James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues”

HARLEM

Even without researching, I know what Harlem has been famous for. It has always been an ethnic spot; some streets are latin, others black, others Irish... And it's not the best of neighborhoods either. Right now it is, but it didn't use to be. Low income families would live there; it was crowded and frustrating. The Harlem Renaissance took place, looking for racial equality through intelectual work, such as poetry, art and music.

http://www.biography.com/blackhistory/harlem-renaissance.jsp#thr

Being a young boy in Harlem at that time, and getting involved with the music scene must have had a terrible influence on Sonny. He was orphaned, from a low income family, born into a family with parents who came from a rural background. He was easily caught up in the fascination and wrath and hate that emerged from all that and was easily influenced to parttake in activities such as doing heroin. However, his brother was absent during this period, being away in the army. ANd, had he not been absent, he was seven years older (and wiser) and would have probably taken a much more mature stand towards this. Sonny surrounded himself with the wrong people and had no one to guide him, which eventually led to his 'tragedy'.

AFRICAN AMERICAN MALES IN THE MILITARY PRE-CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

When Forrest Gump meets Jenny in Washington, DC and meets her friends from the Black Panthers, he is told of how it sickens them that black males are drafted and sent to the most violent zones to be killed, as if they didn't matter. In fact, until the 1940's, the armed forces were segregated! (http://www.army.mil/africanamericans/timeline.html)

Sonny wanting to enlist was ironic because he was coming from the HArlem Renaissance, where they were trying to be integrated, to joining the segregated army. He was trying to change from a non-violent, intellectual protest for equiality to an insitution where he was going to be treated accordingly to what was considered OK for black people to be treated. Not only that, but now he was wanting to belong to a violent, war-oriented organization instead on the intellectual and peaceful jazz movement of HArlem.

BILLIE HOLIDAY

Autumn in New York

It's time to end my holiday and bid the country a hasty farewell.

So on this gray and melancholy day, I'll move to a Manhattan hotel.

I'll dispose of my rose-colored chattels and

prepare for my share of adventures and battles,

Here on the twenty-seventh floor

looking down on the city I hate and adore!

Autumn in New York, why does it seem so inviting?

Autumn in New York, it spells the thrill of first-nighting.

Glittering crowds and shimmering clouds in canyons of steel;

they're making me feel I'm home.

It's autumn in New York that brings the promise of new love.

Autumn in New York is often mingled with pain.

Dreamers with empty hands may sigh for exotic lands;

it's autumn in New York;

it's good to live again.

(http://artists.letssingit.com/billie-holiday-lyrics-autumn-in-new-york-ch94h9d)

Sonny is back in New York now. It's Harlem and not Manhattan, but it's NYC nonetheless. He's back to where he started everything. He was born there, he experimented with drugs, lost his family, ran away from home, was incarcerated... This is his chance for rebirth, he has a second chance at life but is afraid of committing the same mistakes and blowing it again. He can't not suffer, as he told his brother. ANd his way of coping with suffering had always been drugs, but he doesn't want to do them anymore, and that is one of his biggest inner conflicts.

BEBOP

Bebop was an evolution of jazz that took place in the 1940's. It was a way to return jazz to blacks, since white people were beginning to enjoy it too. They 'africanized' it a and tried to make it their own again. Bebop artists wanted to make some uncommercial music, because jazz had been taken away from them and now they had nothing to call their own again. Louis Armstrong even stated that bebop artists were filled with malice and were ill-intentioned. Langston Hughes argued, "Everytime a cop hits a Negro with his Billy club, that old club says, ‘BOP! BOP!…BE-BOP!…MOP!…BOP!…That’s what Bop is. Them young colored kids who started it, they know what bop is."

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/songs/question3.html

http://books.google.com/books?id=2bw-drt5sigC&pg=PA177&lpg=PA177&dq=bebop+political&source=bl&ots=iIFihASgKy&sig=5Eu7jhuTwNhGU_W_BgXfQYSys1g&hl=en&ei=J8KYTOe8JIG-sAPS_LTLDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&sqi=2&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=bebop%20political&f=false

Sonny feels what Hughes feels. It is a way to fight back against what he must have gone through in prison and being a victim of police abuse. He knows about the terrible racial differences there are out there and needs a way to let it out. His brother, on the other hand, agreed more with Armstrong. It was only a lot of noise that led to nothing. Until he witnesses Sonny playing and saw how he was letting go of everything and focusing on the piano. This was his outlet of emotions, and began to understand his need for music to express himself.