In the description of revival meeting, Baldwin seems emphasizing the importance of the music. How the revival successfully evokes people emotions by
the singing and the music conducted by the brother and three sisters. The other important point in the verbal music of revival meeting is the event
in which the story shifts into the scene of Sonny and his brother having conversation while the music of the revival is still continuing that represent the
special characteristic of the progressive movement in the verbal music.
2. The Jazz Performance
The jazz performance may be the most important scene in the story as it acquires the greatest portion
in “Sonny’s Blues”. In the jazz performance there are three sets of compositions that are played. Baldwin use re-representational verbal
music as he chooses “Am I Blue”, a song written by Harry Akst and Grant Clarke
made famous by Ethel Waters in 1929 Albert, 1984: 183, as one compositions featured in the description of jazz performance.
T he performance set in “the only nightclub on a short, dark street,
downtown” p.135 a setting that is very common in African American society especially in Harlem. This setting creates a dark atmosphere that is described as
“the lights were very dim in this room and we couldn’t see.” p.135. When Sonny and his brother enter the room, they are welcomed by other
musicians. The first musician they met is Creole. He is described as “an enormous
black man, much older than Sonny. . . He had a big voice, too. . . ” p.135-136.
Creole seems to know Sonny well, as he said to the narrator “You got a real
musician in your family.” p.136. Later it is told that Creole joins the performance and he plays bass. Another musician also join them whom Baldwin
does not mention the name. He is described as “a coal-black, cheerful-looking man, built close to the ground”. p.136
The narrator is introduced to many people in the bar. The bar itself is described as a familiar place for Sonny, he knows everyone in the bar and
everyone there knows him. And it turned out that everyone in the bar knew Sonny, or almost everyone;
some were musicians, working there, or nearby, or not working, some were simply hangers-on, and some were there to hear Sonny play. p.136
When the performance is about to begin, Creole takes the narrator to sit on a
table in the dark corner. From that point, the narrator observes his brother and other musicians gather below the bandstand p.136. Baldwin then describes the
musicians get into the bandstand one by one: . . . the small, black man, moved into the light and crossed the bandstand
and started fooling around with his drums. Then —being funny and being,
also, extremely ceremonious —Creole took Sonny by the arm and led him to
the piano . . . Creole then went to the bass fiddle and a lean, very bright- skinned brown man jumped on the bandstand and picked up his horn.
p.146 There are four musicians on the bandstand playing different instruments:
Creole on the bass, a black man on the drums, a bright brown man plays the horn, they play along with Sonny on the piano. Baldwin also describes the situation in
the bar just before the performance is begun. Everyone is excited and it seems that they have waited for the moment.
. . . the atmosphere on the bandstand and in the room began to change and tighten. Someone stepped up to the microphone and announced them. Then
there were all kind of murmurs. 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, and the lights on the bandstand, on the quartet,
turned to a kind of indigo. p.137 When the band starts to play, Baldwin shifts the description into the
narrator ’s mind as he just realizes something to deal with music. He knows that
music can evoke something emotional within a person. However, for musicians it is different. It is the job for the musicians to make people able to evoke their
emotions besides dealing with their own emotions. Baldwin describes this as the „triumph’. By playing the instrument, a musician tries to triumph, and then he tries
to share his triumph. Many people still do not realize this. All I know about music is that not many people really hear it. And even
then, on the rare occasions when something opens within, and the music enters, what we mainly hear, or hear corroborated, are personal; private,
vanishing evocations. But the man who creates music is hearing something else, is dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as
it hits the air. What is evoked in him, then, is of another order, more terrible because it has no words, and triumphant, too, for the same reason. And his
triumph, when he triumphs is ours. p.137 As Sonny and his fellows play, the narrator continues to observe them.
When he sees Sonny, he notices that he is struggling at the same time he plays. “I
just watched Sonny’s face. His face was troubled, he was working hard.” p.137.
The narrator also feels that Sonny does not play with other players, yet he seems to play for himself.
“. . . everyone on the bandstand was waiting for him, both waiting for him an
d pushing him along.” p.137 The narrator also notices that behind the bass, Creole plays special role
among them. It is him that leads all of them. But as I began to watch Creole, I realized that it was Creole who held them
back. He had them on a short rein. Up there, keeping the beat with his whole
body, wailing on the fiddle, with his eyes half closed, he was listening to everything, but he was listening to Sonny. p.138
In the next description, Baldwin elaborates the “dialogue” between Creole
and Sonny. Creole wants Sonny to finish his struggle by letting all the past memories go, Creole knows how Sonny feels because Creole also has more or less
the same experience in his past. He wanted Sonny to leave the shoreline and strike out of deep water. He
was Sonny’s witness that deep water and drowning were not the same thing
—he had been there, and he knew. And he wanted Sonny to know. He was waiting for Sonny to do the things on the keys which would let Creole
know that Sonny was in the water. p.138 Then Sonny continues to struggle. He does not play a piano for over a year
while he has a lot of troubles and jailed, so this is the time to recall the memories and get over it by playing music on his piano. Finally, the narrator notices that
Sonny start to get on his triumph by the time of first set is going to end. . . . the face I saw on Sonny I’d never seen before. Everything had been
burned out of it, and, at the same time, things usually hidden were being burned in, by the fire and fury of the battle which was occurring in him up
there.
Yet, watching Creole’s face as they neared the end of the first set, I had the feeling that something had happened, something I hadn’t heard.
p.138 Then when the first set is over. Baldwin describes the next song, which is
“Am I Blue.” In this song, the text describes how they can play together when Sonny already finishes his struggle. Baldwin also describes this next song
differently, now he emphasizes the beauty of their playing. If the first set focuses on Sonny’s struggle, this time they described as a band. The difference is that now
every musician is communicating each other so that they create a beautiful music. Something began to happen. And Creole let out the reins. The dry, low,
black man said something awful on the drums, Creole answered, and the
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
