Music, Liminality, and Time in August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, and The Piano Lesson

Sahana Shravan

In the first four plays of his Centennial Cycle, August Wilson’s application of diegetic music swirls the waters of space and time, allowing the characters (and audience) to survey those on-stage as members of a long lineage that has spanned before, and will span after, their time on stage. The purpose of this lineage, and by extension the music, is to open a portal that accesses both the past and the present, granting passage to the ancestral help that will serve them in a time of need when it seems as though there are no solutions to be found in the physical world.

In order to delve into the purpose of music in these specific plays, specificity in how Wilson utilizes music is useful. Music serves as a method of “cultural transmission and remembrance”, expanding the timeline and historical breadth of the play in specific moments by being unafraid to “disrupt and transcend theatrical time.” (Elam Jr, 29) These moments are more specially crafted than the broad magical realism designation assigned to hyper-realist scenes; rather, their purpose is to specifically use music that bridges two worlds to blur the lines of where ancestral wisdom and life experience can come from. Wilson finds artistic interest in the complexity of Black American life, especially in the immediate post-slavery era of Gem of the Ocean and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, when connections to African life were still strong by comparison to life in the later Centennial Cycle plays. The music in question is often syncretic, appearing in a combination of African and American elements: for example, in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, the members of the Holly boardinghouse only use Sundays, a very traditionally American Judeo-Christian day for rest and family, as an opportunity to “Juba”, a rhythmic dance that refers back to the days of enslavement. The fact that there is Black community music-making in order to do a dance historically done by enslaved Black Americans on a Sunday in Pittsburgh in the 1910’s is the perfect example of how Wilson’s musical syncretism can both represent and invoke the complicated histories, ancestry, geography, identity, and legacy of enslavement all at once.

Across all of the ten plays, this mix appears most strongly in Gem of the Ocean. The play reaches its peak when Aunt Esther, Black Mary, Eli, and Solly help Citizen reach the City of Bones in order to make peace with his moral turmoil and be “reborn as a man of the people” (GOTO, p.73). This is the first example in the early plays of the Centennial Cycle of music undoing the boundaries of the material world in order to facilitate a spiritual communion between troubled characters and ancestors who have wisdom to share. The music and the accompanying lyrics hold all the power in this spiritual process; they are both the guide and gateway that allow Citizen to find his way into the City of Bones and back. The lyrics for his entrance are as follows: “OH WHAT A DAY/TO GO TO THE CITY OF BONES/WE’RE GOING TO THAT CITY/GOING TO THE CITY OF BONES” (GOTO, p.66-67), with a parallel song for the celebration of his return: “YOU MADE IT BACK/BACK FROM THE CITY OF BONES” (GOTO, p.73). Although the text of the song may be literal, the chanting, musical aspect is what allows Citizen to enter his trance, leave the human realm behind for a spiritual landscape constructed in order to give voice to ancestors lost to slavery.

In the next part of the song, the bottom of the boat is referred to as “the graveyard” by Solly, Eli, and Black Mary as Citizen descends the stairs: “I GOT A HOME IN THE GRAVEYARD/REMEMBER ME/GOING DOWN TO THE GRAVEYARD” (GOTO, p.69). This is a direct reference to the ships that forcibly transported African people West to be enslaved. Music can connect people to their cultural histories, augmenting the experience from just the people physically surrounding you to all of the people you are connected to who hav sung that song before. The City of Bones song in particular expands the audience’s perception of Citizen’s struggle as connected to the struggle of all his ancestors who came before him. It respects those who died in the conditions in the bottom of that ship, and musically hints at the idea that the ship itself is a graveyard, even for the people who did not physically die there. There was a spiritual, personal death of the lives and cultures they used to be able to freely hold, the same spiritual death Citizen is trying so hard not to lose himself to as well (although it should be noted that they did not leave this culture completely behind. Otherwise, the magical realist idea of spiritually accessing a City of Bones through a trance could not exist). In the bottom of the boat, the chained ancestors sing to Citizen, asking him to remember them. Wilson gives Citizen the chance at salvation from his realm through song, providing a place where the ancestors, although they are nameless and cannot be reached for guidance in the literal world, can sing to him, guide him, and ask him to honor them.

Composer Kathryn Bostic, who wrote the score for the 2003 performances of Gem of the Ocean, was interviewed by PBS on her writing process for the play. When speaking on her composition for the City of Bones scene, she described her final choice as “the idea of our ancestors chanting this powerful, simple cadence over and over again, fading in and out like the waves of the ocean.” (PBS) This description evokes a sort of trance or meditation; it portrays the kind of otherworldliness that can only be accessed by removing yourself from the physical world around you, and the best way to do that (according to Bostic) was to establish a trance state through music, repeating the same text over and over again. Bostic recognized the importance of music in this specific moment; it is the key that unlocks an entire unseen world for Citizen; it is a world where those who are lost to him, unable to help him in daily life, are granted access in this altered reality to help him find his way.

There are other moments in Citizen’s journey where music bridges worlds. When Solly and Eli (in the masked role of white captors) throw Citizen in chains into the hull of the ship, an old African lullaby his mother taught him is brought to mind (GOTO, p.70). In that harrowing time, the lullaby soothes him and keeps him in the calm dream state he needs just before he finds the City. The lullaby is the perfect literary representation of living in two worlds at once. The song was something his mother taught him, so it is a tangible part of his life experience, but according to the stage directions ,it came from Africa, passed down through his lineage until his mother could teach it to him. It originates in a world and culture he can never know directly, but serves as a point of connection between his family and the spirituality of the world and ancestors lost to him. It gives him the ability to exist in the liminal space between his time and the times of the past. For this reason, it was especially apt for his journey to the City of Bones. There is another song that features as an example of syncretism: Black Mary sings the song “Twelve Gates to the City” as the final musical step before Citizen is able to perceive the City of Bones. The song references the Biblical idea of twelve gates that lead into Heaven. In this context, a Biblical idea is being fused with African spirituality to produce a syncretic version of Heaven unique to African Americans: twelve gates that open into the City of Bones, where people lost to enslavement at sea can be found for spiritual guidance. Music is the medium that facilitates travel between this realm that of the City of Bones. It is the connective tissue that allows Citizen to hear the reality where Black Mary and Esther are guiding him at the same time that he speaks to Garret Brown (who is now the Gatekeeper to the City) and sees the beauty of the City of Bones with its fire-tongued people. The syncretism is especially important in this scene because Wilson does not just use an African song to get Citizen into the City of Bones. Rather, it is essential that the music connect to both periods of time, the present and the past; the portal has to have two ends in order to transport anyone in between. He exits the trance when he is granted passage into the City with song – as the gate swings open, the journey ends.

The City of Bones makes another appearance in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, when Seth and Bynum organize their regular Sunday night Juba. In his stage direction, Wilson explicitly writes that the “Juba is reminiscent of the Ring Shouts of the African slaves…It should be as African as possible…the words can be improvised, but should include some mention of the Holy Ghost.” (Joe Turner, p.50) Again, music signals the cultural syncretism that has taken place over centuries of enslavement in America; the Ring Shouts were derived from African tradition (Wilson asks that the Juba be “as African as possible”), but at the beginning of the 20th century, Wilson found it important to reflect the imprint of Western Christianity (the Holy Ghost). We know that they Juba every week in Seth and Bertha’s house; this musical tradition is bridging Africa and America. Incidentally, there is an instance of musical syncretism acknowledged by the characters within the Juba scene as well, when the young musician Jeremy Furlow adds the Western guitar to the percussive Juba; Seth even remarks, “I ain’t ever Juba with one! Figured to try it and see how it works.” (Joe Turner, 49).

In this example, it is not the people doing the Juba who go through the spiritual experience of their vision expanding to a greater breadth than before; it is the lone bystander, Herald Loomis, who experiences a strong hallucination. Although Juba musicking is usually an expression of joyful religion in the Holly household, it is the exact thing that triggers Loomis’ memory of the seven years spent in enslavement under Joe Turner, which he is struggling to recover from. Personally (this is not mentioned in the text) I felt there was an association with convict leasing and chain gangs. The real Joe Turney of 19th century Tennessee distributed Black convicts to farms during their transportation between jails. The rhythmic nature of Juba likely mimicked the rhythms historically used by chain gangs to keep time during their hard labor; if this was the association Herald made, his reaction makes perfect sense. Once more, the diegetic music opens a door to a broader historical context, both on the large American scale and within the lives of the characters. This moment in the play exemplifies the way the confluence of African and American can be a way of coping and finding a way to go on (as Ma Rainey would say of the blues), as well as a source of immense pain and historical trauma. Loomis sees the Christianity in Juba and cannot stand the glorification of the Holy Ghost it contains. He speaks angrily of a theme repeated in Wilson’s works, of whether Christianity actually serves the Black American community or whether it is foolish to believe and hope for a God who does not seem to ever do anything to stop people’s suffering. As he yells, how can God be so much bigger than people and yet do nothing holy at all?

The Juba rhythms, hoots, and hollers bring on a hallucination for Herald – his method of processing the horror he has gone through is to turn towards the more African aspects of his surroundings, rather than the American ones. Wilson writes in the stage directions that Loomis “begins to speak in tongues and dance around the kitchen”; this is very similar to the direction provided for the Juba, and is distinctly African in its physical action (Joe Turner, p.50). Immediately after, he is violently struck by a vision of the City of Bones. Like Citizen in Gem of the Ocean, he sees himself as actually one of the Bones people, rising up out of the ocean as he searches for meaning and guidance from ancestors lost to the sea. Wilson felt Herald could only feasibly access this experience after a very intense musical experience that connected his struggle to find his song with the ancestors.

The concept of finding one’s “song” is also related to music, and Wilson establishes a historical lineage of those who have found their “song of self-sufficiency”, the way of seeing what kind of person someone is. Bynum establishes that he has seen a man who “shine like new money” before, a man who has found his song and can lead the way for others to find their own (Joe Turner, 15) There is something fundamentally musical and human about the concept of a song that we all have to find about ourselves, and especially beautiful is the idea that this song is a blueprint of everything that matters most about each one of us. It is our way of being, the way we interact with others, and what we hope to give them in our time together. For Bynum, his song and purpose is binding people together; his father’s is different. In Herald Loomis’ case, as the Juba music threw him back into the frenzy of his time under Joe Turner, his destination at the end of the play is marked when he finally finds his own song and shines himself, even though we can’t explicitly know what it was. Wilson places music at the apex of spiritual identity, and establishes a historical legacy of those before Herald who have found their song and can help him find their own, as he so desperately needs.

Music’s relationship to history and ancestry in The Piano Lesson is both ephemeral and solidly physical; it takes the dual form of music that banishes a vindictive ghost of the past and a real piano that symbolizes the choice between the past and the future. Siblings Boy Willie and Berniece spend most of the play fighting over whether it is better for their future to abandon their ancestral history, a plot of land, in favor of the piano with carvings of their family, or to sell the piano for the guarantee of family land in the future. Both arguments have merit: the piano belonged to an oppressor, and was carved in a time when their family had no freedom. Selling it to buy land prioritizes the future of the family, but keeping it preserves the sacred nature of the work, love, and dark sadness their grandfather put into it. Ultimately, music helps them overcome the looming specter of Sutter, the former slave owner, who is haunting their family. Once more, history saves Berniece - Wilson writes in the stage direction that Berniece’s instinct to play the piano to banish the ghost comes “from somewhere old”, an ancient source of knowledge that has come to help her. (The Piano Lesson, 106) The Piano Lesson takes a special interest in the way people of the past can either haunt or help us; music enters into this idea as the conduit that allows the helpers of the past to come to Berniece’s aid to get rid of Sutter. Just as with the chant-like repetition of the song to find the City of Bones, “with each repetition it gains strength,” a “rustle of wind that blows across two continents.” (The Piano Lesson, 106). This incredible way of describing that moment in the stage direction suggests that Wilson is aware of how this music is grown from the African continent, making its way to North America just when it is needed. Berniece actually chants to the ancestors herself, both with her voice and the piano’s voice, first pleading for help, and then once the help comes, sending gratitude in the very last line of the play. This moment perhaps most explicitly makes clear the connections between history, ancestry, African heritage, and the way music allows those connections to take place.

These few examples are not a comprehensive list of all the diegetic music in these three plays alone; there are many other instances of songs providing historical context to characters’ particular moments in time, such as when Bynum sings “Joe Turner Come and Gone” to Seth and Loomis in order for us to learn about his horrific past under Joe Turner. However, this essay focused on the scenes where music is a conduit to a spiritual world outside that of the physical, as these moments most directly relate to the use of syncretic music that joins together the African and American sides of these characters in order to help them through their troubles. Characters themselves are aware of the power of music in their communities, even inside the plays – Aunt Esther, Black Mary, Bynum, and others routinely use music as a tool for connecting those close to them with the help they need. Wilson treats music as a creator of a hallway, a liminal space in which his characters can receive what the rich history and ancestry of Black American life offer to those in need. Music is essential because to his characters, music connects to the fiber of their beings; as a result, they often have one foot in the past and one in the present, giving them a chance to undergo spiritual renewal for a chance at a different future. It is almost as if Wilson is telling his audience not to forget their own song; he wants people to remember where they come from, writing in moments where we can zoom out, seeing these characters both as products of all those who came before them, even as we acknowledge the small part they will play as time goes beyond them.

Works Cited

Admin. “August Wilson: The Ground on Which I Stand ~ Music in August Wilson's Work.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, 18 Aug. 2015, https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/august-wilson-the-ground-on-which-i-stand/3706/.

Shannon, Sandra Garrett, and Dana A. Williams. August Wilson and Black Aesthetics. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Wilson, August. Gem of the Ocean. Theatre Communications Group, 2006.

Wilson, August. Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. Signet, 1988.

Wilson, August. The Piano Lesson. New York: Dutton, 1990. Elam, Harry Justin. The Past as Present in the Drama of August Wilson. University of Michigan Press, 2006.