Music in the Biography of an Ex-Colored Man

Preforming for Freedom

In James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, the narrator is troubled by the two facets of his racial identity making him incapable of determining his self-identity. Music plays a crucial a role in the determination of the narrator's self-identity, he expresses admiration towards African American culture for its originality and universality, while he also reveres European culture for its priority on intellectualism and classical music. It is clear that the narrator struggles with his self-identity throughout the novel, but by joining both of his musical roots is the narrator capable to formulate his self-identity.

The narrator was conscious that "there were some black and brown boys and girls" (Johnson 13) at his school and that they were "in some way looked down upon" (13), but as for race and racism, the narrator was entirely ignorant, until his principal segregated him from the other white students in his class. For the first time in his life he "noticed the ivory whiteness" (15) of his skin, which led him to ask his mother a preeminent question, "Am I white? Are you white" (16)? His mother never gave an explicit answer, further confusing the narrator about his race; she simply admitted that she was not white, but that his father was white and "the best blood of the South" (16). The narrator's life-changing discovery resulted into two things: he "began to find company in books, and great pleasure in music" (18).

European culture is emotionally and intellectually significant for the narrator and plays a substantial role in his love life. From an early age the narrator is intellectually curious, reading books on theology, science, and history, and is evidently intelligent himself, since he "learned to speak [French & Spanish] merely by speaking" (74). Classical music was emotionally important for the narrator for its connection to his "life in Connecticut" (75). The narrator is first introduced to music by his mother, specifically remembering "those evenings on which she opened the little piano [as] the happiest hours of [his] life" (10). More significantly, the narrator meets his father for the first time at the age of twelve during one of his piano lessons, initially not arousing "any considerable feeling of need for a father" (23). He initially plays "half hearted" (24) music for his father, but when he notices his father's "enthusiastic..praise...it touched [the narrator's]vanity" (24), he showed his "gratitude by playing for him a Chopin waltz with all feeling that was in [him]" (24). The narrator's performance established a father and son relationship, "When I had finished...my father stepped across the room, seized me in his arms, and squeezed me to his breast. I am certain that for that moment he was proud to be my father" (24). Classical music also plays an influential role in the narrator's love life. "It was not her delicate beauty" (110) that drew the narrator to his wife to-be, "it was her voice" (110) that attracted him the most. On the other hand, the white singer was captivated by the narrator's "playing of Chopin" (110), she often asked him "to play the 13th Nocturne" (113), and confessed her love to the narrator and also accepting his marriage proposal while she played "the opening bars of the 13th Nocturne" (116).

African American culture becomes an important aspect of the narrator's life, especially music, for its ability to produce particular work that appeals to the masses due to its significant entertainment value:

The cake-walk, I think they ought to be proud of it. It is my opinion that the colored people of this country have done four things which refute the oft advanced theory that they are an absolutely inferior race, which demonstrate that they have