Jazz Subculture in Short American Fiction: The Blues I'm Playing and Sonny's Blues Anonymous College

For many years, audiences have seen art forms extend beyond their original categorisations into other artistic spheres – Pieter Bruegel’s painting inspiring William Carlos Williams’ Hunter in the Snow or Leonard Cohen’s music influenced by the poetry of Constantine P. Cavafy. However, it can be argued that no other art form has extended beyond its supposed limits as effectively as jazz. For a number of different reasons, jazz does not only reveal itself in its musical form but also in several other manifestations. Its strong origins in African-American history and culture have often rendered jazz narration as giving voice to the voiceless and a creative response to oppression (Theriault). Jazz music and literature are deeply rooted in the social and political landscape of American black communities of the early to mid 20th century, creating a subculture that is central to jazz writing and the Harlem Renaissance. Jazz is configured in distinctive ways in James Baldwin’s Sonny’s Blues and Langston Hughes’ The Blues I’m Playing. Through these stories, the authors render jazz music and portray the subculture of jazz, emphaisizing its intersection with the racial, political and social subtexts of the art form.

In James’ Baldwins’...