Freedom in Music in \"Sonny\'s

Freedom in Music in "Sonny's Blues"

"Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin is more than a tale of two brothers, it is a tale of the healing powers of music. The two brothers live different lives with Sonny's brother constantly looking down on Sonny and expressing disgust for his lifestyle. His brother believed he took the moral high ground while Sonny lingered behind in the dark shadows of the city. Sonny, however, learns to live and love music, which gives him a freedom that his brother can only see from a distance. It is not until he experiences him play that begins to understand the importance of music as a tool and escape from life. His experience enlightens him as he undergoes an interpersonal transformation watching Sonny transform before his eyes.

That these brothers come to a moment of interpersonal transformation is amazing because they are so different from one another. Sonny is portrayed as a dreamer and a loser. His brother, on the other hand, believes his life is more fulfilling since he integrate into the white man's world and made a decent living for himself. Sonny suffers because he chose not to take that path in life. He avoided school and fell into drugs. Hicks writes, "Rather than fulfilling himself by assimilating into the mainstream culture and following the American Dream, he chose to immerse himself in the blues world and become a heroin addict" (Hicks). This is significant because it demonstrates that Sonny is responsible for his own decisions. There is probably no one that believes this more than his brother and this gives him reason to look down on Sonny and think the worst of him. He has reason to think he can express or experience something beautiful -- something beyond words. Amazingly, Sonny participates in something his brother cannot even begin to grasp when he delves into music. His brother's pragmatic lifestyle refuses to let him experience such freedom. Hicks maintains, "It is within this portrayal of how individuals react to and deal with their circumstances that we see Baldwin looking both at individual importance and ethnic renewal" (Hicks). The brothers are their own people but they each have a lesson to learn about each other and life in general.

Sonny's life is nothing to which anyone should aspire. He has no real future and he lives in utter hopelessness and helplessness. However, in this dark and shadowed life, Sonny has something his brother does not have. This indescribable thing is powerful and addicting like heroin and the best Sonny cannot even describe it sufficiently. His brother dismisses Sonny's talk about music as he does most of everything else Sonny says or does. This changes when he hears Sonny play. When he experiences the music with Sonny, the things Sonny tried to express to him about music begin to make sense. The brother begins to understand music and he also begins to understand his brother. The freedom Sonny experiences when he is playing is something his brother can relate to after hearing him perform. Music is the bridge between the bothers. John Reilly concurs, nothing this is why music is essential for Sonny's relationship with his brother. The "unique quality of the Blues is its combination of personal and social significance is a lyric encounter with history" (Reilly 56), Music "repairs the relationship between the two men who have chosen deferent ways to cope with the menacing ghetto environment" (56). Sonny's brother wakes up and states, "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" (47). Sonny was more free and living a life more true than his brother realized.