drums talked back. Then the horn insisted, sweet and high, slightly detached perhaps, and Creole listened, commenting now and then, dry, and driving
and calm and old. Then they all came together again, and Sonny was part of family again. I could tell this from his face. He seemed to have found, right
there beneath his fingers, a damn brand-new piano. p.139 This beautiful playing is not the end of the performance. Next, Baldwin
describes how the emotional effects evoked on the audience. It happens when “Creole stepped forward to remind them that what they were playing was the
blues” p.139, on this point Baldwin describes the significance of the music and it is Creole who delivers the message to
all of them. “He hit something in all of them, he hit something in me, myself, and the music tightened and deepene
d.” p.139
The message of the music is described “not about very new.”p.139
Baldwin, through the description of the jazz performance, stated that everyone already knows the message but they do not really remember. In the performance,
the job of musicians is to make everyone listen and remember it. He and his boys up there were keeping it new, at the risk of ruin,
destruction, madness, and death, in order to find new ways to make us listen. For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and
how we may triumph is never new, it always m ust be heard. There isn‟t any
other tale to tell, it‟s the only light we‟ve got in all this darkness. p.139 Again,
Baldwin presents Creole as the one who „speak‟ to all the audience. While Creole plays the bass, he continues to communicate with the audience. He
makes Sonny as the role model of the struggle and the triumph achieved trough music.
The playing of “Am I Blue” speaks for that. Creole seems to speak to the audience that all their playing is “Sonny‟s Blues” or blues about Sonny. Creole
wants the audience to know the story of Sonny‟s struggle and even feel what
Sonny feels . Later, it is told that Creole let Sonny play for himself. “Creole wasn‟t
trying any longer to put Sonny in the water. He was wishing him Godspeed”.
p.139 The band continues playing the song, which is this time Sonny lead the
song. “Then they all gathered around Sonny and Sonny played. Every now and again one of them seemed to say,
amen.” p.140 The playing of this song also described as “very beautiful because it wasn‟t hurried and it was no longer a
lament”. p.140. As the song continues, the narrator starts to realize that it is freedom that is offered. “Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that
he could help us to be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did”. p.140
And at last, the narrator also reaches his triumph. Baldwin describes how finally the narrator is affected emotionally by the music. All his significance past
memories are evoked. When he experiences this, he finally can understand Sonny‟s life and his problems during the brothers had a fight before.
I saw my mother‟s face again, and felt, for the first time, how the stones of the road she had walked on must have bruised her feet. I saw moonlight
road where my father‟s brother died. And it brought something else back to me, and carried me past it. I saw my little girl again and felt Isabel‟s tears
again, and felt my own tears begin to rise. p.140 Then the song is over. There described to be scattered applause. The
narrator asked a girl to take a drink on the bandstand. When the next song is about to begin Sonny drinks from the bottle that his brother gives and look at his
brother, he nods. From that point the description of verbal music of the jazz performance as well as the story is ended.
In the description of jazz performance, Baldwin emphasizes the struggle of the performer, that is Sonny, in order to express his experience in the music. He
deals with his own emotion in the first playing and he triumph and share it to the audience
in the playing of “Am I Blue”.
B. The Structural Analysis of Verbal Music
This chapter analyzes the verbal music horizontally and vertically as Scher suggests. The horizontal analysis features the progressing events in each verbal
music and also the metonymic or the link of sequence and consequence, while the vertical analysis features the verbal evocations of the music described in the
verbal music and also the metaphoric elements.
1. The Horizontal Analysis of the Revival Meeting
The verbal music of the revival meeting is described in fast plot. Baldwin tells the event,
from the narrator‟s point of view, flowing from one action to the next, almost without commentary. That makes progressive events based on
contiguity that operates horizontally dominates the verbal music of revival meeting, resulting in little retarding effects.
The horizontal structure consists of sequence that develop from the descriptions of the people who watched the revival, then moves to the testimony
of the brother, then to the singing, and moves back to the audience again in the description of the effects of the music and singing.
In the very first description, Baldwin puts an opening sequence that indicates the relation of spatial situation
: “On the sidewalk across from me, near the entrance to a barbecue joint, some people were holding an old-fashioned
revival meeting. ” p.128. The description implies that the narrator does not
involve in the revival meeting as he only watches in the distance. He is considered not to be involved as the audience of the performance as he is not affected by the
music emotionally as the other people do. However, he is considered as an observer as he observes how the revival progressed until the music evokes the
emotions on the people. The next sequence shows the relation of
synecdoche part to wholes of “the people”, that is the barbecue cook, the kids, and some people that temporarily stop
their activity to watch the revival. The description of the audiences indicates the people‟s reaction and concern toward the revival meeting. From the description, it
can be seen that people is still interested in such old tradition. In the lexical level, words can give the special characteristic. The word
“old-fashioned‟ explains that the revival meeting is actually an old, or ancient perhaps, ritual and it is described
to be performed in the old ways also. It signifies that the ritual still carries the old values from their formers.
Another relation of synecdoche is the description of the performers, that is the brother and three sisters. The procession of the performance itself can be seen
to consist of two important stages: the testifying and the singing. In performing the revival, the brother and the three sisters use some instruments. These
instruments that they used signify how the great message of the ritual can be
delivered by simple instruments. “All they had were their voices and their Bibles
and a tambourine.” p.128. These simple instruments which later carry the great effect on people as stated in previous chapter. To be analyzed lexically,
„voices‟ refers to the singing of the sisters and brother, it is their means to express the
message of the revival . The „Bibles‟ refers to the act of testifying by the brother.
Testifying bibles is the representation of the old tradition and values as it has been performed since the early years of Christianity. While the tambourine is the
musical instruments that lead and keep the beat of the singing. The tambourine also had a special role to collect the coins from the people.
The next sequence after the description of the singing, there descibed a sequence that shows the relation of causality. Although Baldwin does not clearly
described the cause, it can be seen that the music does effect to the audience. The effects of the music can be represented in the statement: “As the singing filled the
air the watching, listening faces underwent a change, the eyes focusing on something within.” p.129. The statement clearly says that music evokes the
emotions of the peop le. “Listening faces underwent a change” is just a
representation of the evoked emotions expressed through their mimic. “The eyes
focused on something within ” indicates that they no longer see what is in around
them, but they see something emotional deep inside them. And the last description, that is the final consequence, some people leave
the revival and continue their activity, when they get back to the real world after they are
carried away by the music. “The barbeque cook half shook his head and smiled, and dropped his cigarette, and disappeared
into his joint.” p.129 The act
of shaking head is the moment when the cook is sober from the music. Also in the statement “A man fumbled in his pockets for a change and stood holding it in his
hand impatiently, as though he had just remembered a pressing appointment further up the avenue. He looked furious.” p.129 The word „impatient‟ and
„furious‟ show the mental condition of the man who has just realize something and get the feeling of courage.
2. The Vertical Analysis of Verbal Music of the Revival Meeting
Although the metonymic organization dominates the verbal music of revival meeting, there are some metaphoric descriptions especially in the second
paragraph that are stated by the narrator as the verbal evocations of the music. This verbal evocations show how what revival meeting means to the people.
The statement “the music seemed to soothe a poison out of them.” p.129 is
a metaphor of the effect of the music toward the audience. It can be seen that the statement get the meaning from different context, that is the context of
medication. So the evocation says that the music has a healing effect for the audience.
„The poison‟ may refer to the African-American experience in the past, and Baldwin describes this experience in the jazz performance.
The statements “. . .not one of them had been rescued“ and “Nor had they
seen much in the way of rescue work being done around them.” p.129 show that the
“rescue work” of the sisters and the brother, which is usually related to the Christianity where Jesus rescues the sinners, is not the focus of the revival
meeting in this society. Rather, it is the music that does the role of saving people.
The statement from Mel Watkins below represents perfectly what Baldwin means in his description of revival meeting that African-American, the society in the
story specifically, has different purpose in performing the revival meeting to the other Christian believers:
The goal of black preachers in fact, of most religious interpreters is to adapt mythic scripture to the mimetic needs of their congregations
—making the tenets of Christianity relevant to the reality of the black experience.
Watkins, 1988: 122 Although Christianity or the revival meeting does not originally belong to
African-American, it is performed in African-American society in such a way that it suits the African-American experience. The performance of the revival meeting
in African American society is not really to spread the gospel of the life of Jesus Christ or His
“rescue work”, but it expresses the despair and the hope of freedom, their experience since the age of slavery.
The other metaphor found in the verbal music of the revival meeting is the statement
“the tambourine turned into a collection plate again.” p.129-130. The separate context can be seen as „tambourine‟ is a musical instrument, but also
some pieces of plate. Through the metaphor, the author wants to say that the musical instrument has a power if it is played, as described in the verbal music of
the revival, how it can “heal” people.
3. The Horizontal Analysis of The Jazz Performance
The horizontal sequences the jazz performance develop from the description of the club; the first playing set where Sonny struggles; the second playing set,
“Am I Blue”, where the band delivers the message; and the effects or the triumph
