Culture of the marketplace and kitchen

I wanted to take a moment and talk about my first impressions of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone and Death and the Kings Horseman. The first thing I thought was the setting that ties each of these plays together, and the music that is used throughout the plays that give each one a solid heart.

In Joe Turner’s Come and Gone we are given a homey, large kitchen and parlor in which many of the scenes take place around a table. While in Death and the Kings Horseman there are several places we travel to, I want to focus on the Marketplace. It is the Marketplace where we are first introduced to our characters, it is also here where most of the important scenes (except the final scene) regarding the characters that are native to Nigeria are seen and heard through poetry and dance.
The Kitchen for many brings up feelings of Mom and family, when one has a party where do most of the guests congregate? If it is large enough the kitchen or dining room will be the meeting place. It may be more comfortable to be in the living room on the couch, but you often find the kitchen is the heart of the home. The Holly’s home in Joe Turner is no different. The boarders may not be family per say but they act like one.

Then you have the Marketplace in Death and the Kings Horseman. We learned last week the market place was a meeting place and usually run by the women, so I find it fitting to place the wedding scene and the ritual of passage here where it is lead by the women. The kitchen and marketplace are run and fed by strong women.
In the Holly home, Bertha may not have a lot of lines but the kitchen is her domain and she runs it with a firm hand. For example in Act Two Scene One Bertha says to Seth while making breakfast “go on out there and make some pots and pans and leave them people alone.” And in Death when the “police” arrive in the marketplace to take Elesin away the women stand up to them and even mock them by speaking with English accents.

This brings me then to the music and songs used in both plays. Considering both plays are on different continents, during different time periods the feel is similar and the sound is too, to a point. In Death they perform a Yoruba dance. Lead by a praise singer with drums this is a call and response song consisting of poetry and verse. In Joe turner they also have a call and response song called a Yuba, based on Ring Shouts of the African Slaves. (page 52 of JTCAG) Since they do not have any drums they use the table or chests to pound out the heavy beat.

The following is a better example of the Yuba song as defined by the Encyclopedia Britannica: A dance of Afro-American slaves, found as late as the 19th century from Dutch Guiana to the Caribbean and the southern United States. It was danced by a circle of men around two men who performed various steps (e.g., the juba, the long dog scratch, the pigeon wing) in response to a rhythmic call and to the clapping (patting juba) of the other dancers. As a refrain, after each new step the circle danced counterclockwise using the juba step. The juba contained features that persist in Afro-American dances, notably improvisation, shuffle steps, supple body movements, and sharp rhythms and was probably related to the African giouba.

“Patting juba”—slapping the hands, legs, and body to produce complex, rapid rhythms—survived the dance and still appears occasionally in areas where the dance had flourished.

Lastly I found it very fascinating that Joe turner takes place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 1910 about 30 years prior to Death and the Kings Horseman (1944). But when you read the two side by side I get a more contemporary feel from Wilson than I do Soyinka. That’s a whole nother blog!

Here is a link to a quick video of the Lincoln Center’s production of Joe Turner.
http://www.lct.org/showMain.htm?id=186