The Power Of Music In Louis Armstrong's Invisible Man

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Throughout history, music has been essential by utilizing music to communicate, build communities, and empower people of all kinds. Whether it’s Rap, Rock N’ Rock, or Country, music defines who we are as a person and identifying who we are as people in society. While on a search for identity by the anonymous narrator, a black man, who is struggling to work out who he is in a setting of racism and where many people have so many ideas of what it means to be a black man, the protagonist in Invisible Man defines himself as “Invisible.” By analyzing use of Jazz and Blues and rhythms and motifs, Invisible Man develops the protagonist, speech intonations, and narrative riffs. The protagonist deals with internal conflict by being unsure of …show more content…

The power of music is a strong component of people’s life; and in the black community, Jazz was born. The upbeat tunes of Jazz music, characterized by improvisation, syncopation, and a lively, strong rhythm, introduced during the Harlem Renaissance, the African-American artistic and literary movement. Jazz music somehow typified the nonconformist aspirations of youth that dominated the shocking new fashions and lifestyles that emerged during the 1920 's "Jazz Age.” In Invisible Man, the protagonist has quite a passion for Louis Armstrong’s music. “Invisibility, let me explain, gives one a slightly different sense of time, you’re never quite on that beat. Sometimes you’re ahead and sometimes behind. Instead of a swift and imperceptible flowing of time, you are aware of its nodes, those points where time stands or from which it leaps ahead. And you slip into the breaks and you look around. That’s what you hear vaguely in Louis’ music” (Ellison, 8). The protagonist’s explanation of Armstrong’s music shows the connection between Jazz and invisibility. The use of Louis Armstrong into the novel is to complement the narrator’s quest to define himself. “Perhaps I like Louis Armstrong because he makes poetry out of being invisible. I think it must be because he’s unaware that he is invisible. And my own grasp of invisibility aids me to understand his music” (Ellison, 8). Unawareness of one’s invisibility leads to great art, but awareness of invisibility leads to comprehension. The swinging tunes of Jazz continue to dominate until the end of the novel to enable the narrator to realize what identity is for

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