African American Art and Individual Suffering 01/18/20

 African American artistic expression teaches me that suffering is an individual process that needs to be spotlighted on stage for all to feel and support in order to allow it to feel lighter on the shoulders of the sufferer. Within the story of “Sonny’s Blues” and the performance by the Marcus Trio that we enjoyed in class, this argument is relevant. At the end of the story of “Sonny’s Blues,” we see Sonny’s suffering turned into music as all eyes are on him. Within the clip we saw of the Marcus Trio, each performer has his time to perform a solo improvisation and within that, they are able to empathize with one another as is prevalent with Sonny. Their individual stories are reflected onto the crowd. With each emotion expressed through music, the audience can sympathize and empathize with each musician. Throughout this paper I will first be looking over “Sonny’s Blues” looking for evidence of the narrator’s purposes with his brother Sonny. After that, I will analyze why his purposes are important and how they relate back to the suffering aspect that makes African American artistic expression so unique. Lastly I will analyze the clip of the Marcus Trio and see how the individual solos with them relate to “Sonny’s Blues” and the idea of freedom within African American artistic expression.

Understanding the Narrator’s Purposes in “Sonny’s Blues”

Suffering is a main theme within the story of “Sonny’s Blues” and understanding the narrator’s purposes is a way to figure out why it is so important when it comes to African American artist expression. Since the beginning of the story, the narrator is trying to find a way to suffer with Sonny in order to understand what happened to him and protect him from more suffering. The reader doesn’t explicitly know this about the narrator until his conversation with his mother. At first, the narrator is caught up in conversation with someone who he describes as always “high and raggy” and also someone who “had been Sonny’s friend” who the narrator never liked (pg. 19). Through the dialogue we are given between the narrator and Sonny’s friend, we know that something happened to Sonny, but we don’t know what. What we do know is that Sonny and the narrator are both suffering, but in different ways. We also know that the narrator and Sonny are not together in the story just yet because he hadn’t “seen Sonny for over a year” (pg. 20). There is a distinct contrast between what the narrator’s life seems to be like—as if he has everything figured out and put together— and what the reader imagines Sonny’s life is like. The narrator has a job and a family. It seems like the ideal situation when we imagine what Harlem might be like and seems like it is hard to find. We consider him lucky. Harlem seems like the kind of place where there is trouble to be found and we think that Sonny found that trouble. In many ways, the reader, through “Sonny’s Blues” suffers with both the narrator and Sonny, thus fulfilling the purpose of suffering with the sufferer within African American artistic expression. 

When the narrator finally gets to see Sonny, they participate in what seems to be some casual conversation, but there’s always the elephant in the room that doesn’t get brought up until later in the story. This shows the fact that both Sonny and the narrator are trying their best to avoid talking about what happened to Sonny. The narrator wishes to be sensitive to the subject and allow for both his understanding of Sonny’s suffering and Sonny’s trust in him be taken into account. This is a difficult situation to grapple with especially taking into consideration the fact that trying to talk about the suffering of another has some suffering in it too. It isn’t till the narrator converses with their mom about Sonny in a flashback that the audience realizes that the narrator’s primary desire is to suffer with Sonny and to be able to help him. As the audience gets to know the real story about their father and their father’s brother, they can realize how deep the narrator’s desire to help prevent more suffering for Sonny.

The Narrator’s Purposes are Important

The narrator’s true sympathy and empathy comes in at the end of the story. When Sonny finally opens up to the narrator and then invites him to come and watch him play is when the narrator can suffer with Sonny, thus completing one of the main purposes of African American artist expression. It isn’t until the moment where the narrator tells the waitress “to take drinks to the bandstand” and Sonny sips from his drink and looks toward the narrator and nods that Sonny’s suffering was completely accepted by the narrator. This is where the narrator’s validation is important. In order for the cycle of suffering with the sufferer and artistic expression to be complete and keep moving, validation and acceptance are explicitly needed. This is all summarized in how the narrator concludes about how he feels as he listens to Sonny’s solo: “freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that [Sonny (as he played)] could help us be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did” (pg. 47). Listening and experiencing African American artistic expression helps free the artist from their suffering. This freedom cannot exist if people are not willing to listen. It took time, energy and effort on both sides, on the musician side and on the audience’s side, in order for that feeling of freedom to exist.

The Idea of Freedom

Watching the Marcus Trio perform, freedom is a main idea that I think of as I connect it back to “Sonny’s Blues” and the objectives of African American artistic expression. Right at the four-minute mark of the clip we watched as a class, the musician starts on the piano. He is free to express himself as he presses each key with his fingertips. He colors up the stage with the notes that he puts together in patterns and rhythms. As an audience, we feel with him what he so freely expresses. It is a very individual moment for him as all eyes shift to him in the spotlight on stage. This moment only lasts for a moment until the other two musicians join in. These few seconds are symbolic of what African American artist expression is all about. Each artist have their moments to be heard, but after they are heard, the rest of the group is able to respond by playing with them. This response allows the soloist to feel like the rest of the band “hears” them. Whether the soloist plays through suffering, joy or pain, this artistic expression captures the fact that each of us wish to be heard. One way to allow people to feel heard and also free to express how they feel is through sympathy and empathy as reflected here and especially in “Sonny’s Blues.” That is essentially where freedom is found within artistic expression and especially African American artistic expression where the word freedom means much more to them as a race than anyone else. 

Knowing the purposes of the narrator in “Sonny’s Blues,” analyzing why those purposes are important and being able to understand how that reflects back to the idea of freedom with the Marcus Trio allow us to see why suffering with the sufferer is so much a part of African American artistic expression. The art of expression frees us and when we see each other through expression, we can understand each other more and treat each other better because of that understanding.