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In James Baldwin's short story, "Sonny's Blues," the narrator attempts to understand the life of his brother Sonny. Set in post-Korean War Harlem, "Sonny's Blues" places emphasis on the African-American community's struggle economically and socially to become successful. This struggle can also become anyone's battle and not just that of the African-American living in the ghetto. In Sonny's case, he tries to overcome his heroin addiction, a symptom of the lack of opportunities the ghetto offers, with music as he plays blues and jazz on piano. Thus, in Baldwin's story the importance of creativity as a means of expression and of escaping reality is demonstrated through Sonny.
Creativity can be used to express the history of one's life and culture. Thorell Tsomondo suggests, "the artist historian is a kind of poet-prophet . . . bound at once to tradition and to change" (195). Sonny's story contains broken dreams and monumental anguish, which may have caused or perhaps were the result of his heroin addiction. In playing the piano, Sonny becomes a storyteller, and he tells about the struggle he and his audience daily experience: the realities of poverty, crime, and oppression. Even as he recreates the tale of his life, he must create a new sound to push forward and escape the reality. Sonny "lead[s] his audience to a heightened, shared awareness of their cultural identity" when he gives his "heroic, bardic performance" with Creole and the band (Thorell 196). The music that Sonny creates is an expression of his African-American history not just in Harlem but in the society they live in as a whole. Since this history is not just his personal story, but a relative story of a culture of minorities and subjected to repression by a nation ruled by the white majority, the audience knows exactly what he's "talking" about with every note emitted from his piano.
In regards to the music Sonny, Creole, and the man on the horn play, Tracey Sherard believes that it is more probable to be a variation of blues, specifically a form of jazz called Bebop (691). Sherard goes on to argue that "jazz . . . represents a revision of the blues that allows for commentary on the disappointing economic and social conditions of African-American urban culture" (692). In playing jazz, Sonny pushes for a fresh representation of his emotions. Older and more traditional forms of blues were perhaps too stale to express the bitterness of life. Only a new sound can allow the freedom to explore the stagnation of possibilities and the despondent situation Sonny faced. He could mute this reality with heroin, but sobriety always resurfaces and he uses music to escape, to run ahead of the despair.
Creativity becomes a means to escape the reality of repetition also, that of "houses exactly like the houses . . . [and] boys exactly like the boys" they come across again and again in Harlem (Baldwin 71). There will always be hope of a better place, and of a better life. Seeing the cycle of faces and lives dampens the hope, though, so with no means of physically removing oneself then mentally a method must be created to flee. For Sonny, the method is music guiding the dull roar of reality inside his mind and soul into an intelligible song. For the song to also pull the same roar from the listener and allow a temporary release from its hold there cannot be a compromise on creativity; the song must surprise and tug the audience along not by the ear, but by the heart. As the narrator put it, the musician, or any creator, must be able to go in the "deep water" without drowning (Baldwin 87). The difference in treading deep water and drowning as the difference between "acceptance of and dialogue with one's past" and "fear of venturing away from the "shoreline" of the . . . past" (Sherard 701). One must dive headfirst and swim with strength in order to fully understand and utilize the lessons of life. The lessons of Harlem that Sonny sought to share and move past all at once in song were lessons he could not hide from forever. Instead of fearing the roar inside, he brought it to life through creativity.
Most important in creativity is the possibilities that it brings to situations. Thorell says this is because, "more potent that the story that the music tells is the aesthetic intensification of feeling that it evokes, . . . it signifies pure possibility" (199). Sonny's music then, even without spoken word, speaks to the true sensations that reside inside the mind, sensations of love, hope, despair, disillusion, bitterness, and desire. This entanglement of emotion is a powerful and volatile force to reckon with, and music helps to ease the artist and the audience into deep water and not drown. The key to diving into deep water and surviving is "improvisation . . . [as] an act of critical interpretation" (Thorell 199). So while Sonny, in his act of creation, brings out his past with music, he also proclaims himself free from any holds it might place upon him because he remains critical of the past. These holds come to physical being in the form of Sonny's heroin addiction, which is only a sign of poverty and despair. These realities push Sonny to create which in return pushes him beyond the realm of reality. Creativity, then, becomes a kingdom of its own, a refuge for the broken and searching artist.
Music will continue to evolve, and will persevere as a cultural and social commentary. What one culture finds inspiring and inventive, like the bar audience in "Sonny's Blues" finds in jazz, will not be so to another. Each culture has its own sound to express the reality the members experience, and at the same time the sound carries them away from that reality if only temporarily. While Baldwin's story is about music, creativity of course is important in all fields of art, literature, and academics. In conclusion, creativity has become a vital survival tool by mankind, which Baldwin clearly illustrates in "Sonny's Blues."