Half-Blood Blues

“See, I was born here, in Baltimore, before the Great War. And when you’re born in Baltimore before the Great War you think of getting out. Especially if you’re poor, black, and full of sky-high hopes. Sure B-more ain’t south south, sure my family was light-skinned, but if you think Jim Crow hurt only gumbo country, you blind.”

Sid and the others flee persecution in Germany. However, Sid originally went to Germany partly to escape persecution in America. By the time he leaves occupied France for America, he has come full circle and witnessed varying types and degrees of prejudice at each stop along the way.

“Jazz. Here in Germany it become something worse than a virus. We was all of us damn fleas, us Negroes and Jews and low-life hoodlums, set on playing that vulgar racket, seducing sweet blond kids into corruption and sex. It wasn’t a music, it wasn’t a fad. It was a plague sent out by the dread black hordes, engineered by the Jews. Us Negroes, see, we was only half to blame—we just can’t help it. Savages just got a natural feel for filthy rhythms, no self-control to speak of. But the Jews, brother, now they cooked up this jungle music on purpose. All part of their master plan to weaken Aryan youth, corrupt its janes, dilute its bloodlines.”

Here, Sid demonstrates his understanding of the conspiratorial views that made Nazi Germany such a hostile place for minorities and unapproved cultural artifacts, including jazz. Yet by sharing the rest of his story, Sid shows readers the multiplicity of purposes and meanings that jazz music can facilitate, far beyond the simple sensual functions attributed to it by the Nazis. Furthermore, the Nazi obsession with racial purity starkly contrasts with the blended, collaborative nature of jazz.

“I got to thinking how small we come to be these last months, me and Chip. Even two years ago, we like to holler through these damn streets like we on parade. Now we slunk in the shadows, squeamish of the light. I thought of the two of us listening to Armstrong’s records back in Baltimore when we was kids. And I thought of my ma’s family back in Virginia, fair as Frenchmen and floating like ghosts through a white world. Afraid of being seen for what they truly was.”

Sid highly values authenticity and takes issue with his relatives who try to pass as white. As conditions worsen in Germany, however, he increasingly feels the need to hide his own identity, both racially and as a musician. Yet he puts up with it because the loss of liberty has been gradual.