The Blues play an important role in the play because all the characters are consistent in their personalities. There is always a consistency or repetitiveness about what the characters say or do. Troy always has something to say about death, Bono is always warning Troy against his extra marital affairs, and Cory always has an issue to take up with his father.
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Blues
August Wilson says he uses the language and attitude of blues songs to inspire his plays and play characters. The blues is a melancholy song created by black people in the United States that tends to repeat a twelve bar phrase of music and a 3-line stanza that repeats the first line in the second line. A blues song usually contains several blue, or minor, notes in the melody and harmony. Fences is structured somewhat like a blues song. The play all takes place in one place like a key of music and the characters each have their own rhythm and melody that Wilson riffs off of around the common locale. Characters repeat phrases, or pass phrases around, like a blues band with a line of melody. Similar to the role of repeated lyrics and melody of a blues song, Wilson's characters display changes in their life and a changed attitude toward life by repeating scenarios in which they act. For instance, Friday, Troy's payday, is the setting of three scenes. By mirroring the situation in which events in the play take place, we can observe the change that occurs from one instance to the next. For instance in Act One, Scene one, Troy and Bono come home after payday as best friends worried about Troy's future. In Act One, Scene Four, Troy and Bono celebrate after payday because Troy won his discrimination case, but Bono is more concerned that Troy will ruin his life with his extramarital affair. Troy comes home after payday in Act Two, Scene Four, estranged from Bono and his family. He drinks and sings to comfort himself. By now, the good days of the play's first scene seem far-gone. This is a way playwrights manipulate the sense of time in a play, but for Wilson in particular, the repeated events and language of the play are in keeping what he calls a "blues aesthetic." Wilson's plays are extensions of the history of blues in African American culture, and thus, in American culture in general. Troy sings two blues songs, one, in Act Two, scene three, "Please Mr. Engineer let a man ride the line," and in Act Two, scene four, "Hear it Ring! Hear it Ring!" Rose also sings a song in Act One, scene two, "Jesus be a fence all around me every day." Wilson invented these lyrics but based them on themes and symbols in African American traditional, spiritual, gospel, and blues songs. Rose's song is a religious song so hers might have more roots in the gospel tradition. Troy's songs are truly from the blues tradition. His song, "Hear it Ring Hear it Ring!" was passed on to him by his father and in the last scene of the play, we witness Cory and Raynell singing the song together after Troy's death. The blues in Fences connects generations together and keeps alive a family's roots and history beyond the grave. |