“They’re happy.” Or, as one scholar put it, “Despite their lowly status, they are capable of living jubilantly.” Would they see the immense melancholy that hung over the quarter, so oppressive that men had to dull their sensibilities in noise or wine or sex or gluttony in order to escape it? The laughter had to be gross or it would turn to sobs, and to sob would be to realize, and to realize would be to despair.
“The niggers are whooping it up over on Mobile Street tonight,” they might say. I wondered how all this would look to the casual observer, or to the whites in their homes. “The music consumed in its blatant rhythm all other rhythms, even that of the heartbeat.
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