Labeled a “Rhineland bastard,” his parentage was viewed by the authorities as a “cultural stain,” his intensely dark skin rendering the protective status of his German citizenship tenuous.
A mixed-race German citizen, born of a white mother and Senegalese father, his situation became exponentially complicated with the rise of the Nazis in Germany. The Falk story was extraordinary and tragic. Chip Jones (fellow Hot Time Swinger and a friend since childhood) has pestered Sid into agreeing to attend the opening gala in Berlin. It’s the 1990’s and Sid is quietly living out his final years, when, as he himself expresses it, “the past came to collect what owe.” The past arrives in the form of a documentary film celebrating the life another band mate, trumpeter Hieronymus Falk. The band played together in Europe, and particularly in Berlin, in the 30’s, a time when many black American jazz musicians crossed the Atlantic to seek work away from the racist atmosphere at home. A widowed octegenarian, he, in what seems a different lifetime, was once a member of the jazz sextet known as the Hot Time Swingers. Sid is a fair-skinned, mixed-race, retired medical transcriber, living in Baltimore. Half-Blood Blues, however, has been shortlisted for the 2011 Booker, the Giller, and just this past Tuesday, the Governor General’s Literary Award, and has solidified her position as an important new voice in Canadian literature.
Her first novel, The Second Life of Samuel Tyne, (2004) received international praise and attention.
The consequences of decisions made in those chaotic days have haunted a generation, and Sid Griffiths, the aging ex-journeyman jazz musician and central character in Esi Edugyan’s latest novel, is no exception.īorn in Calgary, Alberta, Esi Edugyan (pronounced Eduhjan) is thirty-three-years-old, and currently resides in Victoria, British Columbia. It was a time of extremes when even blood and family loyalties were stretched and broken, and when the strength of relationships often spelled the difference between life and death. It’s an ancient tale of ambition, jealousy, and perhaps revenge, played out against the turbulent darkness that was western Europe in the early days of World War II.
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