Sonny's Blues by James Baldwin (1957)
“Sonny's Blues” by James Baldwin is a popular story, in which are metaphorically emphasized musical elements. Closer consideration of blues and jazz forms application and use of musicians such as Creole, Charlie Parker and Louis Armstrong by Baldwin shows that the basic motives of the story are supported by these themes. The blues, as music and state of being, can be considered as basic to story’s structure. Richard N. Albert says, “In this story, content (message) of the blues is all important,” because by a number of blacks they are considered to be the release from and reflection of sufferings, experienced during slavery. At the story’s end the blues are played by Sonny, reflecting the black heritage, that impressed his brother and returned him into his black sisters and brothers’ community. Beyond using motif of blues for depiction of Sonny and narrator’s unhappiness, the author uses motif of jazz for emphasizing individualism theme. Sonny plays a piano for individuality, exactly for achieving self-determined identity, as this kind of music depends on ability of every musician to improvise ideas. This character idolizes Charlie Parker as the best jazz improviser. In all life aspects Parker soared to heights and flew freely, his adolescence is parallel to Sonny's life as he had acquaintance with drugs almost at the same time with music. When he was fifteen, Parker had addiction for narcotics. Author also mentions Parker when Sonny outside the window hears some boys’ voices: “One boy was whistling a tune, at once very complicated and very simple, it seemed to be pouring out of him as though he were a bird, and it sounded very cool and moving through all that harsh, bright air, only just holding its own through all those other sounds (Baldwin 14)." Here Parker is compared with the image of bird, which blows cools and complicates improvisations. (Richard N. Albert, 178-180)
Baldwin employs Harlem idiom for musical motif, such thing can also be found in his short stories and novels. Specifically, as mentioned by the author, the blues connect familiarity and strangeness, desire and sorrow, reality and memory, present and past. The schoolboys sounds outside the empty classroom announce willingness of narrator to look for beauty in tune’s tenacity and his ability to listen. Music, especially in unforgiving or incongruent circumstances, appears in difficult moments of the text. To Sonny’s addiction counterpart is acceptable his music as a blink in his life within situation’s desperation. By contrast, the death of Grace is displayed by lack of sounds around her. In the story is described how his wife Isabel heard in living room the falling down of Grace: “When you have a lot of children you don’t always start running when one of them falls, unless they start screaming or something. And, this time, Gracie was quiet. Yet, Isabel says that when she heard that thump and then that silence, something happened to make her afraid” (Baldwin 18-19). The experience of his wife proposes that between them there is knowledge’s complete intimacy, they live as in vacuum, filled with their complex self, their struggle and coping mechanisms. According to Eva Kowalska, “Sonny is sound: an arrangement of sound so expressive that he eventually allows, in a profound moment of enlightenment in a darkened cellar nightclub, his brother to feel that he can make sense of not just his own suffering and joy, but of these emotional experiences on a universal human level.” The relationship of Sonny to music has certain importance; it relates to heroin, forming his identity. Meaningful action is precluded by this kind of absorption, and accordingly this character is moving to turn his obliterating, profound sounds into insightful and intelligible music once he is forced by rehabilitation to lose addict identity. Such crucial element enables closure and fulfillment when finishing the story. (Eva Kowalska 4-5)
Musical references spectrum must be explored, as cohesion and harmony of the story are essential. Pop, Jazz, Blues and Spirituals are vital for probing African-American musical traditions that can give us comprehensive understanding of Baldwin’s use of music in this story. If we look closely at the diversity of musical genres in African-American community, it is possible to notice unity’s nuances, which are created by Baldwin in “Sonny's Blues” due to musical allusions, and core elements of the complex music and life such as search for relations with family, hope, artistic expression, despair, loneliness and human isolation. As Steven C. Tracy says, “Through musical intertextuality, Baldwin demonstrates not only how closely related seemingly disparate (in the Western tradition) musical genres are, but also shows that the elements of the community that these genres flow from and represent are much more in synchronization than they sometimes seem or are allowed to be”. Social and historical context, provided by Baldwin, clearly unites secular and sacred musical traditions of African-Americans, revealing commonality instead of bifurcation. In music, namely jazz, spiritual, blues or gospel, are expressed suffering and joy. Like members of community and family, musical genres transcend the artistic, siritual and philosophical differences, which describe them. They create a wholeness rather than destroy each other. For instance, in gospel traditions interpolations of performances and lyrics by Baldwin show that Sonny’s life vision is holistic not fragmenting. Sonny does not neglect modes of expression or experiences of folks, by whom gospel music is performed on his neighborhood’s streets, and his mother’s traditional faith. The use of “If I Could Hear My Mother Pray Again” song in the story reinforces many important elements such as innocent past notion, discussed at gatherings on Sunday afternoon, centrality of hearing, wish to reach holistic unity from sufferings and fragmentation and the desire of family re-unification. The family can be regarded not only biological but also extended. He says that “repulsive to think you have to suffer that much” (Baldwin 40) that means that his response to the woman’s song is sympathetic. (Steven C. Tracy 165-172) Although this Sonny considers this song terrible, it describes his internal feelings: “It’s terrible sometimes, insidethat’s what’s the trouble. You walk these streets, black and funky and cold, and there’s not really a living ass to talk to, and there’s nothing shaking, and there’s no way of getting it out—that storm inside.” (Baldwin 41)
In “Sonny’s Blues” everywhere can be found a music: in sounds-cape and atmosphere of Baldwin’s story. Sonny’s interior life, connections with listeners of jazz and fellow musicians are linked with making of music communal. Sonny was not separate anymore, when he has found his groove. In expressing emotions and becoming music, jazz ensemble members start to be separate, but no isolation or separation can be felt at jazz club. According to Robert McParland, ultimately this story is about community, sharing and cohesiveness; communal music is pointed out. In jazz, this character feels him as in world of spontaneous feeling, ritual and rhythms. Likewise, communal emotions are experienced by narrator of the story. In Sonny is going something special, especially in making of music. Like music, life of Sonny is the pattern of tension and expectancy process, his consciousness may be considered as the rhythm’s expression and dynamic force. Ecstasy is reached by Sonny, into music he invests psychic energy, with emotional and psychological energy are charged the efforts to meaning making. Sonny feels distress before breaking free that can be associated with romantic repetition, involving turbulence, disturbance or distress. Being troubled and turbulent character, he can be also considered as gifted artist. His subject includes struggle of one person and his spirit, psychology and music, life and music. As Robert McParland argues, “Baldwin points to the artist and his jazz as an ecstatic fusion between subject and object”. In Sonny’s blues the main character uses drugs and searches for transformative capability, in his life intervals there is craving for and substitute of such experience. Outside the ensemble of jazz nobody easily understands Sonny even his brother:
Isabel finally confessed that it wasn’t like living with a person at all,
it was like living with a sound. And the sound didn’t make any sense to her,
His brother feels that Sonny plays for his own life that relates to reality, simultaneously noticing that he is killing himself slowly. It is clear for Baldwin that in Sonny’s music exists some tension of struggling with death for life. The narrator is willing to rescue him from such situation, however, for Sonny perhaps may be salvific only the music. In order to resist against “going to pieces” he involves in playing blues and jazz. Baldwin associates his character with an artist, who struggles for his place in society: this creative man is like in lover’s struggle with society. Sonny wants to open up possibilities of artist and overcome the darkness, which surrounds him. He goes into his personal space within his communal connection and rhythm; music becomes gift when he creates it his own. After reaching breakthrough point, in music his life is given back. Baldwin has provided a beautiful lyrical passage, which suggests memory and generation, when Sonny plays. To narrator his music restores family, community and memory. The blues propose suspension space between breakthrough to wholeness and life trouble. (Robert McParland 1-7)
Works Cited
Richard N. Albert. "The Jazz-Blues Motif in James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues". 1984, College Literature. Print
Eva Kowalska. "Troubled reading: “Sonny’s blues” and empathy." 2009, University of Johannesburg Press. Print
Steven C. Tracy. "Sonny in the Dark: Jazzing the Blues Spirit and the Gospel Truth in James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues." 2015, Manchester University Press. Print
Alper Mazman. "Jazz talks: representations & self-representations of African American music and its musicians from bebop to free jazz." 2009, University of Nottingham Press. Print
Robert McParland. "To the Deep Water, Jazz in James Baldwin's 'Sonny's Blues." 2006, Interdisciplinary Humanities. Print
Baldwin James. "Sonny's Blues." 1957, Klett Sprachen. Print
