Sinners and the music of freedom

Every few weeks I learn something about blues and jazz that makes me think about the movie Sinners again. This week I watched a lecture on the influence of the African 6 rhythm on the American Shuffle rhythm by Wynton Marsalis.

First of all, this is perhaps the coolest music demonstration I've ever heard. It immediately and viscerally enriched my listening experience of jazz with history that I'd only understood intellectually before: American jazz evolved out of African music.

This demonstration also leads directly into Wynton's powerful interpretation of American music.

Yes the liberated slave was at the heart of the music of freedom, and who better to embody freedom than one who had yearned for it for so long.

— Wynton Marsalis

But another detail that struck me was the attraction between slave fiddlers and the Irish jig. After watching Sinners, my friend S had pointed out that the Irish used to be persecuted in America too, hinting at a possible reason behind the choice to make the vampires in the movie Irish. There was something to explore here, so I decided to rewatch the Irish jig scene in Sinners.

When I watched the movie in the theatre, this was easily the eeriest scene for me.

I was drawn.

This was true horror.

Not horror as in jump scares. But horror as in I couldn't tear my eyes away from how sick and wrong it was. Horror arising from the uncanny¹.

At the same time, many people on YouTube commented about how this song stirred their souls and ignited a sense of longing. This was certainly what the lead vampire Remmick felt in the moment, but I was personally so overwhelmed by the unheimlich that I was unable to feel this emotion.

Now, with repeated exposure and a less cinematic experience, I could finally analyze this scene a little. I learned that this song—Rocky Road to Dublin—is a standard of Irish folk music, and the lyrics are quite fascinating. A young Irishman leaves his hometown and family, slightly heartbroken, to seek his fortune ("reap the corn"). Along the way he keeps ghosts and goblins at bay, and finally ending up in Liverpool, he and his country are insulted and he lets his shillelagh fly out in anger. He is ultimately rescued by fellow Irishmen.

A song of longing for home, bearing humiliation in foreign lands, and, finally, the camaraderie of one's countrymen.

All these aspects—the African 6, the evolution to the American Shuffle, the Irish Jig, the Black experience, the Irish experience, the longing, the suffering, the horror, the joy, the rebellion, the envy, the sick and wrongness and how it arises from proximity and distance to homeliness, the fatal attractions—these are all bundled up in blues and jazz.

There are layers upon layers of attraction at play here.