Seven Guitars (Plume Drama) [Paperback]

Although not quite on a par with "Fences" or "The Piano Lesson," Wilson's story of a blues musician and his companions in the late '40s is still a compelling read. As usual, he creates music in the language of his characters, all of whom are distinctly drawn.

"Seven Guitars" recounts the fate of a Pittsburgh blues musician, Floyd "Schoolboy" Barton, who scores a hit record in Chicago, but falls short of capitalizing on his success, either with his music, or with his on-again, off-again love, Vera. Along the way, we meet his musician friends, Canewell and Red, his crusty neighbor Louise, the seductive young visitor Ruby, and the mysterious Hedley, who orates on Marcus Garvey, Ethiopia and Buddy Bolden while he goes about his job butchering chickens for sale on the streets of Pittsburgh.

The play's vibrancy springs not only from the characters' plain-spoken poetry, but from Wilson's knowledge of blues, folk legends, superstitions and from his vivid recreation in print of a particular place: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which he has managed to turn into a place of literary myth.

As in "Fences" and in his play set in the '60s, "Two Trains Running" Wilson relies strongly on a character verging on and descending into madness. In "Seven Guitars," it's Hedley, and the way you feel about the play will be determined in part by your reaction to this character and how Wilson uses him. For me, Hedley's motivation was a bit too murky, and his most important act at the end of the play did not mesh well with the motivation Wilson developed for Floyd, the ambitious bluesman. Because of this problem, "Seven Guitars" lacks the powerful thematic punch of "Fences" and "The Piano Lesson."

Still, this play makes a fine addition to Wilson's dramatic cycle that explores African-American life through the twentieth century. The play confirms his place as one of the great voices in the American theater.

August Wilson's play "Seven Guitars" had its Broadway premiere in 1996. The play follows seven African-American characters, both male and female, in Pittsburgh in 1948. The first scene opens after the funeral of one character, and the play then moves back in time to tell his story.

There is a lot of excellent material in this play. Wilson expertly weaves in songs, humor, one character's recipe for turnip greens, and a funny discourse on the difference between Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi roosters. One character, Floyd, is a talented musician, and his arc offers a perspective on African-American artistic aspiration.

Probably the most memorable character in the play is Hedley, a hardworking entrepreneur who is tormented by rage and lust. His dialogue is particularly rich, as he invokes Toussaint L'Ouverture, Marcus Garvey, and traditional African-American biblical interpretation. Overall, "Seven Guitars" is a frequently compelling play with well-written dialogue.

Okay, blame it on the recently departed Studs Terkel and his damn interview books. I had just been reading his "The Spectator", a compilation of some of his interviews of various authors, actors and other celebrities from his long-running Chicago radio program when I came across an interview that he had with the playwright under review here, August Wilson. Of course, that interview dealt with things near and dear to their hearts on the cultural front and mine as well. Our mutual love of the blues, our concerns about the history and fate of black people and the other oppressed of capitalist society and our need to express ourselves politically in the best way we can. For Studs it was the incessant interviews, for me it is incessant political activity and for the late August Wilson it was his incessant devotion to his century cycle of ten plays that covered a range of black experiences over the 20th century.

Strangely, although I was familiar with the name of the playwright August Wilson and was aware that he had produced a number of plays that were performed at a college-sponsored repertory theater here in Boston I had not seen or read his plays prior to reading the Terkel interview. Naturally when I read there that one of the plays being discussed was entitled "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" about the legendary female blues singer from the 1920's I ran out to get a copy of the play. That play has been reviewed elsewhere in this space but as is my habit when I read an author who "speaks" to me I grab everything I can by him or her to see where they are going with the work. This is doubly true in the case of Brother Wilson as his work is purposefully structured as an integrated cycle, and as an intensive dramatic look at the black historical experience of the 20th century that has driven a lot of my own above-mentioned political activism.

The action of this play takes place in a black neighborhood in Pittsburgh (Wilson's home town) in 1948. This, moreover, is the fifth and thus the middle play in the century cycle. Both these facts are important in understanding the tensions of the play. One of Terkel's oral histories is entitled "The Good War", about the trials and tribulations of those on all sides of the conflict in World War II and from all strata in the American experience of that war. Implicit in Terkel's use of quotation marks around the words in his title is that, on reflection and with time the expectations from that war might not be all they were made out to be. That, at least, jibes with my own sense of the dilemma that confronted those who fought the war. I believe that Wilson also is reflecting on that understanding in this work since some promises were made to black people then that "their boats would also rise" after their key role in industry on the home front and in the ranks of the (segregated) army.

The story line, as seems to be axiomatic with Wilson, is fairly straight forward if the issues presented and the dialogue spoken that convey those issues are much more complex. Army veteran Floyd has some musical talent and heads out to try his luck in the Mecca (for migrating southern blacks)- Chicago and has just had a hit. However, through the well-known vagaries of American racial life, as filtered through common black experience, he hasn't been able to cash in on his success. So, to avoid being the classic `one hit' Johnnie who clutter the cultural landscape of America, Flyod sets out to re-conquer Chicago on his terms- if he can just get that guitar out of hock, get that band together, get that woman (Vera) to believe in him and his ability to succeed and if he can avoid the "cutthroats" (literally) out to cut him down to size all will be well. Floyd fails, and that failure is a metaphor for the black condition in the 1940's. Maybe things will turn out better later but "the dream" is still on hold here. This, my friends, is powerful, powerful stuff beyond what I can describe to you here in this short summary.

Wilson's conceptual framework, as I have mentioned previously in a review of his "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom", is impeccable. Placing the scene in 1940's Pittsburgh permits him to give a bird's eye view of that great migration of blacks out of the south in the post-World War I period at a time when they are shaking off those roots (as exemplified by the nice contrast in the play between the old time thinking Miss Tilley's with her ill-fated rooster and Louise and Vera ). Floyd, Red Carter and Canewell, among others (including Ruby, recently arrived from the South) are now "assimilated". Moreover, Wilson is able to succinctly draw in the questions of white racism (powerfully so in the story of Floyd's agent, Mr. T. H. Hall), black self-help , black hatred of whites (Hedley's tirades), black self-hatred, black illusion (that the `lifting' of the white boats was going to end, for blacks, the seemingly permanent Great Depression), black pride (through the link with past black historical figures and with the then current hero, Joe Louis), the influence of the black church (good or bad), black folk wisdom (as portrayed by Canewell, who is more grounded in his memories of his southern roots than the others) and, in the end, the rage behind black on black violence (Hedley) resulting from a world that not was not made by the characters in this play but took no notice of their long suppressed rage that turned in on itself.

And all the time while one is reading the play one is struck by the music of the dialogue, it's always the blues. I posed a question in the review of "Ma Rainey" asking, plaintively, "what are the blues?". That is, apparently, to be my theme in reviewing the body of Brother Wilson's work. I will let the last line of that review stand here. "So if anyone asks you what the blues are you now know what to say- read and see Mr. Wilson's play(s)".