The Importance Of Freedom In Sonny's Blues By James Baldwin

Dating back to slavery in the seventeenth century, African Americans have been socially, culturally, and economically oppressed in the United States. The anger and frustration that oppression has caused has catalyzed the movement of African American culture and African American Identity. It’s no coincidence that the pre-civil rights belief in the dignity of African Americans and the incredible awareness of the importance of the individual resulted in what is the century’s most cultural assault on western jazz conventions. If an audience was there to listen, musicians supplied a sense of how freedom, reality, and discipline could coexist within the ensembles improvisation. In a time and place like 1950s Harlem, jazz music was the medium through which African American could come together as a community and turn their incredible suffering into freedom. This idea, when put into practice, is examined and

In “Sonny’s Blues”, the narrator and Sonny both witness a revival meeting but from different places, literally and metaphorically. The narrator witnesses it from Sonny’s bedroom, looking down on the crowd surrounding the 3 girls and 1 boy singing. He thinks to himself, “Not one of them had been rescued…neither did they believe in the holiness of the three sisters and the brother, they knew too much about them” (Baldwin 70). This shows that the narrator finds religion inauthentic. On the other hand, Sonny who didn’t like the song still found a way to connect with it, says, “Her voice reminded me of what heroin feels like sometimes- when it’s in your vein. It makes you feel sort of warm and cool at the same time” (Baldwin 71). What Sonny was also feeling was a spiritual awakening, he felt the comfort the comes with knowing you have roots, that you’re someplace dating back centuries but it was disguised as the peaceful bliss that comes from a