33 min
Branford Marsalis (Ma Rainey's Black Bottom) Right on Cue
-
- TV & Film
Awards season is upon us, which means all the studios and streaming services are breaking out their big guns. Luckily, one of the best films of the year comes to Netflix this weekend. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, based on the play by August Wilson and starring Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman in his final role. A fictionalized snapshot in the life of the Mother of the Blues, Ma Rainey, George C. Wolfe's film imagines her in a sweaty, muggy Chicago recording studio in the 1920s, trying to record her most popular singles for white Northern audiences, far from her comfortable Black Southern crowds. Of course, tensions rise over everything from artistic freedom, racial animus, and Coca-Cola. And all the while, Ma's trumpeter Levee, played by Boseman, tries to take advantage of their opportunity to stake his own ambitious claim in the music world. It's a vibrant adaptation of a riveting play, filled with staggering performances from Davis, Boseman, Colman Domingo, and the rest of the ensemble. And it tells a story about Black culture's impact on popular culture, and those artists' attempts to secure their own legacy in the face of a white world that wants to repackage it for their own consumption.
The blues thrums at the heart of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, so it makes sense that Wolfe would tap jazz legend Branford Marsalis to pen the score. Not only does he punctuate vital moments with a burst of vivid jazz orchestration to throw us into Chicago in the Roaring '20s, he was also responsible for arranging every song you see and hear on screen. Luckily, I got the chance to talk to Marsalis, who's spent decades as one of the genre's foremost saxophonists and bandleaders. He spent three years as the head of the Tonight Show band for Jay Leno, and he's got plenty of stories to share both in and out of the story of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.
Awards season is upon us, which means all the studios and streaming services are breaking out their big guns. Luckily, one of the best films of the year comes to Netflix this weekend. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, based on the play by August Wilson and starring Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman in his final role. A fictionalized snapshot in the life of the Mother of the Blues, Ma Rainey, George C. Wolfe's film imagines her in a sweaty, muggy Chicago recording studio in the 1920s, trying to record her most popular singles for white Northern audiences, far from her comfortable Black Southern crowds. Of course, tensions rise over everything from artistic freedom, racial animus, and Coca-Cola. And all the while, Ma's trumpeter Levee, played by Boseman, tries to take advantage of their opportunity to stake his own ambitious claim in the music world. It's a vibrant adaptation of a riveting play, filled with staggering performances from Davis, Boseman, Colman Domingo, and the rest of the ensemble. And it tells a story about Black culture's impact on popular culture, and those artists' attempts to secure their own legacy in the face of a white world that wants to repackage it for their own consumption.
The blues thrums at the heart of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, so it makes sense that Wolfe would tap jazz legend Branford Marsalis to pen the score. Not only does he punctuate vital moments with a burst of vivid jazz orchestration to throw us into Chicago in the Roaring '20s, he was also responsible for arranging every song you see and hear on screen. Luckily, I got the chance to talk to Marsalis, who's spent decades as one of the genre's foremost saxophonists and bandleaders. He spent three years as the head of the Tonight Show band for Jay Leno, and he's got plenty of stories to share both in and out of the story of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.
33 min