Half Blood Blues

This is a novel that deftly explores a lesser-known aspect of the Holocaust: the persecution of Blacks and German “Mischlings” in Germany during World War II. It’s set against the backdrop of the jazz age, which has been effectively shut down in Berlin because the music is seen as “degenerate.” The tale is narrated by Sid, and moves back and forth in time to unfold the story of a talented band and its young trumpet player, Hieronymus Falk. The musicians must struggle against the growing danger of Nazism, and each experiences varying degrees of safety in Europe based on their background and citizenship. One of the most endangered is Hiero, a German of mixed race, who is taken by the Nazis one night and never returns. Sid show more witnesses this, and a major focus of the novel is Sid’s guilt as he grapples with what he did, and did not do, on that night.

The novel gracefully swerves from Paris, to Berlin, to present-day United States, as Sid tells the story both from an immediate perspective, and from the future, looking back. It’s written in a rhythmic, lyrical jazz slang that reads almost like poetry. The prose is at times sharp and laugh-out-loud witty, and at other times raw and chilling. After about 30 pages, I was so hooked on the story I found it difficult to put the book down.

Esi Edugyan has that special something that allows the reader to live in the historical context she’s created, right along with her wonderfully human, flawed characters. She shines a light on what it would be like to live in a world turned upside-down by hate, and explores what the average person would do when caught in an impossible situation in which death could be around every corner. Through it all the musicians continue to cling to their music, the one thing that still makes sense when nothing else does.

This is not a novel where everything is wrapped up tidy and neat. It leaves you wondering, thinking, and somewhat haunted by the characters and their story. Edugyan is an extraordinarily gifted writer with a very unique style and voice. Very highly recommended. show less

Much took place during the occupation of France during the Second World War, but Half Blood Blues brings to light one of the most unique forays into wartime fiction that I have yet encountered.

Edugyan has pieced together an enthralling musicians’ tale of life on the fringe during Hitler’s march through Europe. Although popular before WWII, jazz quickly became offensive in the eyes of ‘real Germans’, and musicians were made to register under Goebbel’s Reichsmusikkamer. In short, things were about to change and the members of the Hot-Time Swingers were feeling the squeeze. With a cultural mix of half-blood Americans, Jews and Germans, and the genius horn of Hieronymous Falk (a black stateless German), the Hot-Time Swingers show more needed to get out of Berlin, not only to save their music, but to save themselves.

“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.”

Salvation came in the form of Delilah Brown, singer and confidant of the incomparable Louis Armstrong. Once the boys discover Armstrong wanted to meet and play with them, it seemed the only thing to do; head down to Paris and pray for a session with the king himself.

There is much happening within the dynamics of these main characters, and we see the events unfold during the Paris occupation and 50 years later, as Chips Jones (drummer) and bass player Sidney Griffiths travel back to Berlin, first to shine within the spotlight of a music festival and documentary celebrating the Hot-Time Swingers heyday, and then to look up Hiero, the kid who made the horn sing.

Totally three dimensional and engaging characters keep this book alive. The bantering and colloquial language flows without being tiresome and the threat that gathers during the bands stay in Paris is palpable and fed straight to the reader through well written, tangible prose. At times I felt as one with the band, listening to their quips and jokes and feeling the oppression that was never far away.

There is not a perfect person within these pages, they all have the human frailties and passions that manage to get most of us into impossible personal situations at least once in our life. Where these individuals find themselves is a mixture of their own actions and those of other, more powerful forces, which makes this story all the more probable and compelling.

On this year’s longlist for the Booker Prize, Half Blood Blues is a perfect example of the calibre of literature I hope to see competing for such a distinguished award. show less

A beautifully compelling story that weaves together two parallel timelines in the life of Sid Griffiths, a biracial American-born jazz musician who spent much of his young adulthood living in Europe. Half of the tale is set in Germany in 1939 as Sid and the other men in his band struggle to get out of the country, which has become increasingly unsafe for a group of Black men who play jazz. However, once they get into France the threat of the Nazis continues to loom. The other half of the novel follows Sid in 1992 as he travels with his former bandmate, Chip, to Berlin for a festival screening a documentary celebrating the life Hieronymous Falk, another of their former bandmates. However, Chip has a surprise for Sid that will force Sid show more to once again grapple with a decision he made in 1940 that had disastrous consequences.

It took me a bit to settle into the novel as Edugyan writes it in an historical version of African-American Vernacular English, awash with slang of the 1930s jazz scene. However, once I was accustomed to Sid's voice I was drawn completely into his life in both the early days of the war and in the 90s as he struggles with the choices he made in the past. Edugyan effortlessly weaves in her research about the lives of Black folk in Europe in the 30s and also manages to include real jazz figures in the story, including an appearance by Louis Armstrong. A gorgeous tale of friendship, jazz, and the impossible decisions that were made in the face of war. Recommended. show less

Until now, with this book, I've never read a book that itself moves and works like a blues song. But that's changed with Half-Blood Blues. Edugyan's gorgeous novel is, in every way, a carefully crafted blues that is also an artfully told story and thoughtful examination of personal identity. In moving between 1939 and 1992--and at the same time between America, Germany, France, and Poland--it reveals the life of a jazz musician whose personal story is irrevocably tied to others' stories and identities as they were lived in 1939, and as they echo over him even fifty years later.

Edugyan's Half-Blood Blues might well display the most artful use of personal voice and dialect I've ever seen in a novel, and the way in which her rhythms and show more structure evoke a blues is something to behold. Even in the tone of the beginning and ending, this book is experienced like a blues, and it is masterful.

Absolutely, I recommend it. show less

I was intrigued by this book ever since the Giller Prize longlist came out. I put a library hold on it right away and, as luck would have it, the day after it was announced that Half-Blood Blues had won the 2011 Giller Prize I was notified by the library that the book was waiting for me.

Sid and Chip grew up in Baltimore a few blocks from each other. Chip started playing drums at an early age and Sid learned to play stand-up bass. The two of them ended up playing in a jazz band in Berlin and it was a pretty good life before the Nazis decided jazz was decadent. Their trumpeter was Hiero Falk, a young black German. Hiero (or the Kid) is brilliant. He could be the next Louis Armstrong. In fact, Louis Armstrong sent his assistant, Delilah, show more to Berlin to ask the band to come to Paris to play with him. As we learn right at the beginning of the book Hiero and Sid did make it to Paris but one morning Hiero got picked up by the Nazis. He was sent to a concentration camp and was never heard from again. Until, that is, a filmmaker decided to make a documentary about Hiero and premiered it in Berlin. Then Chip got a letter from Hiero and he asked Chip to come to his home in Poland.

That's the bare bones of the story but the book is so much more. We live through the time the band has to hide in a jazz club because the Nazis were looking for them. My heart was in my mouth when they crossed the border into France. The description of the crowds streaming out of Paris as the Germans entered put me right there in that mass of humanity. I felt like the bus trip across Poland would never end because I so much wanted to know what awaited them at the end. And yet, I deliberately slowed down my reading of the last 20 pages because I really didn't want the book to end. Edugyan writes so beautifully and powerfully. I know she is not old enough to have lived through the times in the book but she writes like she did.

The book truly deserves all the attention it has received. I think I may be buying a copy for a Christmas present. show less

Two black jazz musicians from Baltimore, Chip and Sid, narrowly escape Berlin in 1939 only to find their dreams come true in meeting up with Louis Armstrong in Paris, but also their nightmares as they watch the Nazis march into the city even as they are struggling to record their finest disc, “Half-Blood Blues”. In the aftermath of the occupation, Sid does something that will haunt him all his remaining days, but which he will not reveal until fifty years later at the end of a quest of reconciliation in Poland.

Esi Edugyan’s story is rich with history and horror. Jazz greats file past and interact with the characters. And the tension between individual glory, even if that glory is just a jazz record, and conscience is achingly show more portrayed.

The prose is saturated in what passes for early 20th century Baltimore dialect. But while that at first locates and brings the characters to life, it later loses its effectiveness and starts to seem like affect. It is unclear why they speak in this apparent dialect even in German (Chip and Sid are fluent). And other characters, such as Delilah and Hiero, sound remarkably similar to Chip and Sid. But that is part of a more general concern in that we don’t really get to know any of these characters in any depth. The structure of the crisis and its milieu is adequately portrayed but Sid’s critical action is hard to judge given that we don’t really have a strong sense of him. However, maybe these are minor complaints. Because in general I did enjoy the story and I was, throughout, fascinated to learn about these black musicians in those dark days.

Gently recommended. show less

Half Blood Blues is a little like a cross between Christopher Isherwood's Berlin stories and Suite Francaise. The story kicks off with a group of jazz musicians cutting a record in wartime Paris. Shortly afterwards one of them, a black German considered the next Louis Armstrong, is captured by the Nazis.

The story cuts between the war years in Berlin and Paris, and 1992, when the central characters have grown old. The narrator is Sam, the bass player, who comes from Baltimore with Chip the drummer. The jazz scene in Weimar Berlin sought out black American players and gives them great opportunity. They hook up with a Jewish pianist and a couple of Aryan Germans, as well as Hiero, the trumpet genius.

Hiero and Sam are rivals for the show more attentions of singer Delilah, who is a confidante of Armstrong's. This rivalry intensifies as the band members finds themselves outcasts when the Nazis take action against Jews, blacks and jazz musicians, affecting them all. They flee to Paris, only to have the Nazis follow them. There, the rivalry between Sam and Hiero turns bitter.

In 1992, Chip and Sam are invited to Europe to the opening of a documentary about Hiero, which surfaces feelings long suppressed. An invitation to a meeting in Poland adds to the mystery.

Edugyan has created a set of terrific characters with an argot that feels authentic. Jam sessions and Hiero's playing are described in a way that makes you feel the music and get what makes Hiero great. It is a terrific account of professional and personal jealousy in a context of shared fears that work to both pull the characters together and drive them apart at the same time. show less