How Blues Can Save The Soul Essay - 1,411 words

How Blues Can Save the Soul INTRODUCTION Our main senses are the pathways by which we understand and interact with the world. Essential to relationships, they allow us to see facial expressions, touch one another and hear words and tones of voice. Hearing messages would have a different dimension as we glean that it is not how a message is intended that determines its effect but rather how it is received. As Robert Bolton states in People Skills, the distinction between hearing and listening is important. Hearing refers to the physiological process of receiving auditory sensations. Listening is more complex and involves the interpretation and understanding if those signals.


One can hear a person without ever listening to him or her. Whether or not one can actually listenand be listened toplays an important role in the quality of our lives such as our satisfaction with friendships, the cohesiveness in our families, and our effectiveness at work. More scientifically, listening is the awareness of, the tending to, the organization of, and the operationalization of data entering our nervous system via our hearing mechanism. Unlike hearing, which is a physiological passive activity, listening is an active cognitive process (Petress, Kenneth). This paper looks into James Baldwins story Sonnys Blues which depicts the relationship between two brothers at different times in their lives. Baldwin dexterously weaves the story to build an understanding between the two brothers. And what better way to bridge and hasten this understanding than to equip one of the brothers with a gift for music.


The Brothers Dilemma Written in 1957, this story carries a vital social message. The older brother is a Harlem algebra teacher who serves as the narrator. The younger brother is Sonny, a jazz pianist, who has some notorious streak in him. He is arrested for peddling and using heroin. Baldwin is known to have vague delineations in time so that it is the essence of his stories that stands out. This is true for this story too.


In fact even the title has a double-meaning blues to signify woes and loneliness and at the same time refer to musical blues. The elder brother attempts to understand the ways of his delinquent younger brother. Music paves the way to this understanding and it is this element that glues the brothers together. The sense of listening into the real blues of Sonny entails a sensitivity only a person one is intimate with can fully comprehend and understand. For example, despite the ears ability to distinguish minute differences in sounds, most cultures organize the vast range of audible sounds into musical scales of only five to seven notes. Each culture learns preferences for its own way of dividing the sound spectrum. Asian music with its subtle pitch changes sounds whining and off-key to Westerners because it uses smaller divisions between notes.


Jamaicans prefer syncopated ballads, while Russians use lush minor melodies. Music plays a prominent role in our lives. Most people have an exquisite, inborn musical sense that develops subconsciously over their lifetimes. A baby responds to lullabies, and gravitates toward music. Pre-toddlers bounce to the beat of a song. We surround ourselves with music; before radios we sang as we worked and played, and in modern life we play music in our workplace, flip it on as soon as we get home, wake up to it, and play it in our ear. Music stimulates us. I always feel a surge of strength and adrenaline when speakers blast powerful music.


Music makes exercise fun during P.E. classes and has been instrumental in helping people enjoy exercise of all types. Most of our social occasions demand music, from a string quartet during a dinner party to a polka band at a wedding reception. Music enhances every party or sporting event. The tingle of pleasure we can get from music releases endorphinswe are touched physically and emotionally by music. The author describes the two brothers as this: "They were growing up with a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against the low ceiling of their actual possibilities.


They were filled with rage. All they really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which was now closing in on them, and the darkness of the movies, which had blinded the ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

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Essay Tags: music, norton introduction, the narrator, blues, sonny

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