Albert King once stated: "The Blues its twelve-bar, bent-note melody is the anthem of a race bonding itself together with cries of shared self victimization and trouble, which are always present, and always the result of others, pressing upon unfortunate and down trodden poor souls." The music within the novel "Beloved" presses upon the reader's own emotional boundaries by presenting to us the treatment of slaves through an entirely different medium; not only through language but through sound; through the "soul" of those who give their voice melody. It further accumulates within Toni Morrison's poetical style, symbolising the repression of slaves, but paradoxically, symbolising their own livelihood and freedom. Music is displayed as an essential commodity to the text; through the omnipresent narrator's rhythm that provides continuity to the mellifluous rhetoric, but also through the characters" own tribulations. This is displayed so effectively through such cries of self- victimization.
Music for the black American has always been an encoded language, a means of unification and cultural preservation. The literature, like the music, depends on a communal understanding, and the creativity is held together by a constant beat, like the double bass in an improvisation. As a jazz musician, my personal experience with the theory of the blues and improvisation allows me to observe the release and tension technique within Toni Morrison's work. It is a theory I have chosen to construct and elaborate, primarily through the illustration of the black community and their relationship with Sethe. Morrison intends her work to appear improvised, her words sinuous, like the music of the black culture, which does not rely on words to convey expression; her use of streams of consciousness and non-linear narrative represent such a lyrical style. A. S. Byatt writes, "In the foreground is the life of the black people whose courage and dignity and affection is felt to be almost indomitable.