The Thaumaturgy Department

The Griot

A little bit of Ma Rainey-related info for you, in the form of an article written by Corina Riviere, who was one of Faedra’s dramaturgy assistants, and is currently attending the University of Maryland.

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Griots: There’s Value in their Anecdotes

by Corina Riviere

      Everyone has a story to tell. One could argue that a person’s life is no more than a series of stories, a sequence of lessons learned over the years. But our valuable life experiences don’t only affect us as individuals, do they? We have a lasting influence on our friends, family, and colleagues—the ones who become an audience to our anecdotes and so actually have an opportunity to learn something from our encounters.

       Throughout history, storytelling has been used as a means of imparting wisdom and describing significant events to an upcoming generation. Several centuries ago, there emerged in West African cultures dedicated historians of sorts, individuals whose primary purpose was to preserve the memories of a community through storytelling.¹ These individuals were the griots. Held in high esteem throughout the community, the griot taught (and to this day teaches) his people about themselves, effectively communicating important ideas and values to an audience. A more recent explanation of the griot states, “They were the attendants of kings, warlords, nobles and later of Islamic scholars… As oral specialists in a world where writing was practically nonexistent, they had to guarantee not only the survival of their people as a culturally and historically defined group, but also the social status of the nobles they were attached to.” ³ These historians are essential in maintaining the culture of their people.

         In order to effectively tell a story, a griot must be able to create harmony and unity with an audience. If a tale resonates among its listeners and instills something in them that wasn’t there before, the griot has successfully done his job in educating his people. In the Journal of African Cultural Studies, scholar Russell Kaschula references Jones, Palmer, and Jones’ Oral and Written Poetry in African Literature today in defining the griot as “…an artist who ‘was, and still is, observer, commentator or councilor on the past and passing scenes. He happily still survives in some parts of Africa, not only rehandling traditional material… keeping the heroic feats of historical figures alive, but also commenting in traditional style on contemporary matters.’” ⁴ In view of that, maintaining a connection between the older traditions of a people and their present-day interests is also a component of the griot’s role in society. By keeping these differing reference points and concerns in mind, the griot can more easily establish harmony and unity between himself and his modern audience.

         In the American community, this way of communicating ideas and values to others through stories is used in everyday conversation. We can use a story to make a point that enhances our argument. These kinds of educational exchanges are present throughout Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom—much of the important dialogue between the characters takes the form of a story. Cutler and Toledo could be considered the griots of this play, mainly because their abundance of wisdom and life experiences are revealed in the stories they tell. The griot’s occupation is an inherited one, passed down from parents or grandparents to their children—but that abundance of knowledge isn’t something that is always desired among the younger prospects. Some decide that they don’t want to accept the experience and wisdom that a griot has to offer, while others not only receive and apply the messages given, but go on to become oratory practitioners themselves.³ The responses to Toledo’s story of his previous marriage provide clear examples of these varying reactions to a griot’s words. Cutler receives the point clearly, and responds with intelligent feedback. Levee on the other hand, doesn’t receive either the story or the point Toledo is trying to make.          

           Now, even though the stories of this play are mainly used for enlightening Ma Rainey’s band members, they also say something to the audience. African American griot Nana Camille Yarborough made a great comment about the nature of her profession. “[W]e tell the story of the great African people,” she said proudly. “We tell of our strengths and our weaknesses—but it is told in love, as we must be in love with each other.” ⁵Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is definitely a play that explores the highs and lows of its characters, but what can be learned from this exploration?  What message can we take away from the conflicts between band and manager? What morals can we learn from the way Ma Rainey handles business, or from Cutler’s story of Reverend Gates? Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is chock-full of stories used to impart values; let’s consider August Wilson as the griot in this case. What do you think he’s trying to say to his audience through the lives of these characters?

Reference:

1. Rasmussen, Susan J. “Griots And Griottes: Masters of Words and Music.” Rev. of Griots And Griottes: Masters of Words and Music. Comparative Literature Studies 2001: 361. Academic Search Premier. Web. 1 Apr. 2010.
2. “Griot.” Def. 1. Merriam-Webster Online. Web. Mar. 2010.
3. Panzacchi, Cornelia. “THE LIVELIHOODS OF TRADITIONAL GRIOTS IN MODERN SENEGAL.” Africa 64.2 (1994): 190-211. Web. 22 Mar. 2010.
4. Kaschula, Russell H. “Imbongi and Griot: Toward a Comparative Analysis of Oral Poetics in Southern and West Africa.” Journal of African Cultural Studies 12.1 (1999): 55-76. Web. 31 Mar. 2010.
5. Arinde, Nayaba. “Nana Camille Yarborough—in Love with Her People.” New York Amsterdam News 07 Aug. 2008, 99th ed. Web. 31 Mar. 2010.

Faedra on 1920s soda bottles.

Question:

Were there was any sodas/soda bottles (other than Coke) in existence in 1927 Chicago?  Can you suggest what these liquid props might be? We need other liquid to be delivered with the sandwiches, & to be available to be drunk onstage.

Response:

So, by the 1920s, Soda was big business—and prohibition actually propelled the demand even further.  By 1927, there were a few big names circulating nationally (in addition to Coke) such as Vernor’s Ginger Ale (the first US soft drink, invented in 1866), Dr. Pepper (which was actually invented in 1885, a year before Coca Cola), Pepsi (invented in 1898), Hires (the rootbeer, invented in 1876), and Ward’s Orange Crush (which was originally invented in Chicago in 1906, now known simply as Orange Crush).

There’s this publisher/collector, Digger Odell, devoted to educating the public on antique bottles and publishing price guides for bottles.  He has some great info on soda—and soda bottles—from the 1920s.  I’ve pasted some of the most text below (with a few sample pictures), but if the props department doesn’t already have this site/book—or one like it—it may be something they want to check out—there are A LOT of images!:

“Many of the sodas of the 1920s were embossed like counterparts of earlier decades.  But unlike their counterparts they display lavish design elements.  The variety seems endless in the competition to be noticed.

 The 1920s were the heyday of the designer soda.  Anyone could put up soda.  Generic bottles were cheaper than the designed bottles and labels could be applied for brand identification.  The labels, of course did not last and so became a bother and an added expense.  The designer bottles could have the proprietors name blown into the glass along with the design.  The design helped with brand identification and customer loyalty.  In a field as crowded as the soda beverage field getting noticed was getting more difficult…”

More from the dramaturg known as Faedra.

Stage management poses the question, Faedra responds, and we all receive some most interesting insights.

LINDY HOP #2 DRAMATURGY RESONSE – 3.18.10

Question:

Understood from a previous email, (from Dr. Chris Martin)  that the term “Lindy Hop” gets its name in September 1927, BUT is it directly related to Lindbergh’s flight? 

Response:

So, I found this great site about the Lindy Hop—it has historical information, dance clips, pictures, etc.    And it turns out that your hunch was right—the name of the “Lindy Hop” (legend has it) DID come about as a reference to Charles Lindbergh!   (See the edited excerpt below for the fun details):

“SHORTY” GEORGE SNOWDEN & BIG BEA

…Shorty George was the top dancer at the Savoy from its opening in 1926 to the early 1930s. Barely five feet tall, he was recognized as a comic dance genius. When paired with his most well known partner Big Bea (who towered over him), what resulted were dance steps and patterns that were both wildly entertaining and technically brilliant. While some accounts credit Shorty George with introducing the first break-away pattern, he is most remembered for two things: his signature move, aptly named the Shorty George and giving Lindy Hop its name…

THE DANCE STYLE ACQUIRES A NAME

While no one disputes Shorty George’s claim to popularizing the Shorty George dance step, the initial naming of Lindy Hop is another matter. Charles Lindbergh completed his non-stop flight from the United States to Europe on May 21, 1927. This was at a time when this dance style was becoming all the rage in Harlem, throughout New York, and up and down the entire East Coast. Now consider two things:

• The terms hop and hopping were common vernacular for dance and dancing during that time.
• The worldwide reporting of Lindbergh’s feat (akin to the first Moon landing) undoubtedly included some accounts that regarded his flight over the Atlantic Ocean as a hop.

The point here is that the term Lindbergh Hop was likely already a part of popular culture prior to the very specific date and time Shorty George is said to have, by some accounts, spontaneously named this new dance style Lindy Hop. In fact, some reports have it that among dance circles the term Lindbergh Hop was being used to describe the Savoy dance style months, perhaps a year before his mention of it to an inquiring reporter. With that said, what follows is a distilled account of how Lindy Hop acquired its name:

The place and time was (pick one, several different accounts have been reported),

• One evening following Lindbergh’s flight to Paris.
• September 1927 at a dance contest in Central Park.
• 1928 at a dance marathon at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem.
• June 17, 1928 at the Manhattan Casino Ballroom in New York during a dance marathon.

The circumstances were that a news reporter, unfamiliar with this new dance style, went up to Shorty George, the declared winner in the Central Park version of the story, and asked what it was they were doing. Shorty George then thought for a moment, and replied,

“The Lindy Hop, we’re flying just like Lindy did!”

Another account reports his reply as,

“I’m doin’ the Hop, the Lindy Hop!”

The “one evening following Lindbergh’s flight” version claims his inspiration came from a newspaper headline that happened to be laying nearby.  Regardless of who it was that initially used the term Lindy Hop or when it was used, Shorty George will forever be recognized as the individual that mentioned it to the reporter, who then went on to make the name stick. ..

Asked and Answered, the dramaturgy edition

So, another from the annals of rehearsal. Query posed to production dramaturg Faedra, and the reply follows. No, not all of our “du jour” questions are this interesting, rich, or rewarding—nor are our answers, always.

STEW/LEFTOVER DRAMATURGY RESPONSE – 3.18.2010

Question:

p. 42 Toledo’s “But the stew they eat, and the stew your grandpappy made, and all the stew that you and me eat, and the stew Mr. Irvin eats…ain’t in no way the same stew”.  Irene interested in your take on this.

Response:

So, I think that the whole idea of “stew” is the collection of life experiences we must confront (and “consume”)—it’s what we encounter and, thus, “take in” that makes us who we are, collectively and individually.

And then, in extending that to the “leftovers” discussion,  I think one of the clearest (and convenient!) explications is offered by the celebrated Wilson scholar Harry J. Elam, Jr., in his 1996 essay, ‘‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom: Singing Wilson’s Blues”:

“Wilson advocates and agitates for African American social consciousness and black nationalistic self-determination through his art. Accordingly, Toledo instructs the band members as to their status as products of the economics of slavery. These are lessons that Wilson wants all African Americans to understand. In his powerful, poetic and humorous analogy of a stew, Toledo explains that African Americans are historical leftovers. ‘‘See we’s the leftover. The colored man is the leftovers. Now what the colored man gonna do with himself? That’s what we waiting to find out. But first we gotta know we the leftovers.’’ For Wilson, African American advancement can only come after African Americans recognize their leftover status, appreciate the legacies and lessons of slavery and realize and express their Africanness. In Ma Rainey unfortunately, Toledo’s words do not activate an increased social awareness in the brash young trumpeter, Levee, nor in the other band members.”

So, certainly, that passage is about activating one’s nationalistic consciousness and that can only be done if one “knows thyself.”  In fact, that’s one idea I talked about in the interview used for CENTERSTAGE’s  Joe Turner’s Come and Gone  playbill and I think it serves just as well in our consideration of Ma Rainey:

“I do believe that a major message for African Americans in Wilson ‘s plays is to “Know Thyself.” Part of this is about knowing and appreciating your past: understanding the obstacles overcome by those that came before you as well as recognizing the wealth of your culture and the contributions it has made to society-at-large.”

With all that said, however, I’d like to add this additional thought in relation to “leftovers”:

        I think it’s important to remember, especially in an African American cultural context, that Toledo’s comparison of black folks as a “leftover” not be perceived as a pejorative observation (his critique is not that black folks are leftovers, but that we don’t recognize our own leftover status).

        We have to remember that a good deal of African American cultural history is indebted to the reality of “leftovers.”  Whether we are talking chitterlings (chittlin’s) or quilts, we are talking about cultural products that were divined out of “making something out of nothing”—about taking the discarded and the dregs, the second-hands  and the cast-offs—and transforming them into that which was not only functional, but desirable.  That tradition of innovation and revitalization is the same spirit that has informed everything from African American vernacular to the artistic impulses of Jazz music—traceable in various forms of expression, it all goes back to a spirit of riffing and revising—taking an originating source/object and making something anew.   BUTyou’ve got to understand what you have in hand in the first place before you can aspire to new possibilities…

-Faedra

Ma Rainey du jour ad infinitum

Another dramaturgy question has come down the transom, this time on the details of the train journey from Thomasville, Georgia up north (the band members have a lengthy dispute over archaic train lines, to the thrill of the subway-map-loving geek in us all).

Here’s Faedra’s clarifying note:

DRAMATURGY RESPONSE 3.13.09

1.      As per earlier email: p. 75  Levee’s Train Route knowledge vs Cutler’s “Rev. Gates” train route?

I’ve always wanted Levee to be right.  He seems so certain about it:  “That train got four stops before it reach Macon to go on to Atlana.  One in Thomasville, one in Moultrie, one in Cordele…and it stop in Centerville.”   He even goes further to show his knowledge of the routes when he says, “The only train that stops at Sigsbee is the Yazoo Delta, and you have to transfer at Moultrie to get it!”   He feels so certain and, clearly, is so eager to be right—for once. It takes him but a second to stop Cutler’s story and offer a corrective—I feel like he has to know what he’s talking about.  And for him, I feel like he’s got something to prove and here’s his chance. 

BUT…. in looking at the Mapquest map here (I sent the link separately, in case anyone wants to use the site themselves), we see that Sigsbee and Moultrie are very close together.  Cutler insists that the train pasts Moultrie and stops at Sigsbee while Levee says the train foregoes Sigsbee and stops at Moultrie.  Well, as it turns out, Cutler may be “more right” than Levee…

Ina 3-Volume book on Georgia (dated 1906 and published by the State Historical Society) it notes in its Cyclopedia of Georgia, an entry for Sigsbee:  

“Sigsbee, a post-town of Colquitt county, is a station on the Georgia Northern railroad, ten miles northwest of Moultrie, and in 1900 reported a populated of 227.  It has some mercantile establishments and is an important shipping point”

So, Levee is WRONG when he proclaims that there is no stop at Sigsbee “except the Yazoo Delta” because there was, and it was the *same line* that stopped at Moultrie.   So both Moultrie and Sigsbee—which are actually less than 10 miles apart were both part of the Georgia Northern Railway.  Moreover, unlike the Sigsbee station, the Moultrie station still “stands” (not functioning, but retained as a historical site).  In fact, there’s a whole webpage on the Moultrie station (with great pics, the pic below is one of the train “museum” pieces):  

http://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu/colquittcounty/oldmoultrietraindepot.htm

So, all this to say:  I guess  Levee IS wrong when he says that there is not train stop in Sigsbee and Cutler may be very right when he says that Rev. Gates stopped off in the small town of Sigsbee (rats).

2.      Was Paramount Records connected to Paramount Film Studio?

 No (and a little bit “yes”).  The origins of Paramount Records can be found in a chaircompany, that eventually turned to making phonograph cabinets and then phonograph records.  The company didn’t become “Paramount Records” until around 1918 and its “race records” business blossomed after it bought out the floundering black-owned record company, Black Swan. Along with such record labels as Okeh and Columbia Records, were among the most successful Race Record companies.  Nevertheless, the decline of the industry during the Great Depression led to Paramount closing its door in 1932 (although for many years later, there were some “reissues” of discs under the label’s name).

As it turns out, Paramount Pictures purchased the rights to the name “Paramount Records” in the late 1960s but prior to that purchase their histories were totally unconnected.

PS: What map, you may say? Well, we’ve created a Google Map with all the locations of the Georgia Northern railroad, plus other locations mentioned in the play, which you can access if you click right here.