Making Ma Rainey
Making Ma Rainey She changed popular music forever, but the “Mother of the Blues” is not the household name she deserves to be. Netflix’s recent star-studded release, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, adapted from the Pulitzer-winning dramatist August Wilson’s 1982 play, brings one of the US’s first professional blues singers back into the cultural sphere. The larger than life, gold tooth-wearing Ma Rainey, famed “Mother of the Blues”, is played with regal poise by Viola Davis, who fires off pointed retorts from beneath an impenetrable mask of make-up. Known for her thunderou...
Source: newstatesman.com