Music and Dance as Connection and Liberation in Open Water

The Thematic Claim: Music and Dance as a Shared Language of Survival and Freedom in Open Water

In Caleb Azumah Nelson's Open Water, music and dance are not decorative or incidental; they are the novel's primary mode of honest communication. The narrator and the woman repeatedly find that language is inadequate—the narrator notes in Chapter 14 that language is still flimsy, inadequate—and turn instead to sound and movement to confess pain, build intimacy, and experience moments of collective freedom. The thematic claim can be stated precisely: music and dance function as a shared language that allows characters to express feelings words cannot capture and to find moments of collective freedom, however temporary, within a world that often denies them safety.

The novel develops this claim through a series of scenes that move between the solitary and the communal, the personal and the political. From the narrator's kitchen breakdown to the Deptford jazz night, from the woman's phone confession about dance to the Carnival dance with a stranger, music and dance emerge as the novel's answer to the question that recurs throughout: how are you feeling?

Music as Confession: The Kitchen and the Jazz Night

The novel's first extended meditation on music comes in Chapter 7. Alone in his kitchen, the narrator breaks down while listening to Jonwayne's 'Afraid of Us,' a song built on a vocal sample from a group of Black women including Cissy Houston. The music raises something within him, and he slides to the floor, wailing. The song stops; he is in a break, a percussion break, a pause where rhythm falls loose. This moment establishes a key pattern: music initiates the confession, but the confession itself happens in the silence after the music stops.

When he rises, he puts on Solange's 'Junie' and begins to move across his living room. The passage describes affording yourself the freedom to be, moving with intentional and unthinking steps, approaching ecstasy, losing control of what you know. He is born fresh, born new, born free. This is the novel's clearest statement of music and dance as liberation—a solitary, bodily release that bypasses trauma and the shadow of oneself.

The chapter then moves to the Deptford jazz night, where musicians gather, channelling their voices through their various instruments, to ask each other how they are feeling. Here the theme expands from the personal to the communal. A veteran dancer tells a first-timer that the ancestors visit us and we let them take over. The narrator watches the rise and fall of Black bodies moving of their own accord, and describes the experience as plunging into an ocean where the sticky tar of trauma is washed away by the waves. He addresses the room directly: dance, sing, do what you must; you are safe here, you are seen here, you can live here. The chapter ends with the question: what does it sound like? Freedom.

This passage establishes the novel's core argument: music and dance are not entertainment but survival. They are how Black people in this world find safety, visibility, and a way to live.

Dance as Self-Making: The Woman's Voice

In Chapter 8, the woman offers her own account of dance over the phone. When the narrator asks how she copes, she lists smoking, drinking, eating, treating herself well—and then adds: and I dance. She describes dance as her space: she is making space and dancing into the space, filling the silence between the kick and the snare and the hat. She dances to breathe, but often dances until she is breathless and sweaty, feeling all those parts of herself she cannot always feel, parts she does not feel she is allowed to feel. She concludes that she makes a little world for herself, and lives.

This is a crucial counterpoint to the narrator's experience. For the woman, dance is not just release but self-possession—a way of claiming parts of herself that the world does not permit her to feel. The narrator responds with wonder, saying he has never heard anyone talk about dance like that. He invites her to the Wednesday jazz night in Deptford, and she agrees. Music and dance become the thread that connects them before they have even been in the same room again.

The woman's description also connects to the novel's broader interest in the body as a site of truth. In Chapter 30, narrated by the woman, she recalls buying a 35mm camera like the narrator's after seeing Roy DeCarava's photograph 'Couple Dancing, 1956' at an exhibition, recognizing the two of them in it. The photograph—a Black couple dancing—becomes a model for the connection the novel seeks: a moment of intimacy and movement that language cannot capture.

Carnival: Collective Joy and Its Limits

Chapter 20 offers the novel's most complex treatment of the theme. On Carnival Monday, the narrator attends a house party with rooftop vibes but leaves quickly. The party is marked by mimicry of broken English and a Rasta wig—cultural appropriation that the narrator finds unbearable. He slips out into Carnival proper, where he witnesses a stranger's patty being knocked from her hand, and the two share a grin in pain.

But then the woman takes his elbow and leads him to a sound system. Bass slaps thud, like a heartbeat. She winds her hips loose like elastic, takes his hand around her waist, and encourages him to slow down. The passage describes the muddy fervour of a generous moment found under the miserly grey of a London sky on Carnival Monday—an unexpected miracle in these moments of freedom.

This scene complicates the theme in two ways. First, it shows that music and dance are not automatically liberating; they can be co-opted and degraded. The house party's mockery of patois is the opposite of the Deptford jazz night's reverence. Second, it shows that genuine connection through dance is possible even with a stranger, in the midst of a city that is simultaneously celebrating and commodifying Black culture. The narrator finds freedom not in the curated rooftop party but in the messy, embodied Carnival crowd.

Music as Memory and Grief

Chapter 29 traces music through the narrator's personal history. In 2001, he watches MTV Base and sees Black performers—one of whom he will later spot in a supermarket car park, his child on his shoulder. In summer 2016, he loses himself in a mosh pit at a Skepta show, feeling the purchase of each finger on his skin as five pairs of hands pull him back to his feet. When five Black bodies move freely across the stage, he thinks: this feels right.

The same summer, Frank Ocean's album Blonde drops while he is in Spain. He listens on a beach, then runs into the sea and cries. The salt of the sea mingles with his tears. This is music as emotional release on a grand scale—the album arrives from the sky, and the narrator is caught between looking forwards and looking back.

Six months before the present, at Daniel's memorial, a slim figure dances to the sound of silence. The narrator wonders if the figure is crying, like he did when he saw a bike lying on its side, wheels still spinning. Music and dance here become a way of mourning—movement in the absence of sound, grief made physical.

Finally, the narrator records a music demo in a coastal studio. He dances across the second take, shoulders loose, punching words across the 64-bar count. He gazes at his reflection in the booth glass, relaxed, unhurried, playing rapper for a few moments, and wonders if this is what freedom looks like.

But the chapter immediately complicates this. The narrator reflects on open water, trauma, and drowning: he has always thought that if he opened his mouth in open water he would drown, but if he did not open his mouth he would suffocate. So here he is, drowning. The freedom of the recording studio is real but incomplete. Music offers a glimpse of liberation, but the narrator is still drowning in the open water of his own pain.

Complexity and Contradiction

The novel refuses to present music and dance as a simple escape. Several tensions run through the theme.

Freedom is temporary. In Chapter 14, the narrator is looking forward to freedom, even if it is short, even if it might not last. The Deptford jazz night, the Carnival dance, the mosh pit—all are moments that pass. The novel does not offer music as a permanent solution but as a series of brief, precious respites.

Liberation can be solitary or communal, but not always both. The kitchen dance is purely personal—the narrator is alone, his family unreachable. The Carnival dance is collective but with a stranger. The novel shows both modes without ranking them.

Music can be degraded. The house party in Chapter 20 mocks the very culture that Carnival celebrates. The novel is alert to the ways Black music and dance can be appropriated, and it insists on distinguishing authentic expression from mimicry.

The body is both free and vulnerable. Dance liberates the narrator, but the novel never lets us forget that Black bodies are also targets. The memorial scene, the police questioning shopkeepers, the narrator's fear that leaving the house might mean not returning intact—all of this shadows the moments of joy.

Character and Symbol Connections

The theme connects directly to the novel's central symbols. The open water appears in Chapter 7 as the ocean that washes away trauma, and again in Chapter 29 as the water in which the narrator drowns. Music and dance are the bridge between these two versions—the means by which the narrator sometimes reaches the shore.

The honest gaze is also intertwined with music and dance. In the barbershop, the narrator and the woman hold each other's gaze; in Chapter 14, when they reunite at NikeTown, language is still flimsy, inadequate, so they stand, silenced by the weight of it all, letting their bodies confess their truths. The body, in motion or in stillness, becomes the honest language that words cannot provide.

The music and jazz symbol page captures the novel's broader argument: music is not background but foreground, a way of being and knowing. The Deptford jazz night, the Skepta show, the Frank Ocean album, the recording studio—each is a site where the narrator and others ask and answer the question, how are you feeling?

The barbershop also connects to the theme. It is a space of community and ritual, where the barber's clippers pause to acknowledge what passes between the narrator and the woman. Like the jazz night, it is a place where Black people gather and are seen.

Among the characters, the narrator is the novel's primary figure of music and dance—he listens, he moves, he records. The woman is a dancer who describes dance as her space and her life. Samuel introduces them, and his role as a dancer is part of what draws the narrator to the woman. The narrator's grandmother and mother are present in the background of these scenes—the grandmother's passing triggers the kitchen breakdown, and the mother's grief is something the narrator cannot share. Freddie appears in the novel's broader exploration of Black friendship and loss.

Study Questions

1. How does the novel use music and dance to express what language cannot? Trace at least two specific moments where words fail and music or movement succeeds.

Answer: In Chapter 14, when the narrator and the woman reunite at NikeTown, the narrator explicitly notes that language is flimsy and inadequate, so they stand in silence, letting their bodies confess their truths. In Chapter 7, the narrator's kitchen breakdown is initiated by music (Jonwayne's 'Afraid of Us') and resolved through dance (Solange's 'Junie'), with the narrator moving from wailing to a state of being born fresh, born new, born free. In both cases, music and movement accomplish what speech cannot.

1. Compare the narrator's solitary kitchen dance in Chapter 7 with the communal Carnival dance in Chapter 20. What does each reveal about the theme of liberation?

Answer: The kitchen dance is purely personal—the narrator is alone, his family unreachable, and the liberation is internal, a release of grief and trauma through solitary movement. The Carnival dance is collective—the narrator dances with a stranger, guided by bass and the woman's encouragement to slow down, and the liberation is shared, an unexpected miracle in the midst of a city that is simultaneously celebrating and commodifying Black culture. Together, they show that liberation through music and dance can be both individual and communal, and that both modes are necessary.

1. The woman says she dances to breathe but often dances until she is breathless. How does this paradox illuminate the novel's treatment of freedom and constraint?

Answer: The paradox suggests that dance is not a simple escape but a complex negotiation with constraint. The woman dances to feel all those parts of herself she is not allowed to feel, and the breathlessness is a sign of that effort—she is pushing against limits, not ignoring them. This mirrors the novel's broader treatment of freedom as temporary and hard-won, as in Chapter 14's description of freedom that is short and might not last.

1. In Chapter 29, the narrator wonders if this is what freedom looks like while recording his demo, yet the chapter ends with the open water drowning metaphor. How does the novel complicate the idea of liberation through music?

Answer: The recording studio scene offers a glimpse of freedom—the narrator is relaxed, unhurried, playing rapper for a few moments—but the chapter immediately pivots to the open water metaphor: if he opened his mouth in open water he would drown, but if he did not open his mouth he would suffocate. This suggests that music offers a momentary reprieve but does not resolve the underlying trauma. The narrator is still drowning, still unable to fully speak or stay silent. Liberation through music is real but incomplete.

1. How does the novel distinguish authentic cultural expression from appropriation? Use the Deptford jazz night and the Carnival house party as your primary examples.

Answer: The Deptford jazz night is presented as authentic because it is a space where Black people gather to be themselves, asking each other how they are feeling through their instruments, and where the ancestors are said to visit and take over. The Carnival house party is presented as inauthentic because it mocks the very culture it claims to celebrate—mimicry of broken English and a Rasta wig are forms of plundering language and identity for amusement. The novel's distinction is clear: authentic expression emerges from lived experience and community, while appropriation borrows the surface without the substance.