The Color of a Lie

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism.

Music shows up often in the novel, from Calvin’s history as a jazz musician, to music’s relationship to passing, to Sojourner being a music school. Throughout the novel, music symbolizes identity.

As a jazz musician, Calvin feels connected to music by Black artists. His father makes him quell this interest, saying that “[e]ven Black artists who [a]re played on mainstream white radio stations [a]ren’t allowed” (28). He thinks this would make it more likely for their true identities to fall under suspicion. With his history of playing in Chicago jazz clubs, music is a huge part of Calvin’s identity that he must suppress at Levittown. When he makes friends with Eugene and Harry, even before they form an informal jazz trio, Calvin narrates that their friendship feels “like music,” using a metaphorical relationship between friendship and music to explain how they make him feel able to express his true identity.

At the Heritage dance, Calvin notes that they only play songs by white musical artists. Rather than playing recent originals by Black artists, they play songs that were “already copied by white artists like Bill Haley and His Comets and Elvis Presley” (187).