The Vertical Analysis of The Jazz Performance
w ere maybe owned by it.” p.128 and as well as in the jazz performance: “Some
people at the bar shushed others. The waitress ran around frantically getting in the last orders, guys and chicks got closer to each other” p.137. This excitement
indicates the importance of the performance to the people. The second similarity is the testifying part. In the verbal music of revival
meeting Baldwin writes “The brother was testifying and while he testified two of the sisters stood together, seeming to say, amen” p.128. Baldwin also inserts a
statement in the jazz perfor mance: “Then they all gathered around Sonny and
Sonny played. Every now and again one of them seemed to say, amen.” p.140.
The statement implies an act of testifying. In his performance, Sonny testifies his life, his struggle, and his triumph in his playing, just like the brother who testifies
the rescue work in the bible. The numbers of performers in the two music performances, whether
incidentally or not, also have the same number that is four. However, not every performer is described sufficiently as the importance laid in the leader whose role
is dominant on the performance. The leader in both performances exists within the sister with tambourine and Creole. It is already described in the analysis of the
verbal music how Creole leads the band, guide Sonny into his triumph, and delivers the message of the music. Similarly, the sister with tambourine leads the
singing in the revival meeting as seen in “the woman with the tambourine, whose singing dominated the air” p.129. Another statement of their similar role can be
found in “the sister with the tambourine kept a steady, jangling beat.” p.129 and
“it was Creole who held them all back. . . Up there, keeping the beat with his whole body.” p.138.
Another similarity is seen in the part which the music affects the audience or the triumph achieved. Although the evoked experience is subjective, the point of
this experience or the triumph is similar in its relating to the past, the freedom, and the courage to face the world. It is described in the verbal music of the revival
meeting how it leads them to the past: “time seemed, nearly, to fall away from the
sullen, belligerent, battered faces, as though they were fleeing back to their first condition, while dreaming of their last” p.129, how the freedom enters: “the
music seemed to soothe a poison out of them ” p.129, and how it gives them
courage: “. . . impatiently, as though he had just remembered a pressing appointment further up the avenue
” p.129. Those three also appears in the narrator‟s evoked experience through the jazz performance. The evoked past,
mainly tells about his family, is seen in the statement: “And he was giving it back,
as everything must be given back . . . and it brought something else back to me” p.140
. The freedom is stated clearly: “Freedom lurked around us . . . he could help us to be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did.
” p.140. T
he last statement of courage: “And I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside, as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble
stretched above us.” p.140. The last but important similarity is the description of the instruments itself.
Baldwin describes the tambourine and piano as a powerful instruments as well as ordinary instruments. By playing them the performers triumph and then share it to
the audience. This can only be achieved by “fill it, this instrument, with the breath of life” p.138. However, these instruments are only ordinary instrument if they
are not played. It is seen in “the tambourine turned into a collection plate again.”
p.129- 130 and “a piano is just a piano. It‟s made out of so much wood and wires
and little hammers and big ones, and ivory.” p.138 These similarities shows that the story of
“Sonny‟s Blues” is actually develop in metaphoric organization as it emphasize the similarities of the different
part of the story rather than links of sequence and consequence. Here can be stated that Baldwin uses the revival meeting to describe the same process of delivering
message of freedom to African American. This can be seen that he features some terms such as “seemed to say, amen” and “cup of trembling” in the description of
jazz performance.