THE BLUES AND AFRICAN AMERICAN CULTURAL IDENTITY: A STUDY OF AUGUST WILSON’S MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM

Abstract

This article examines a major African American play to show how the African American minority, through the theatre, resists the impositions of the authoritative culture in order to maintain their own cultural identity. To establish the centrality of their role in American society on one hand, and to maintain their cultural identity on the other, African American playwrights have contributed successfully in raising a resistance among their people against the dominant authoritative culture and the negative effects of the dominant (white) cultural discourse on the main cultural aspects of their identity. Historically, the African Americans are those torn from their motherland and taken to America by force to be sold as slaves. They had been subjected to brutal behavior and severe authoritative discourse for several generations. This article presents a representative African American playwright whose works encapsulate a variety of African American experiences during the 20th century. It discusses August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1984) through which Wilson promotes the importance of foregrounding these subordinated and marginalized cultural aspects in order to produce and maintain an African-American cultural identity. Specifically, the article will discuss the cultural devices represented here by blues music as a discursive means used by the African Americans theatre to resist authoritative culture.