So by embracing the underground, as the narrator eventually does, he is attempting to regain a sense of his own identity by remaining separate from the falseness of that which occurs above him. Clearly, it is significant that he spends his time stealing electricity, writing his story, and listening to Louis Armstrong's "What Did I Do to Be So Black and Blue" on a phonograph. The first, obviously, is his attempt to subvert the works of mainstream society; but the second two stand as the symbol for what jazz represents in the American experience. Jazz is this sense of individuality; so much so, that the narrator is able to create his own identity...

Today, the invisibility of jazz has been lifted, but its importance to the meaning of the words "America" and "democracy" remains the same as Ellison understood it to be.
Works Cited

De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975.

Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. New York: Random House, 1980.

Ostendorf, Berndt. "Ralph Waldo Ellison." New Essays on Invisible Man. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Peretti, Burton. "Speaking in the Groove: Oral History and Jazz." The Journal of American History, vol. 88, no. 2, September, 2001.