Race in My Antonia

"When Samson was well again, his young mistress led him back to the piano.  Several teachers experimented with him.  THey found he had absolute pitch, and a remarkable memory.  As a very young child he could repeat, after a fashion, any composition that was played for him.  No matter how many wrong notes he struck, he never lost the intention of a passage, he brought the substance of it across by irregular and astonishing means.  He wore his teachers out.  He could never learn like other people, never acquired any finish.  He was always a negro prodigy who played barbarously and wonderfully.  As piano playing, it was perhaps abominable, but as music it was something real, vitalized by a sense of rhythm that was stronger than his other physical senses, - that not only filled his dark mind, but worried his body incessantly.  To hear him, to watch him, was to see a negro enjoying himself as only a negro can.  It was as if all the agreeable sensations possible to creatures of flesh and blood were heaped up on those black and white keys, and he were gloating over them and trickling them through his yellow fingers." (92).

We talked in class about the implicit messages of the book, and specifically how race is present in the book.  This passage stood out to me, especially because Marissa and I just finished our paper on how race is relevant in the musical world.
This passage seems to be surprised at how well a black musician can play.  To see him enjoy himself and cross the "black and white" barriers (black and white keys).   A black boy being a great musician was rare in this time, especially in this environment.  When he performs, race becomes neutralized, and he becomes harmless.  He is just a musician, regardless of race who his audience can observe without feeling threatened.