Throughout James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, the narrator is constantly questioning his identity and racial background. This is seen in the beginning of the story where he just assumes he is white, but later realizes he is actually biracial. From this point on, he is constantly questioning what he is and how other people will see him. The audience can compare the narrator's journey of discovering his own race through his exploration of music from both of his identities, classical and African American music styles.
Johnson constantly displays in the novel that the narrator struggles to ever completely identify with a single race. He is constantly moving across the racial line, identifying as either or depending on the situation. As is often common with biracial people, it can be hard to ever feel comfortable with one's own identity. The narrator uses music to feel one with both of his identities,
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He sets on a path to compose the classical music with an emotional, rhythmic African twist, in hopes of creating his own type of merged type of music. However, in Germany, he is astonished when he hears a performer who is a "trained" black musician, one that is able to combine many characteristics of many types of music, innovating his own style. He realizes that he "had been turning classic music into ragtime, a comparatively easy task; and this man had taken ragtime and made it classic." This is a turning point for his self-identification. Becoming excited and encouraged by this travelling to gather spirituals in order for him to be able to fully encompass African American music traditions, in attempts to add more character to his