SPOTLIGHT: MAYBAIL
the character Maybail is an amalgamation of several women of the movement, but also of history. she is both real and ethereal. exoteric and esoteric.
Exo:
in a very real sense, maybail is a maid. she cleans white folks houses in a suburb of Nashville, and catches the bus all over the city. her feet hurt. her arms ache. and still, she presses on. why? because she has no choice. she doesn't have a formal education. she goes to work, she goes to church, and she works hard to raise her children, particularly a son who she has to weaken ("it hurts me/ to teach my man-child/to cower/ i do it/ because i want him/ to /live") in order to keep him alive in a racist world. she represents a legion of day-workers who outwardly don't fight racism, but do their best, through their prayers and support of family, to keep the next generation nurtured through adulthood.
Eso:
it's the name. commonly misnomered "Maybelle" by some who hear it aloud, it is really spelled "Maybail." why? because she may bail at any time. using the common hip-hop colloquialism of "bailing" or "bailing out" (which means to leave at an instant), she represents the worker who could--at any given moment--turn on their employer and violate the "employer-employee code" in order to hand down justice. note the similarities between Maybail and Celie in "The Color Purple," during the scene where Celie receives joy out of the tiny retributive act of spitting in Mister's drink. sure, it didn't harm him. no one knew about it except her. yet, it was a tiny victory.
Maybail does not do this, but she has considered it, as have many black domestics dating back to slavery times. she is in a position of viewing the ultimate contradiction ('how can you/ spit on black people/ and practice/evil/ then find your way home/ and ask for some/ tea/ prepared by a/ black person/ like/ me?"). yet, she maintains her dignity ("i've got to treat you/ better/ than you/ treat/ me.") for the sake of the larger good. she represents the love of Christ.
note that you may have witnessed her being "nailed" to the crucifix of her position. penetrated with a dishrag, a broom, a crown-of-thorns-headrag, etc. these implements were handed down to blacks from whites, so that the blacks themselves could hand them to Maybail. such is often the case when we see figures like her--especially as we move up the ladder of "class." we can look down on people like Maybail without realizing that they have played their role also.
MUSIC
Maybail starts, with the rest of the cast, in the Spiritual tradition ("Oh Freedom"), representing the next leg of Afrikan music that influenced early America. but when she speaks, make no mistake, she IS The Blues. her whole monologue is one flowing Spoken-Word Poem. i write to jazz, blues, and gospel most of the time, and Maybail is very much a ripping tenor saxaphone wailing like Big Bill Broonzy on a steel-string guitar. Delali Potakey works the language to make it seamless (a credit more to her interpretational skills than anything else), but it is a poem written in blues meter. if you remove the physical words and listen to the rhythm and tone, you can hear the music. so, in Essence, she represents the longing of those in pain to express themselves in a productive way--which is what the blues is. a cathartic moan of reconciliation.
what did you feel when you watched Maybail? did you find some of what she said humorous? frightening? let's rap.
