Tracey Sherard\'s \"Sonny\'s Bebop: Baldwin\'s

Tracey Sherard's "Sonny's Bebop: Baldwin's 'Blues Text' as Intracultural Critique"

Tracey Sherard, in her article "Sonny's Bebop: Baldwin's 'Blues Text' as Intracultural Critique," examines the meaning behind type of blues Sonny play, especially the effect of the type of music is read as jazz -- specifically Bebop -- rather than traditional views (Sherard, 691). She suggests that Baldwin's story asserts that the traditional blues form was not an adequate way to express the black experience (691). Since this story claims that the blues are not fully adequate, "Sonny's Blues,' then...comments on the social text that is the blues" (692). The story deals with being trapped in a cultural narrative which both Sonny and his brother are trying to escape in their own ways (692).

Though "Sonny's Blues" asserts itself as a blues text, it also calls the blues obsolete (693). Jazz takes over as more fully capable of expressing the "disappointing economic and social conditions of African-American urban culture" (693). Baldwin asserts in many of his works that black men needed a "gimmick" to get them ahead in life (694). Sonny's gimmick is music, which he alters from its traditional form. Sonny's brother's gimmick is math; as a teacher, he has escaped the Harlem cultural narrative of downward-spiraling destruction and loss and is therefore unable to see Sonny's struggle fully, though the reader can despite Sonny's brother's obtuse narration (695). Eventually, as Sonny's brother becomes worried that Sonny is again doing heroin, and may never stop, he begins "to shoulder the 'freight' of his community's stories and history" (696).

Sonny's brother also does a lot of self-examination during the story, perhaps even alluding to himself when he tells stories of "a kid" (697). He also learns of the darkness in his family's past that mirrors Sonny's personal darkness and the darkness of the blues, as well (697). Acceptance of this darkness is hard for Sonny's brother, symbolizing the reluctance to accept the greater darkness of his cultural history and expectations, and his mother recognizes this difficulty -- she is able to both recognize and accept the darkness and hope for a better future (698). This is the start of Sonny's brother's awareness of his cultural narrative, but it is a slow process that leaves him unable to comprehend Sonny's musical aspirations (699). Even what he thinks of as music doesn't line up with Sonny's more in-tune tastes; Sonny refers to Armstrong -- whom his brother thinks of as representing jazz/blues -- as "that old-time, down-home crap," with certain implications of racial turncoating (699).