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Close-up of a piano and the hands and knees of the person playing it.

© Tony Arpante
The Dog-Eared Page

excerpted from
Sonny’s Blues

James Baldwin
• March 2011

Then Creole stepped forward to remind them that what they were playing was the blues. He hit something in all of them, he hit something in me, myself, and the music tightened and deepened, apprehension began to beat the air. Creole began to tell us what the blues were all about.

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