It also represents the old school – an established star working in a Southern style that Levi thinks is behind the times. Part of the history embedded in the play is the story of the great migration of Black Southerners to the industrial cities of the North, and Levy doubts that his fleet on the blues, light-finger approach will captivate the tastes of migrants, and even surpass white record buyers. It represents a different kind of artistic nature – crowded, impulsive, prone to self-destruction. He argues with other musicians, refusing to listen when they try to talk sensibly to him. It attracts Dusi believers, which is to say the least of a risky career. He is a young man in a hurry, eager to get cash in check before he writes.
Without new shocks and grief-stricken feelings over Bozman’s death earlier this year – to Boseman’s lean and hungry mobility – it’s hard to watch Levy. And “Ma Reini’s Black Bottom” has been around for a very long time and will suffer in archives, algorithms and collective memory, though, now there’s something extra stingy to deal with.
Not because it’s explicit or literally timely – Wilson’s O’Brien argues that it’s time to consider racism right now, because black life is always important – but because of some unexpected emotional echo. Wilson’s text is a study for certainty, but it is tormented by loss, and to face it at the end of 2020 is to feel the weight of the accumulated absence.
There are some permanent and tragic ones, such as just losing Boseman at at just. Others, we hope, are temporary. This is a rendering of a work written for the stage that begins with a feast – the sweaty, sensual grandeur of the blues in action. It’s also a movie you’ll probably encounter in your living room or on your laptop and further confuses an inevitable identity puzzle. Shall we call this theater, cinema or television – or sometimes graceful, sometimes a clumsy hybrid of all three?
Maybe the question doesn’t matter, or once again we’ll get our decisive bearings and it will make more difference once theaters and nightclubs are replenished. But at the moment, “Ma Rei’s Black Bottom” is a powerful and harsh reminder of the need for art, its terrible costs and the people, lifestyle and dead values with which we share it. “Blues help you get out of bed in the morning,” says Ma. “Get to know you are not alone.”
Ma Renee’s Black Bottom
Rated r. Walking time: 1 hour 34 minutes. Watch on Netflix.
