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In Noise: The Political Economy of Music, Jacques Attali argues that “All music, any organization of sounds is then a tool for the creation or consolidation of a community, of a totality” (6). Taking a cue from Attali’s notion of music, this paper explores how George Gershwin attempts to construct the sound of nationhood in Porgy and Bess. As Ray Allen argues, in the 1930s, “increasing numbers of artists and intellectuals turned to the folk tradition of the ‘common man’ to forge a more democratic and pluralistic vision of America” (248). In this nationalistic movement, Gershwin’s work was one of the most notable musical achievements in creating a consensual image of the United States as a nation-state. This paper takes two strategies to explore Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. First, it focuses on how Gershwin resolves musical conflicts or differences between classical music and jazz in Porgy and Bess. And then, it discusses this opera’s literary representation of an ideal community: “the Promised Land.” As Joseph Swain argues, Porgy and Bess is Gershwin’s most important composition, and arguably the most important nationalistic opera in the history of American culture. Gershwin’s folk opera greatly contributed to the creation of an ideal image of the US through its sound of the nationhood. In revealing Gershwin’s musical and ideological achievement, however, this paper also argues how his opera deconstructs what it constructs through a close examination of “the Jazzbo Brown Music” at the end of this opera. In conclusion, this paper argues Gershwin’s opera (de)constructs the sound of nationhood.
