to be elevated by white men. Undoubtedly, acting grateful and deferent would be the path of least resistance. But after decades in the music business, Ma Rainey has learned her worth and she has learned how little the white men who exploit her think of her. She has developed a thick enough skin to endure the hatred and name-calling and is forcing them to feel uncomfortable. They are acting out respect toward a black woman, even if they don’t feel it. In the era of Jim Crow and unprosecuted lynching, this is a radical act.

“If you colored and can make them some money, then you all right with them. Otherwise, you just a dog in the street.”

Ma has no illusions that her stardom somehow transcends racism. While Toledo criticizes Levee for looking for approval from white men, Ma Rainey has developed a way to use the white men as they use her, never forgetting that they hate her as much as she hates them. She refuses to compromise herself or her music, which is likely why her career was so long. Levee is ready to act polite to Sturdyvant, giving him what he wants while fighting his fellow black musicians. Ma recognizes that her life means nothing to Irvin and Sturdyvant, even as Irvin talks about himself and Ma as a team.

“It sure done got quiet in here. I never could stand no silence. I always got to have some music going on in my head somewhere. It keeps things balanced. Music will do that. It fills things up. The more music you got in the world, the fuller it is.”

While Sturdyvant and Irvin treat Ma as a moneymaker, Ma sees her music as art, something that makes the world a better, richer place. While she is happy to take whatever money and perks she can squeeze out of the white men who profit off of her, music is in her heart and soul, an integral part of her identity. This goes much deeper than the commercial aspects of popular music in which a person is in style for a short time and then disappears. It illustrates the reasons that she refuses to perform or record any way other than her own. She isn’t just being difficult for the sake of being difficult, she is filling the world in her own way.

“White folks don’t understand about the blues. They hear it come out, but they don’t know how it got there. They don’t understand that’s life’s way of talking. You don’t sing to feel better. You sing ‘cause that’s a way of understanding life.”

As the blues becomes popular with both black and white audiences, white singers begin to take up the style. Sturdyvant’s purchase of Levee’s music heralds the next phase of the commercialization of the blues in which black voices are made invisible. Ma describes the blues as something essential, something that rose out of blackness. The genre originated on the plantations as the expression of slaves and was carried forward by their children and grandchildren. Separating the blues from blackness means divorcing it from the pain and suffering that created it. It was a way of speaking pain and processing oppression. Blues performed by white people is sanitized.

“Some mens got it worse than others…this foolishness I’m talking about. Some mens is excited to be fools. That excitement is something else. I know about it. I done experienced it. It makes you feel good to be a fool. But it don’t last long. It’s over in a minute. Then you got to tend with the consequences. You got to tend with what comes after. That’s when you wish you had learned something about it.”

Toledo is addressing Levee’s insistence upon flirting with Dussie Mae, despite the possible consequences if Ma discovers them together. Levee’s willingness to risk his potential music career for a single woman whom he just met speaks to his motivations as a musician. Levee wants the excitement that Toledo is talking about. He wants the thrill of taking what he wants without consequences. Given Ma’s influence in the music industry, impressing Ma might have bolstered his career more than impressing Sturdyvant, who only sees dollar signs. Levee opts for fleeting pleasure, foolishly severing ties with his allies. Of course, Toledo also asserts that all men have a moment in which they are foolish over short-lived bliss, as illustrated by the rest of the band members’ stories.

“I done been through life. Made my marks. Followed some signs on the road. Ignored some others. I done been all through it. I touched and been touched by it. But I ain’t never been the same fool twice. That’s what I can say.”

Twenty years Levee’s senior, Toledo has traveled as a musician, made mistakes, and had triumphs. He has taken and rejected advice. He admits his own moments of foolishness in life but argues that he learns from his mistakes. Toledo excuses acts of foolishness as necessary in growing. Levee argues that it is hypocritical for Toledo to call him a fool when he has been foolish himself, and Toledo calls foolishness “part of making life” (74). Although Levee is free to be foolish, he might also learn from the mistakes and advice of others.

“Oh, life is fair. It’s just in the taking what it gives you.”

Toledo responds to Levee’s complaint that life isn’t fair by asserting that life “is what it is” and that fairness is all about how you respond. Toledo’s use of the phrase “life is fair” isn’t claiming that life is equal or that everyone has the same struggles and advantages. He’s arguing against Levee’s understanding of fairness as balanced and saying that life is fair because life is inherently unbalanced and unequal. Inequality isn’t an example of the system of life breaking down, it’s an aspect of life progressing as it always does. The only thing that a person can control is how they respond, which might mean fighting systemic inequality or making the most of what one has.

“Niggers got a right to be dissatisfied. Is you gonna be satisfied with a bone somebody done throwed you when you see them eating the whole hog?”

Levee is angry at racial inequality, and rightfully so. He has endured violence toward himself and his family. His dissatisfaction is legitimate. In the music industry, the treatment of Ma Rainey shows that African Americans are used to make white people richer while receiving a small fraction money they make. This comment foreshadows Levee’s final interaction with Sturdyvant, in which he throws him a small amount of money for his songs, which will undoubtedly draw a fortune. Levee rails against this unfairness, but ultimately punishes the wrong person.

“We done the same thing, Cutler. There ain’t no difference. We done sold Africa for the price of tomatoes. We done sold ourselves to the white man in order to be like him. Look at the way you dressed… That ain’t African. That’s the white man. We trying to be just like him. We done sold who we are in order to become someone else. We’s imitation white men.”

Toledo is arguing that they, as African Americans, have sold out. The rhetoric about selling themselves refers to slavery when Africans were bought and sold against their will. Now, after centuries of slavery have ended, Toledo is suggesting that participating in and being exploited by white commerce equals offering themselves up to be bought and sold. They have been separated from their African heritage, which Toledo asserts is an essential part of their identity (even as his bandmates scoff and refer to stereotypes of barbaric Africans). Rather than returning to their roots and culture, Toledo claims, they are assimilating into white culture and imitating white men.

“What I care about burning in hell? You talk like a fool…burning in hell. Why didn’t God strike some of them crackers down? I’ll tell you why! I’ll tell you the truth! It’s sitting out there as plain as day! ‘Cause he’s a white man’s God.”

Levee refuses to accept the idea of a benevolent god who loves everyone equally because different groups of people receive such unequal treatment in society. There is a sense of security inherent in believing in a deity who has a plan and a purpose that is supposed to be essentially good. It frees the individual from the fear that their pain and suffering is pointless. This is why Levee’s anti-God declarations anger Cutler to the point of violence. He is trying to take away the belief system that allows Cutler to think that there is order in the universe. Cutler’s story, in which a black reverend is attacked, is meant to illustrate the fact that white men have no respect for black men, even those who have been designated men of God. Levee takes it a step further, arguing that his story shows that God has no respect for black people. Belief in a god who is infallibly good lets Cutler ignore social inequalities as part of a divine plan. To Cutler, a world in which God isn’t loving is hopeless.

“I done told you…It ain’t about your music. It’s about Ma’s music.”

Cutler understands the hierarchy within the studio. Ma is the star. She is the one whose music and style sells records, at least for now. In the recording session, Levee attempts to outshine Ma. His overly embellished playing makes it difficult for Ma to hear her notes, compromising her performance. Levee is trying to advance himself by taking something away from another black performer. However, Ma has more experience and power than Levee. During Ma’s session, she is the one in charge, as Irvin and Sturdyvant give in to her demands in order to keep her recording. Levee’s insistence upon playing his way instead of Ma’s is an act of arrogance. He is attempting to cash in on fame he hasn’t achieved.

“Well, Levee, I’ll be fair with you…but they’re just not the right songs.”

At the beginning of the play, before the band arrives, Sturdyvant tells Irvin that Levee’s songs encompass the changing sound of the blues. Sturdyvant’s use of the word “fair” hearkens back to Levee and Toledo’s argument about whether or not life is fair. In Toledo’s understanding of life as fair, Sturdyvant is being fair by acting as expected. What Levee does with what he gets in this moment defines the rest of his life. If he had walked away and taken his songs elsewhere, Levee might have had a chance to work his way to the top as a performer. Instead, Levee kills Toledo, an act that will likely lead to death or imprisonment and the end of his career. Sturdyvant’s claim that “they’re just not the right songs” is an attempt to trick Levee into believing that his music is worthless and giving it up for a small amount of money. The fact that Sturdyvant offers to buy his existing songs plus any he writes in the future is proof that they are not worthless. As Toledo also pointed out, looking to white society for permission means erasing himself in favor of what white men want him to be. In an instant, Sturdyvant erases Levee’s understanding of himself as a star and remakes him as an unseen songwriter who will never be famous.