The Power of the Blues

As expressed by many of the past century’s greatest and most influential artists, the “blues” are a fantastic motivator in articulating inner suffering and injustices. From heart-wrenching romantic defeats to radical social discriminations, the blues were one of the many soulful platforms of expression for African-American musicians in the early 20th century. In 1957, author James Baldwin, in his short story “Sonny’s Blues”, relays his reality of the suffering and inequality surrounding him in the post-war-years of New York City, and how his brother, Sonny, finally finds his way from the darkness by way of the blues.

The power of the blues & jazz movement of the early 20th century has had profound effects on the way our country evolved into a more, though not completely, tolerant society. The introduction and use of the blues helped African-Americans to turn personal tragedies and suffering into an identifiable, communal art form, in a way that captivated like-minded audiences and forever changed the musical world.

Through suffering, tribulation, drug addiction, the importance of family, and the power of the blues, Baldwin paints a literary portrait of his time in Harlem in the early 1950s and how atrocious and unnecessary social disparities can be overcome through the positive power of music and the Christian ideal of being “Our brother’s keeper”. As Sonny’s brother says in the end, “All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it. And even then, on the rare occasions when something opens within, and the music enters, what we mainly hear, or hear corroborated, are personal, private, vanishing evocations.”