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Music as medium for maturation in three Afro-American novels
Abstract
This study examines how music has been treated by writers and critics as being at the heart of Afro-American cultural expression. Two elements crucial to black music--its improvisational nature and its vernacular appeal--have made it an inspiration to black writers. Genres of black music most often treated in the literature have been gospel, jazz, and blues. In all forms, music can provide a rich symbolic context for the writer, and in the three novels examined, music catalyzes the maturation of the youthful protagonists. These changes are discussed as comin(g) up stories, a black vernacular variation on the traditional Bildungsroman. Chapter one assesses the intertextual occurrence of music as a point of reference or agent for change in a variety of Afro-American works. Chapters two through four each examine how individual authors view music as an expression of black culture and how, in largely autobiographical first novels, they use black musical genres to promote the maturation of the books' protagonists. James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain finds much drama in the songs and rituals of the sanctified church. The gospel service surrounds John Grimes on his fourteenth birthday and is a prominent force in the conversion that frees him from his father's sway. Baldwin also counterpoises a secular blues spirit to the gospel influences in several revelatory scenes. In Al Young's Snakes, a young orphan, MC, is initiated into sex, drugs, and music. He finally verifies his commitment to an improvisational life by leaving grandmother and girlfriend behind and traveling to New York, guitar in hand, to try his future in music. In Albert Murray's Train Whistle Guitar, the adolescent protagonist Scooter, growing up in rural Alabama, finds a positive role model in an itinerant blues singer, loses his virginity, yet emerges from the novel's events with a mature sense of self. An epilogue reflects on how this type of novel fits within the canon of modern Afro-American literature.
Subject Area
American literature|Black studies|African American Studies
Recommended Citation
Carroll, Michael Charles, "Music as medium for maturation in three Afro-American novels" (1991). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9219365.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9219365