SOURCE: "The Black Musician: The Black Hero as Light Bearer," in Give Birth to Brightness: A Thematic Study in Neo-Black Literature, The Dial Press, 1972, pp. 135-52.

In the following essay, Williams analyzes the figure of the musician in African-American literature, concluding that in Baldwin's fiction it functions as "the embodiment of alienation and estrangement, which the figure of the artist becomes in much of twentieth century literature."

The Drifters are in the fetid bosom of Manhattan
 Rocking the Apollo like an exploding battleship:
 The bobbing Black crowd reach long upward
 The short-skirted young girls dog in the aisles . . . The Drifters are in the big Apple tonight
 sing us a song . . . SANG!

When I see them strut to the foot lights, faintly
 smiling amongst themselves, giving measured "cool" response
 to the screaming, the dancing, the reaching, and then looking
 into the crowd and darkness, swagger a retreat with that...