Sonny’s Blues: Jazz and It’s Role on the Human Emotion

Abigail McCormick

ENL10C

Fountain

14 May 2018

Sonny’s Blues: Jazz and It’s Role on the Human Emotion 

The short story Sonny’s Blues by James Baldwin does an amazing job at capturing the role music can have on the human psyche, expressing the true contentedness it brings through the seemingly self-destructive main character, Sonny. Told from the perspective of Sonny’s brother, a broken, middle-aged Algebra teacher, this story is one of growth and accumulation, all of which seem to follow a particular jazz-like rhythm. At thew end of the story, after a rocky retelling of the narrator and Sonny’s upbringing and the life Sonny is currently learning to lead, the narrator visits Sonny at a jazz club, and there is a complete change in the perception of Sonny and the narrator, by which is demonstrated not only through the diction and syntax, but also through the use of vivid imagery within the reader. 

Because of the weight placed on music within this particular piece, it can be challenging to pinpoint the exact song in which could touch Sonny, his crowd, and the narrator in the way it does. However, the song “Fables of Faubus” by Charles Mingus, a jazz composer, expresses a large level of emotion all through the absence of words, in which is particularly interesting.

The absence of words in “Fables of Faubus” is one of the many qualities of which make it compatible with Sonny’s Blues, in that it makes up for any and all words through the deep expression of emotion. Not only does the narrator himself use too many words to describe the setting, his emotions, and the plot itself, but Sonny’s obvious lack of verbal expression is made up for through the music he plays. The beginning of the song builds up the listeners anticipation, utilizing a mischievous sound through music itself. At the same time, the tune seems as if it is attempting to be careful, structured, and hide the true feelings it contains. The same excerpt plays repeatedly, over and over, throughout the first few minutes of the lengthy song, paralleling the fact that Sonny has repeatedly fallen into a rabbit hole of drugs, lies, and discontentment. 

By the second minute of the song, there’s a sense of competition and anger, by which can be seen and measured in the capacity of how the narrator perceives and describes Sonny. “[The children’s laughter] was not joyous laughter […] It was mocking and insular, its intent was to denigrate […] Perhaps I was listening to them because I was thinking about my brother and in them I heard my brother. And myself” (2). This sense of anger the narrator is associating with his brother and the way in which he relates it to his students shows an obvious disdain amongst the family, and actually shows that the narrator blames himself, in a way, for the destruction of his brother. In a more obvious sense, the piano in the background throughout the entire song is significant to Sonny’s story, in that it is a reminder of the time Sonny spent with Isabel after promising to attend school in order to play the piano. The narrator states, “Isabel finally confessed that it wasn't like living with a person at all, it was like living with sound. And the sound didn’t make any sense, to her, didn’t make sense to any of them—naturally” (13). This particular moment is significant because of the way in which the piano works to show the role Sonny had in his family’s life: not only was his presence measured through rhythm, but it was also how he communicated his thoughts, emotions, and feelings, and he buried himself in it as a way to convey his emotion. 

The middle of the sixth minute mellows out entirely, and this stringy and calm tone can be representative of the time by which Sonny ran away from the narrator and Isabel. The silence in which the narrator describes (“the silence of the next few days must have been louder than the sound of all the music ever since time began” (13).), and the description of the fight in which brought the narrator to tears, shows how he desperately wants Sonny to need him. This can be seen in this song as well, when the melancholy tone  begins to pick up at around the seventh minute. The narrator says, “I stood in the hallway, staring at the door. I heard somebody laugh in the room and then the tears came to my eyes. I started down the steps, whistling to keep from crying, I kept whistling to myself, You going to need me, baby, one of these cold, rainy days” (14).

The end of the song shows an eager contentment, and leave the listener wanting more, despite the fact the song is eight minutes long. The yearning, emotion, and desperation all within this particular song are the reason it so perfectly encapsulates Baldwin’s Sonny’s Blues, and the absence of words actually works to show that music speaks for itself, with or without words.