[Inspired by the
anniversary of Charlie
Parker’s death—on which more in Thursday’s post—this week I’ll be
AmericanStudying some figures and issues related to the very American musical genre of jazz.
Please share your own responses and thoughts for a swinging crowd-sourced
weekend post!]
Three engaging
and important examples of jazz’s influence on American literature.
1)
Langston
Hughes’s Jazz Poetry: As I wrote in that post on Hughes’s
Collected Poems, his voice,
style, and themes can’t be reduced to any one element or influence. Yet as
illustrated by his important
essay “Bop,” Hughes was deeply interested in jazz and its many variations,
and that interest manifested itself in a good deal of his poetry. Take, for example,
the complex short work
“Dream Boogie,” the opening part of Hughes’s book-length poem Montage of a Dream
Deferred (1951). “Dream Boogie” both uses and analyzes the sounds,
rhythms, and styles of “bop,” and in the process makes a subtle but compelling
case for the genre’s social and cultural significance as well as its aesthetic
appeals.
2)
The Prologue
of Invisible Man (1952): The
Prologue of Ralph
Ellison’s titantic mid-century novel has much to do as the rest of that
sweeping book, but is anchored by a recurring allusion to one specific text: Louis Armstrong’s “Black and
Blue” (1929). In a Prologue—and a novel—defined so fully by metaphors
and allegories, Ellison’s use of Armstrong’s song does two important
things: illustrating how jazz specifically and African American art more
broadly have likewise utilized such extended metaphors; yet at the same time
grounding his metaphors and symbols in a song and sound that are quite potently
concrete and real. When he ends his Prologue with the question, “But what did I
do to be so blue?,” Ellison is thus reiterating how much the allusion, the
song, and jazz itself can tell us about his narrator’s American story and
identity.
3)
Toni
Morrison’s Jazz (1992): Morrison’s
historical novel, set in the 1920s (a period
seen and defined as the height of jazz’s popularity and influence in America)
in Harlem (the locus
of those trends), has a great deal to say about that time and place, the potency
yet also potential problems of jazz as both a cultural form and a way of life,
and how those things connect to the long arcs of African American and American
history. But it also offers a successful prose equivalent to Hughes’s jazz
poetry, a fictional style that includes improvisation, call and response, and
other hallmarks of the musical genre. Taken together, these three works trace
jazz’s literary presence and influence across the 20th century.
Next jazzy
connection tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Jazzy connections you’d share?
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