In August Wilson’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” Ma Rainey fights to control what happens to her music once she enters the recording studio. Today, musicians are confronting a new question: What happens when artificial intelligence can profit from the identity attached to their music?
Round House Theatre’s production of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” which runs through Oct. 18 in Bethesda, Maryland, brings an older struggle over artistic control to the stage. Set during a recording session in 1920s Chicago, Wilson’s play follows Ma and her band as conflicts over art, money and control expose the imbalance between the musicians creating the work and the people conducting the business around it. That same question of who can profit from an artist’s value is now being tested in a very different setting nearly a century later.
Musicians Jason Isbell, David Lowery, Guy Forsyth and Eduardo Calle filed a class-action lawsuit on Aug. 31 against AI music company Suno. They allege that the company commercially exploits artists through an AI system capable of generating music imitating artists’ identities and styles without permission. Suno disputes the allegations.
The U.S. Copyright Office has also studied AI-generated digital replicas and recommended federal legislation to address gaps in protections against unauthorized replicas of a person’s voice or appearance. Its broader AI inquiry received more than 10,000 public comments.
For Nicole Michelle Haskins, who portrays Ma Rainey in the Round House production, the struggle over power begins with understanding Ma as more than a demanding recording star.
“She is the only advocate she has,” Haskins said. “The choices presented to her are to surrender or fight. Ma chooses to fight.”
Haskins said Ma enters the recording studio knowing the value that she brings, even as the people around her repeatedly challenge her decisions. She exercises her leverage and pushes back when others attempt to dictate how the session will proceed.
The real Gertrude “Ma” Rainey was one of the earliest Black women to record blues commercially. Between 1923 and 1928, she made more than 100 recordings for Paramount Records, according to the Smithsonian.
One surviving agreement shows how at least part of that business worked. A Dec. 12, 1923, royalty agreement for “Walking Blues,” signed by Rainey and composer Lovie Austin, provided them two cents for each printed piano copy sold in the United States and Canada. They were also entitled to one-fourth of the royalties the publisher received from mechanical reproductions, minus a 10% collection cost.
For Haskins, portraying a character negotiating those relationships does not feel entirely removed from being an artist today.
“The life that I live as an artist is not that dissimilar from the world that August Wilson has written,” Haskins said.
The technology surrounding artists, however, has changed dramatically.
The scale of AI-generated music has grown quickly. In July, streaming service Deezer said it was receiving about 90,000 fully AI-generated tracks a day, more than half of its daily uploads. Those tracks accounted for less than 3% of all streams.
The lawsuit against Suno is not primarily a traditional copyright case about whether an AI-generated song copied a particular recording. Instead, the musicians rely largely on state right-of-publicity laws, which concern the commercial use of a person’s identity.
According to the complaint, users can enter musicians’ names and use them as a retrieval key for AI-generated music drawing on characteristics associated with those artists. The plaintiffs argue that an output does not have to copy a specific song or perfectly reproduce an artist’s voice for the artist’s commercial identity to be exploited.
Suno disputes that characterization of its technology. The company has said it does not use artists’ names as training metadata and does not permit users to prompt its system for specific artists. Suno says references to artists are filtered and redirected toward descriptions of musical characteristics. Its own prompting guide, for example, encourages users to describe features such as tempo, vocals and instrumentation, using phrases like “bright pop track,” “110 BPM,” “female vocals” and a “big synth hook.”
The Suno dispute centers on more than ownership of a particular song or recording. It raises the question of whether an artist’s name, likeness and other identifying characteristics can be used commercially to generate new music without permission.
Haskins resists describing that underlying conflict as merely contemporary.
“I don’t think they feel contemporary,” Haskins said of Ma’s concerns. “I think they feel worldly.”
For Haskins, AI is one setting for a larger struggle over who has power over creative work. She said the problem of Black people being separated from control of things they created has existed far longer than the technology now raising those questions. The Library of Congress notes that early record companies sometimes used white performers to record music associated with Black artists rather than hire the Black performers themselves, while Black musicians remained rare on early commercial recordings.
“It just hasn’t stopped happening,” she said.
That interpretation shapes the way Haskins portrays Ma’s fight for control. She pointed to a brief moment in the second act when Ma’s manager attempts to steer her toward a different song. Ma refuses and proceeds with the recording she intends to make.
Haskins said the moment stands out precisely because Ma does not need a dramatic confrontation to establish who has the final say.
“She’s not demanding control. She’s not asserting control,” Haskins said. “She is simply positioning herself in correct order.”
La Tetra Metts-Owens is a reporter for HUNewsService.com. She covers Prince George’s County and theater.
