Ellison weaves jazz into the plot of Invisible Man while showing the connection the main character has with that type of music. The connection is cited early when memories of an old woman come back to him while listening to "What did I do to be so black and blue?" Her response, "...The power of self-expression." Because he is captive in most every way, he finds freedom in self expression, better known as jazz.
As a young man in the south, he grew to hate most songs sung by his fellow men of the same race. He does not know why it annoys him so, but the suffering that his fellow men speak of irritates him. It irritates him because it is not their blues that they sing but those of others. It is not until he is expelled from school that he finally feels the emotion in the music that has surrounded him his whole life. "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" flows through his mind as he sits in church shortly before being expelled, and he thinks of his parents. He is moved to the point that he leaves the building because his guilt has overcome him with such force.
As the narrator moves through life, his roots of jazz can be seen by small passages which convey one point or another. One time as he is walking down the street, a fellow Negro asks him, "Is you got the dog?" The main character's knowledge of music brings him to reply, "No, not this morning," thus completing a rhyme from the old south. It is never quite specified whether Invisible Man is born with this connection with Jazz and folk music or if he has acquired it over his lifetime. One idea is clear, however. It is that he has knowledge of the jazz of his time period and relates himself to musicians such as Louis Armstrong.
Ellison's meticulous writing clearly shows that this invisible young man is in touch with jazz and that jazz is what touches him most. Jazz is what is with him through all of his journeys even through his identity changes. Henceforth, jazz plays a prominent role in the Ellison's novel, Invisible Man.
by Eddie McClelland