Jazz (Book) | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 34 pages of analysis & critique of Jazz (Book).

Jazz (Book) | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 34 pages of analysis & critique of Jazz (Book).
This section contains 9,150 words
(approx. 31 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Tracey Sherard

SOURCE: “Sonny's Bebop: Baldwin's ‘Blues Text’ as Intracultural Critique,” in African American Review, Vol. 32, No. 4, Winter, 1998, pp. 691-705.

In the following essay, Sherard traces the cultural significance of Baldwin's use of jazz music in his short story “Sonny's Blues.”

In “Baldwin, Bebop, and ‘Sonny's Blues,’” Pancho Savery argues that, “although there have been interesting analyses of ‘Sonny's Blues,’ none of them has gotten to the specificities of the music and the wider cultural implications.” As Savery points out, most of these analyses tend to focus on music as “the bridge the narrator crosses to get closer to Sonny” or to look at the blues through a somewhat superficial lens.1 Like Savery, I believe that the “kind and form of these particular blues make all the difference” (166). The story, though titled “Sonny's Blues,” strongly supports a reading that it is jazz, and more specifically “Bebop,” that Sonny plays in...

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This section contains 9,150 words
(approx. 31 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Tracey Sherard
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Critical Essay by Tracey Sherard from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.