“With the writing of Jazz, Morrison takes on new tasks and new risks. Jazz, for example, doesn’t fit the classic novel format in terms of design, sentence structure, or narration. Just like the music this novel is named after, the work is improvisational.”
-www.enotes.com/jazz/
“As rich in themes and poetic images as her Pulitzer Prize- winning Beloved…. Morrison conjures up hand of slavery on Harlem’s jazz generation. The more you listen, the more you crave to hear.”-Glamour
Toni Morrison’s Jazz is an eclectic reading based on elements of African American culture that produce, surround, and are an integral part of literary text. As we know, African American culture is distinguishable from other American cultures by its emphasis on music. This attention to music has produced two original forms, blues and jazz, and has developed distinctive traditions of others like gospel. Jazz is based mainly on one of these forms, namely –as the title infer- on jazz. This form pervades the whole book and provides not only subject and theme but also literary technique for the novel. Consequently, Jazz is not only the novel about the jazz era but also a novel that develops jazz “strategies” and creates a “jazz” of its own.
Morrison uses music as both a structural and a symbolic element in her work. Music often carries information about community knowledge, aesthetics, or perspectives. Toni Morrison often discusses the power of music and the way it functions in culture in discussions of her craft. (…) Symbolic and structural elements of music appear throughout all of Toni Morrison’s fiction in one way or another. (Obadike)
As it mentioned above, the title itself, draws attention to the world-renowned music created by African Americans in the 1920s’ as well as to the book’s jazz-like narrative structure and themes. Jazz is the best-known artistic creation of Harlem Renaissance. “Jazz is the only pure American creation, which shortly after its birth, became America’s most important cultural export”(Ostendorf, 165). It evolved from the blues
In the formally standardized, instrumentally accompanied form of “city blues”(as opposed the formally unstandardized and earlier “country blues”), the blues was to become one of the two major foundations of 1920s jazz (the other being rags). City blues tended to be strophic songs with a text typically based on two-lin...
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...al idiosyncrasies perhaps as well as written prose can”(Pici). Morrison took on “new tasks and new risks” but it was worth doing so, as ”the result is a writing style that has a unique mix of the musical, the magical, and the historical.”(www.enotes.com/jazz/)
Works Cited:
Andrews, John. (1998). What bebop meant to jazz history. A review of Scott Deveux’ book “The Birth of the Bebop: A Social and musical history.”
Breckenridge, Stan L. (2003). African American music for everyone. Second Edition. Iowa: Kendall-Hunt Publications.
Enotes. The life and work of Toni Morrison. [Retrieved on December 16, 2005 at
www.enotes.com/jazz.
Glamour – Magazine review of Toni Morrison’s Jazz
Hitchcock, H.W. (2000) Music in the USA: A historical introduction. NJ: Prentice House.
Morrison, Toni. (1993). Jazz. NY: Penguin Books.
Obadike, M.L. (01.01.2006) www.blackeneart.com/Morrison.html
Ostendorf, Berndt. (1986). Anthropology, modernism, and jazz. NY: Harold Bloom.
Pici, N.F. (1997-98) Trading meanings: The breath of music in Toni Morrison’s jazz. In Connotations 7:3 (1997-98)
Rodriguez, Eusebio L. (1993). Experiencing jazz. Modern Fiction Studies, 39. 3-4.
Poverty is a complex and growing problem in the United States. As of right now there is no solution. There are proposals and acts, such as Obama Care, that were enacted in an attempt to help people in poverty, and there are so many organizations, such as Habitat for Humanity and The Hunger Project, that try to aid people when they start to lack the necessities, like food and shelter. College students are graduating college with a large amount of student loans and no way of paying them off, people are being evicted from their homes, and employees are being laid off. The unemployment rate in the United States in 2015 was five percent, that’s about fifteen million people. It’s becoming difficult for people to find jobs, therefore making it hard for people to get back on their feet and start living a comfortable lifestyle. Poverty in the
Gates, Henry Louis and Appiah, K. A. (eds.). Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. New York, Amistad, 1993.
The word “jazz” is significant to America, and it has many meanings. Jazz could simply be defined as a genre or style of music that originated in America, but it can also be described as a movement which “bounced into the world somewhere about the year 1911…” . This is important because jazz is constantly changing, evolving, adapting, and improvising. By analyzing the creators, critics, and consumers of jazz in the context of cultural, political, and economic issue, I will illustrate the movement from the 1930’s swing era to the birth of bebop and modern jazz.
Fast. Risky. Intriguing. The upbeat tempo, clashing of high-hats, and randomness in the seduction of jazz draws in an audience during a performance. The musical art form of jazz uses key elements that mainstream music normally use to draw an audience in. However, the added emphasis of improvisation sets jazz apart from mainstream music. Improvisation calls for a musician to create new music on the spot. Musicians use elements like tempo changes, tone, riffs, and etc., to express improvisation. As jazz originates from the African American
Jazz music prospered in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Jazz was created by African Americans to represent pain and suffering and also represented the adversity that racial tension brought. (Scholastic) African American performers like Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie “Bird” Parker came to be recognized for their ability to overcome “race relati...
Jazz is referred as “America’s classical music,” and is one of North America’s and most celebrated genres. The history of Jazz can be traced back to the early era of the 20th century of the U.S. “A History of Jazz” presents From Ragtime and Blues to Big Band and Bebop, jazz has been a part of a proud African American tradition for over 100 years. A strong rhythmic under-structure, blue notes, solos, “call-and response” patterns, and
Samuels, Wilfred D., and Clenora Hudson- Weems. Toni Morrison. New York, NY: Twayne Publishers, 1990. 53-78. Print.
By the end of World War I, Black Americans were facing their lowest point in history since slavery. Most of the blacks migrated to the northern states such as New York and Chicago. It was in New York where the “Harlem Renaissance” was born. This movement with jazz was used to rid of the restraints held against African Americans. One of the main reasons that jazz was so popular was that it allowed the performer to create the rhythm. With This in Mind performers realized that there could no...
Not only is it nearly impossible to pinpoint jazz’s conception in time, many locations are accredited with its origin, the United States allowed for jazz to start gaining popularity and leading into the change it had to the music scene. When jazz is brought up, many first think of its birth place being New Orleans, Louisiana. New Orleans has always been a big musi...
Toni Morrison does not use any words she doesn’t need to. She narrates the story plainly and simply, with just a touch of bleak sadness. Her language has an uncommon power because of this; her matter-of-factness makes her story seem more real. The shocking unexpectedness of the one-sentence anecdotes she includes makes the reader think about what she says. With this unusual style, Morrison’s novel has an enthralling intensity that is found in few other places
Mobley, Marilyn Sanders. “ Toni Morrison.” The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Eds. William L. Andrews, Frances Smith, and Trudier Harris. New York: Oxford UP, 1997.508-510.
Louis Armstrong’s rendition of “(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue” altered various components of the original tune as he incorporated several jazz techniques typical of the 1920’s and pulled the piece out of its original context of Broadway. Doing so greatly changed the piece as a whole and its meaning, to call attention to the necessity of civil rights for the black population. Armstrong’s life was not purely devoted to music. As a civil rights advocate for the black population in the U.S., he grabbed the attention of the government through his fame and helped to bring equal rights to his brethren. But at times, Armstrong allowed his actions to undermine the importance of African American civil rights, which created negative sentiments
The young girl in the story is struggling with finding her own gender identity. She would much rather work alongside her father, who was “tirelessly inventive” (Munro 328), than stay and work with her mother in the kitchen, depicted through, “As soon as I was done I ran out of the house, trying to get out of earshot before my mother thought of what to do next” (329). The girl is torn between what her duties are suppose to be as a woman, and what she would rather be doing, which is work with her father. She sees her father’s work as important and worthwhile, while she sees her mother’s work as tedious and not meaningful. Although she knows her duties as a woman and what her mother expects of her, she would like to break the mould and become more like her father. It is evident that she likes to please her father in the work she does for him when her father says to the feed salesman, “Like to have you meet my new hired man.” I turned away and raked furiously, red in the face with pleasure (328-329). Even though the young girl is fixed on what she wants, she has influences from both genders i...
The adults in the story expect the children to grow into the gender role that their sex has assigned to them. This is seen in several places throughout the story, such as when the narrator hears her mother talking to her father, “I heard my mother saying, ‘Wait till Laird gets a little bigger, then you’ll have a real help’…. ‘And then I can use her more in the house’” (Munro 495), when her grandmother comes to visit and tells her all the things girls aren’t supposed to do, and when she is roughhousing with her little brother and the farm hand, Henry Bailey, tells her, “that there Laird’s gonna show you, one of these days” (Munro 497). While the narrator disagrees with the adults, and tries not to conform to their expectations, at the end of the story both she and her brother end up acting exactly as a child of their age and gender would be expected to act: the preteen girl crying with no apparent logical reason, and the young boy excited to have been included with the men, and talking about the thrilling tale of slaying a horse.
Morrison, Toni, "Recitatif." African American Literature: A Brief Introduction and Anthology. Ed. Al Young. New York: Harper Collins, 1996. 209-25.