Essay

Write a five page (1,250-1,500-word) on either topic #1, or on topic 2A, 2B, or 2C, below.

The best papers for this project will include not only an expository component, but will

make use of the best relevant scholarship in order to enhance whatever argument your

essay is making.

1. Write a descriptive and evaluative essay on a song by Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, or

Billie Holiday (except “Strange Fruit”), recorded in the years before 1945. You may to write 1

about two songs released as two sides of a record originally released as a “single.” In that case,

your essay should consider both songs, devoting appropriate space to each one. Your aim is to 2

describe what it is you hear and to evaluate the song as a performance work by concentrating on

the characteristics outlined in this prompt. Focus on a commercially released recording available

to the public in the United States during this period. Describe the artist’s singing style and assess

it comparatively to other songs she recorded around the same time. Describe the singing and the

accompanying music as clearly, vividly, and precisely as you can. What’s your reaction to the

artist’s singing style? How does this particular record help you understand audience tastes during

this period? Can you relate this song to an aspect of social thought? Does the “social” import of

the song operate solely on the song’s narrative or rhetorical plane? Or does it “enact,” as it were,

a socio-utopian set of values or concerns on a sonic, aesthetic, symbolic, or other dimension? Be

The reference page of your essay on a song must include full discographical data, e.g.: Holiday, Bill. 1 “Strange Fruit.” Billie Holiday And Her Orchestra. Frank Newton, trumpet; Tab Smith, soprano, alto sax; Kenneth Hollon, Stanley Payne, tenor sax; Sonny White, piano; Jimmy McLin, guitar; John Williams, bass; Eddie Dougherty, drums; Billie Holiday, vocals. Commodore 526. Rec. New York City, April 20, 1939.

This means that you would be writing, e.g., about both sides of Commodore 526, including “Fine and 2 Mellow.”

specific. Write about instrumentalists and their solos, if any. Consider these questions in light of

comparable records made during that year.

2. Write about character, place, or time in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. By choosing to

focus on one of these aspects of the play, your aim as a writer is to discuss your topic in such a

manner as to give the reader insight into the play as a whole.

a. When thinking about character, consider such features as the individual’s nature,

training, disposition, age, fortune in life, sense of morality, the trajectory of the action

the character takes during the play, how and in what manner does the character express

him or herself in speech, and how the character fares at the end of the play.

b. Considerations of time might include the setting of a discrete action, or of the play

as a whole. Other considerations include the relationship between past, present, and

future as expressed by the action, a character, or by the play generally; the

appropriateness of the action in terms of the historical time period in which that action is

set; how the characters or the play express the relationship between public life and

private life; or the relationship between time and circumstances.

c. A discussion of place will take into account size of both the theatrical and the

fictional space within which the action takes place, that is, the fact of the stage and the

portrayal of the play’s fictional lifeworld, including questions of micro and macro space;

issues of distance, urban versus rural settings, whether the play treats place as revered or

unimportant; how the play shows the relationship between place and the ownership of

place; and what bearing, if any, the materiality of the place has on the action of the play.