Sid Griffiths is the novel’s narrator and protagonist. Born and raised in Baltimore, Sid has enough African ancestry to legally qualify as African American, but his skin is light enough for him to occasionally pass as white or European. His speech and writing patterns reflect the slang he picked up in his youth, and his narration is infused with a lively sense of humor. Under the influence of his friend Chip, Sid develops an interest in jazz at a young age and learns to play the bass guitar competently, before setting off to Europe to make a career of it.

However, Sid does not possess the prodigious musical talent enjoyed by some of his peers, which means that he sometimes reacts to them with defensiveness or jealousy, emotions that impact his reliability as a narrator and cloud his judgment. Typically, those negative emotions fade with time, and he makes efforts to repair relationships when they sour, whether with Delilah, Chip (whom he describes as “like a weakness for me” [193]), or Hiero. Sid’s inner conflict between helping others and protecting his own interests underlies most of the novel’s central action, and his belated search for redemption gives it an endpoint.