Part 2, Sound and the Mainstream, Section 1 Summary and Analysis

The essays in this part of the book contain commentary, analysis, reflection, and criticism relating to various types of music as manifestations and/or expressions of Negro culture and experience.

"Living with Music" (published 1955). The author describes, in extensive and evocative detail, the equal parts musical and noisy environment in which he once struggled to write. There was a loud record player next door, a courtyard on the other side of a short wall which was a gathering place for street singers and philosophers, a drunk constantly shouting from the roof, and a singer in the apartment upstairs who, as the author describes, vocalized all day, every day, in all weathers and in all moods. He describes himself as being in something of a dilemma - on the one hand recognizing...