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and Web Site Designer Jim Sullivan Class Meetings Office Hours |
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The Music of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible
Man Prologue Track 1 (3:15) The narrator refers to himself as "Jack the Bear" on page six. On an obvious level he is hibernating like a bear, but the term "Jack the Bear" also makes reference to African American jazz and folk traditions. "Jack the Bear" was the name of a blues playing slide pianist in 1920’s Harlem (Savory 67); it is the name of the 19 Duke Ellington song I have included on this CD; and, it is the name of a trickster character in African American folk tradition (Sundquist 121). A version of the folk song has the following lyrics: Jack the rabbit! Jack the bear! Track 2 (4:37) We can read pages 8-14 of the novel as an extended literary version of a jazz riff on Louis Armstrong and his music. A quote from literary critic Pancho Savory will help here:
Written by Andy Razaf and Fats Waller for the hit African American review/musical "Hot Chocolates" in 1929, "Black and Blue" demonstrates both Armstrong’s genius and the vibrancy of a musical form that the untutored listener might mistake for sad, depressing, or backward. The blues, especially as Armstrong performed them, were anything but depressed. Indeed, they marked the artistic transformation of the harsh realities of life into something vibrant and beautiful. In essence, like Ellison the novelist, Armstrong triumphed over the injustice of racism through art. Listen for the disjunction between the sad and bitter lyrics and the soaring energy of Armstrong’s trumpet. Track 3 (2:55) Although not mentioned in the novel, this song appears on the CD because Ellison has commented upon it elsewhere:
Armstrong composed the song himself. Listen for his final "stop time" solo, many jazz aficionados consider it the greatest recorded improvised solo not only for its power, energy, and clarity but also for its passion and depth of feeling. Track 4 (2:52) Also not mentioned in the novel, this song earned a spot on this collection because it plays a key role in our broader discussion about jazz and the ability of the artist to transform pain, suffering, and doubt into something powerful. Armstrong’s scat singing on this song reverberates in the music world until this day. It marks our first recording of scat singing and its influence extends through pop culture and music right up to contemporary hip hop and rap music. Chapter 2 Track 5 (3:30) Although Ellison does not mention any specific songs in this chapter, Jim Trueblood embodies the blues and folk tradition in the narrator’s life and in African American culture more generally. To give some sense of the kind of religious and blues music a character like Trueblood would sing, I have included three songs from a live concernt performed by Mississippi John Hurt back in 1965. The first, I Shall Not Be Moved," offers an example of the "primitive spirituals the narrator might have been referring to on page 46:
Track 6 (3:36) Track 7 (3:18) These two tracks provide class examples of the folk blues tradition that the narrator struggles to come to terms with throughout the novel. Their subtle complexity and power reflect the same power Trueblood’s storytelling exercises over the narrator, Mr. Norton, and the readers of the novel. Trueblood has crossed every moral boundary but his art, his storytelling, and his music give him a sense of identity and a cultural power that the narrator lacks. Chapter 5 Track 8 (3:25) As the author listens to the sermon of Homer Barbee he reflects on the sermon and spiritual tradition at his school and in his culture. On page 134, he mentions Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" "resounding" through the dominant theme of Dvorak’s New World Symphony "my mother and grandfather’s favorite spiritual." (The CD includes a second song, "Every Time I Feel the Spirit," but only because they appear on the same track on the Robeson CD and could not be separated while writing this CD). Track 9 (12:28) The narrator refers to this second movement of Dvorak’s 9th or New World Symphony in the same passage in which he reflects on spirituals. The use of classical music in the text and the discussion of its intimate relationship with Black spiritual traditions reflect Ellison’s interest in bringing together vernacular and classical traditions in both music and literature. Chapter 9 Track 10 (2:50) Peter Wheatstraw, "the Devils only Son," sings lines from this song to the narrator when he arrives in New York. Wheatstraw represents another blues figure that the narrator refuses to take seriously, and when he denies his ability to communicate with Peter he loses a part of himself. His playful sexually charged language and comic preoccupation with blueprints ironically foreshadow the betrayal by Bledsoe that the narrator learns of in the chapter. Eric Sunquist notes a historical person behind the name: "Peetie or Pete Wheatstraw was the stage name of William Bunch, an actual blues singer whom Ellison knew from his recordings…and his performances in the Midwest, and with whom Ellison himself played on one occasion in St. Louis…" Wheatstraws "recordings frquently carried the epithet "high sheriff from hell" or "the devil’s son-in-law" (Sundquist 123). Chapter 11 Track 11 (7.22) What do we make of Ellison’s invocation of Beethoven in a scene in which White people administer electrical shock therapy to the Black narrator? In both cases that the narrator explicitly invokes classical music, the text leaves us with complex interpretive options. Chapter 12 Track 12 (5:25) Mary Rambo, another in a long line of folk and blues figures in the novel, quotes this Mahalia Jackson song on page 255 as she preaches the message of cultural uplift to the narrator. Through Mary, Ellison introduces the gospel tradition into the narrative, another example of how the story of one man also traces the story of African Americans from Reconstruction to the Civil Rights era. Chapter 14 Track 13 (3:19) The narrator overhears Mary singing this classic from the "Empress of Blues," Bessie Smith, and decides to accept the job from the brother hood so that he can repay Mary what he owes her. Trueblood gives us a male folk blues figure; Smith offers a more nationally recognized and commercially popular female version of the blues. Chapter 20 Track 14 (3:03) Page 452 features a moment at Todd Clifton’s funeral when "an old plaintive, masculine voice arose in a song, wavering, stumbling in the silence at first alone, until in the band a euphonium horn fumbled for the key, and took up the air, one catching and rising above the other and the other pursuing…" In a moment of pain, an African American community returns to its roots in spirituals (where Marx fails faith and history intervene). By the way, the title also appears as the title of a James Baldwin essay in which Baldwin writes: "The story of the Negro in America is the story of America—or, more precisely, it is the story of Americans…He is a series of shadows, self-created, intertwining, which now we helplessly battle. One may say that the Negro in America does not really exist except in the darkness of our minds" (Baldwin "Many Thousands Gone" quoted in Sundquist 125) Conclusion Track 15 (3:21) The masterpiece of Armstrong’s career, the jazz era, and, perhaps, all of American music. In many ways it speaks for itself, but we shall discuss it a bit in class. Bibliography
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