"Summertime" from Porgy and Bess

Porgy and Bess is set in the early 1900's in an all-Black fishing community in Charleston, South Carolina. Bess, the lead female character, is addicted to drugs and lives with the town bully, Crown. After Crown, while high on cocaine, murders Robbins over a game of craps, Bess tells him to flee; Sportin' Life, her cocaine dealer, wants her to flee with him to New York City, but she declines. With no one else to turn to, Porgy, the crippled beggar of Catfish Row, agrees to let Bess stay with him. They settle into domestic life together and soon fall in love. Bess and Porgy go to a picnic together and before Bess can leave, Crown, who was hiding in the bushes, rapes Bess. She returns to the mainland and begs for Porgy's forgiveness and asks if he'll protect her from Crown. Crown returns to lay claim to his woman, and when he draws a knife, Porgy strangles him to death. Sportin' Life returns and tries to convince Porgy to admit to Crown's murder, and, after he feeds Bess cocaine, convinces her to go to New York with him. The operetta ends with Porgy setting off to find his love.

Porgy and Bess is problematic in a number of ways. It is clear to me that this operetta was written for a white audience to further perpetuate the notion that Black people are, more often than not, tangled up in drugs, money, and love problems. This tragically sad show highlights the events in Bess' life, but she always has a man after her, and she always relies on them. While the music is beautifully sung and written, it was written by white people for white people in a very white style of music, opera. If I am not mistaken, Porgy and Bess became the first Black folk-opera of its time. It had a bad reaction from the white consumers at first, but the music and lyrics are quite beautiful; some of the featured songs have become beloved throughout the ages. "Summertime", for example, has been sung by artists such as Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Luis Armstrong, and Myles Davis who all put their own personal flair on it rather than singing it like an operetta. "Summertime" sets the stage as the very first musical number in Porgy and Bess, an interesting choice by Gershwin and Heyward to have a Black women open their show.