Sonny's Blues: Music and Flashbacks

(http://students.cis.uab.edu/leshay07/Mainprojectpage.html - Harlem Renaissance)

James Baldwin in Sonny’s Blues frequently employs the use of flashbacks to propel the story further, give background information, and to clarify and complete certain characters’ personalities and what drives them throughout the story.  There is also the theme of music throughout the plot- it’s what eventually helps the narrator understand and accept his brother.  I made the connection between the music theme and flashbacks because I feel that music has the unique ability to immediately transport people to different times in the past- to seamlessly cause that person to flashback to the first time they heard the song, or a huge event in their life while the song was playing, etc.  Smells, pictures, and other sensory experiences can also cause a person to relive an event for flashback to their past- but they only last a few moments where as the flashback caused by familiar music lasts the entirety of the song or longer!  I’m not sure if that connection is really all the obvious (or necessary, really) but it’s one that my brain went to almost immediately after finishing.

Charlie "Bird" Parker- Sonny mentions him as being one of the greatest jazz musicians alive and someone that he admires