The Representation of Music in the Novels of Chinua Achebe, Aminata Sow Fall and Zora Neale Hurston

Abstract

This paper explores the multidimensional concept of musical representation in the African and African American novel with a focus on the works of Chinua Achebe, Aminata Sow Fall and Zora Neale Hurston. It analyzes how music conveys meaning both within and beyond linguistic frameworks. It contributes to the philosophical debates surrounding whether music can represent anything beyond its popular concept as means of entertainment. The study delves into the role of metaphors, symbols, gestures, and embodied cognition in musical understanding, arguing that listeners often credit narrative or emotive content to musical structures. Drawing on the examples of these prominent writers, the paper highlights how musical motifs can evoke movement, emotion, or narrative arcs without requiring textual elements. Finally, the paper concludes that music as a representational system operates through dynamic, non-verbal analogies to human experience; it challenges, to some extent, the notion that representation requires fixed semantic content.