Annotated Jazz Reading

A Brief Response to Toni Cade Bambara's "Medley"

Some readers may be familiar with Toni Cade Bambara’s frequently anthologized short story “Gorilla, My Love,” but in her 1974 short story “Medley,” Bambara uses the story of a young manicurist as a way to express some of the most important themes that dominate her oeuvre: Black female consciousness, the role of women in African-American culture, and their place in larger society. What makes this story worth recommending is Bambara’s central contention, namely, that jazz is an important part of Black women’s lives and it carries a unique position for reclaiming strength and individuality in both personal relationships and the world at large.

The narrator, Sweet Pea, is not a musician herself, but rather the inamorata of a dynamic but not very successful bass player named Larry Landers. Despite his lack of real musicianship, he has “these long arms that drape down over the bass like they were grown for that purpose” and he’s got a special talent: “Larry Landers was baad [sic] in the shower”(105). This passionate sexuality, then, is at the heart of the relationship. Larry and Sweet Pea never feels so close as when they sing in the shower. “My Funny Valentine,” “Green Dolphin Street,” Jelly Roll Morton’s “Deep Creek Blues,” Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Betty Roche, and others all are sung with love and desire and longing. However exciting and pleasurable the relationship is, Sweet Pea begins to see that Larry’s magnetism hides a suspicious and possessive side. After establishing a very lucrative professional relationship with a gambler named Moody, Sweet Pea asserts her true aim: “My agenda is still to make a home for my girl”(119). In the final climactic scene, Sweet Pea and Larry, singing in shower for one last time, begin to move through their repertoire improvising and changing the melody line, adding scat and a vocal pattern described as “Swahili Wailing”(123). Finally, Sweat Pea is soloing, singing on her own, not dependent on Larry’s supporting line, singing for her little girl, singing for herself.