Seven Guitars Book

August Wilson is one of the finest playwrights of the 20th century, but this is not one of his finest plays. The usual elements are here: a setting superbly realized in place and time, a large cast of eloquent, mellifluous African American voices, the abiding presence of music, hints of dark magic and ghostly hauntings, and an overwhelming sense of a complex and dangerous cultural heritage, a heritage which may lead to wisdom but can also lead to despair, violence, and death. When Wilson combines these elements most artfully, they may be transmuted into a masterpiece like Fences. Here, however, the elements don't coalesce, the transformation never happens.

The "seven guitars" of the title are the seven voices of the characters in the play, the six mourners who gather after the funeral to celebrate the life of blues singer Floyd "Schoolboy" Barton, snuffed out at the moment when he had begun to achieve success, and the voice the guitarist and singer, the "Schoolboy" himself. Like many expressionistic playwrights'O'Casey and O'Neill come to mind'Wilson is often deficient in structure and relies instead on the music of his character's speech as a form of organization. This time, though, it doesn't work. The language of the characters isn't sufficiently individualized, except for that of the mad old prophet Hedley, who should act as an occasionally chilling symbolic voice, but overwhelms and unbalances the play.

I admit that I could be wrong. This is a play after all, and I believe that, given the proper attention to the actual blues music of the play, a director, sensitive to the rhythms of speech and blessed with a cast of superior actors with their own individualized voices, could make this play into an an extraordinarily powerful entertainment. I didn't have the privilege of seeing it, though, I merely read it. And in my reading, Seven Guitars--unlike Fences, "The Piano Lesson," and "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom"'failed to come to life.

I'll quote here one of my favorite passages . Floyd the blues singer, on the verge of stardom, expresses his frustration at the factors that hem him in, the forces that seem determined to keep him from going to Chicago and cutting another hit record: I had seven ways to go. They cut that down to six. I say, "Let me try one of them six." They cut it down to five. Every time I push . . . they pull. They cut it down to four. I say, "What's the matter? Everything can't go wrong all the time." They cut it down to three. I say, "Three is better than two'I really don't need but one." They cut it down to two. See . . . I am going to Chicago. If I have to buy me a graveyard and kill everybody I see. I am going to Chicago. I don't want to live my life without. Everybody I know live without. I don't want to do that. I want to live my life with.