Sonnys Blues Sentence Analysis

Pg. 45 of Sonnys-Blues

"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. But the man who creates the music is hearing something else, is dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air. "


This sentence is spoken by the narrator as he listens to his brother, Sonny, play with his musician friends at a tavern in Harlem. It describes how he personally views music, viewing it as a way of self-expression and as a different form of speaking. I found this strange at first, because from the rest of the story, I had assumed that the narrator looked down on musicians. But here in this sentence, I could see that he either came around or had already respected musicians, but had thought it an unfit career for his brother.

From what I can tell in the text, Sonny has been pursuing and playing music his entire life, and I feel as if this sentence encapsulates all his struggles. Throughout all the years he had been playing, channeling his 'roar' as the sentence describes, no one that ought to have cared about him ever heard it. When he was lodging at Isabel's, they couldn't properly hear his music, as they said "the sound didn't make any sense to them'. Later, Sonny himself describes his music as an outlet for himself to let loose, a way to show the struggles of his life, even if others couldn't properly hear him.

It's also a good metaphor for the relationship between the 2 brothers. The narrator (the older brother) seemed to believe it was his duty to guide Sonny on the right path, or at least what he believed to be the right path. But Sonny didn't want to pursue an education, he wanted to pursue music. And during his earlier days as an aspiring pianist, his brother didn't listen to him. Akin to how people couldn't properly hear the music he was creating from within. 

I also think it's important to look at this sentence in the context of the music genre, jazz. Jazz in my humble opinion is the most suitable music for people to express themselves. In more classical instrumentation, musicians can express themselves through composing, such as Beethoven even when he was deaf, but even he followed more rigid structures. In jazz, everything is free flow and smooth. With improvisation and freestyle solos being such heavy parts of the genre, jazz musicians bend the rules of music to fit them, rather than the other way around. And I think this makes it optimal for people like Sonny to express themselves without rules or regulations.