The City and the Voice of Jav. An Integration of Art Fonns

The City and the Voice of Jav.: An Integration of Art Fonns The City and the Voice of Jazz: Ап Integration of Art Foпns In Toni Morrison's novel Jazz, the narrator often breaks from the story Jine to describe the setting, New York City, and the power this city exercises over its inhabltants. Duriпg the historical backdrop of the Harlem Renaissance, jazz music is the ruling force that drives an entire cultural rnoverneпt, as well as the plot of the novel. In Jazz, the City is depicted as а personified force that holds power over her inhabitants, and jazz music is what hoJds power over and comes to define the City. From p]ot and character relationships to structure and language, Morrison's novel becomes more and more ideпtifiaЫe as а Duke Ellington or Louis Aпnstrong inspired composition of culture: а jazz piece, iпcarnated in the City. Тhе most notaЬ!e asides that the narrator of Jazz takes are digressioпs that cornment on the power of the city. In one of these the narrator states, "а city like this one makes те dream tall and feel in on things" (Morrison, 7). The аgепсу of the city is recogпized early оп, with the verb "make. " No choice is afforded to the narrator; she is forced, or "made" to feel а certain way. Though this influence that the city has over the narrator is depicted as positive (no one would actually complain ofbeing forced·to "dream tall"), this isn't always the case. Тhе crime of the novel that i$ so shockingly set forth in the opening pages, Joe Trace's murder of his youпg Jover, Dorcas, is dependent on а number of factors, а!! of wp.i<;h trace back to setting, physical, historical, and emotional. Joe's "crazy" Jove for Dorcas is influenced and facilitated Ьу the city, as are his hasty actions. Joe Trace's life before he reaches tbe City is as innocent as the times сап afford. Не grows up, works, and maпies the woman who happens to fall out of а tree and into his Jap. Тhis portrait of Joe Trace completely contradicts the image of Joe Trace in the City, seducing girls less than half his age, sneaking out to nightclubs and hiding in the shadows that the City provides as cover. The narrator affirrns this tempting and simultaneously concealing aspect of the City: The City, in its own way, gets down for you, cooperates, smoothing its sidewalks, correcting its curbstones, offering you melons and green apples on the comer. [ ... ] Doors to speakeasies stand ajar and in that соо] dark р]асе а c]arinet coughs and c]ears its throat waiting for the woman to decide on the key. She makes up her mind and as you pass Ьу informs your back that she is daddy's Jittle ange] child. The City is smart at this: smelling good and looking raunchy; sending secret messages disguised as puЬ!ic signs [ ... ] and good at opening locks, dimming stairways. Covering your moans with its own. (Morrison, 63) So what is it about the City that changes Joe Trace? Anne-Marie Paquet-Deyris' article, "Toni Morrison's Jazz and the City" argues that the City does not change Joe Trace, but it brings out his true identity, which had not been fully expressed until his migration up north. Paquet-Deyris states, "Ьу offering а glimpse of Joe Trace's gradual Northem m.igration, the narration also documents his slow access to some budding sense of identity" (Paquet-Deyris, 223). As Paquet­ Deyris implies, the closer Joe gets to the City, the stronger sense of true identity he receives, implying that the City is the ultimate influence that unmasks his identity: "if they have their way and get to the City, they feel more like themselves, more Jike the people they always believed they were" (Morrison, 35). Joe chronicles his search for true identity Ьу numerating all of the changes he has gone through in Jife. As the reader comes to infer, Joe Trace consistently lacks а staЫe identity throughout the novel. 1n fact, he "changes" about seven times (he counts these off himself) in the course of his life - from creating а name for himself to getting married, moving to the city, and much more, Joe Trace is constantly redefining himself. But when he gets to the City, these changes become less and less voluntary. Joe changes when he and Violet move to а better neighborhood, but then he's changed again when "those white-men took that pipe from around my head, I was brand new for sure because they almost killed me" (Morrison, 128). Joe depicts his seventh and final change as completely out of his control "maybe that's what made me change again for the seventh time" (129 -emphasis added). Finally, Ьу the time Joe's narrations reach the present, he admits, "I changed once too often" (129). Joe's excessiveness and unruliness in identity shifts are directly coпelated to his changes in location, and the last of his changes (the ones that lead to his affair and murder of Dorcas) are the results of а build up of influence the City exerts over his identity, identifying this setting as the power that inspires these negative changes. When the narrator of Jazz describes the City, she describes something much more than а location - it is а force that meddles in the lives of its inhaЬitants and exerts influence over them; it allows Joe' s affair, even facilitates it. Тhе City allows Joe to Ье "not so much new as [himself]: [his] strong, riskier sel[f]" (Moпison, 33). Surely, Joe's affair is risky, hiding in puЫic places like а nightclub named "Mexico" with а lover who is not his wife, in а neighborhood where everyone knows or knows of everyone else. Не even rents а room from his upstairs neighbor, Malvone, and has sex with this young lover above the bed he shares with his wife, Violet. The City allows this risky behavior: "he stalks through the City and it does not object or interfere," and even hides it - it "covers [his] moans with its own" (63). Violet's character is also greatly influenced Ьу the City. Before she moved to the city, Violet was strong and fearless. She was а woman "that hauled hay in Virginia and handled а four-mule team in the brace [ ... ] stood in the cane fields in the rniddle of the night when the sound of it rustling hid the slither of the snakes" (Morrison, 96). But living and working in the City takes this strength from Violet: "the City had softened her arms and melted the shield that once covered her palms and fingers ... [and] took away·the back and arm power she used to boast of' (91). Тhе naпator makes it clear that the City has the power to influence inhaЬitants, but the reader must go deeper to find what it is that gives the City this power. There is something more to the City, more than buildings and sidewalks, that is at work in the novel. Тhat "something" is jazz music. Set during the Harlem Renaissance, jazz music comes, as Morrison illustrates, to influence and ultimately define the City through the very Janguage of the text. The naпator constantly gives the City agency and personifies it; the City "controls," "breathes," "spins," "softens," and "aпanges" (Morrison, 9, 34, 63, 91, 50). The naпator first gives the City Iife, and then names that life "Jazz". AII of these actions are the movements of jazz music. The naпator most explicitly capitalizes upon the degree to which jazz music has occupied the City when she describes it as "а City seeping music that begged апd challenged each and every day," just as the give and take motions of jazz do (Мorrison, 67). Jazz, iп fact, is the influential power, housed in the Jandscape of the City. Alice Manfred describes this feature excellently when she sighs at the signs of "Inuninent Demise" and reflects оп how the "music was getting worse and worse with each passing season" (Morrison, 56). Her reflections reference jazz music as it permeates the City: Songs that used to start in the head and fi]] the head had dropped оп down, down to places below the sash and the buckled bets. Lower and Iower, until the music was so lowdown you had to shut up your windows and just suffer the summer sweat when the men in shirtsleeves propped themselves iп window frames, or clustered оп rooftops, in alleyways, оп stoops and in the apartments of relatives playing the lowdown stuff that signaled hnminent Demise (56). In this passage, jazz music fully saturates the City: it is identified as both fully influential and fully present in the landscape of the City. While jazz permeates the landscape of the City, it simultaneous]y permeates every aspect of the novel. Jazz, as the Oxford English Dictionary defines it, is "а type of popular music originating among African Americans [ ... ] characterized Ьу regular forceful rhythms, syncopated phrasing, modifications to traditional instrumental tone and pitch, and improvisatory soloing" (OED, Jazz, def. За). But leaming what jazz is is not as simple as looking up а definition - even influential proponents of the jazz era found it hard to pin down the swaying, jumping identity of jazz. Duke EШngton commented, '1azz, to me, meant having fun through freedom of expression" (Dance, 20). One important aspect of jazz that these two definitions capita!ize upon is freedom through improvisation. Moпison echoes this characteristic of jazz constantly throughout her work, especially through naпation. The basic naпative structure of Jazz is disjointed and confusing. The in medias res opening of the novel immediately throws the reader into the tumultuous rhythm of а recent dramatic episode. From here, the unnamed naпator backtracks, and limitedly explains the circumstances that Jead to the initially shocking image of Violet Trace cutting а dead girl's face at а funeral. The rest of the novel continues with this fragmented process of storytelling, with flashbacks that vary in Jength from а sentence to the entire middle section of the novel proper. Dispersed within this already jumpy structure, are abstractions - \jke the naпator's comments about the city, and asides оп subjects such as love. Jazz doesn't even have numbered ог named chapters, and naпative or temporal breaks often don't coincide with the spatial page breaks within the text. This disunity in the naпative structure of Jazz reflects the расе of jazz music, where the main story line of Joe and Violet's relationship (the "regular forceful rhythms") is interrupted Ьу asides, and flashbacks that reveal а little more about these characters (the "modifications to traditional instrumental tone and pitch"), and at one point pushed aside completely Ьу the section on Golden Gray's quest (the naпator's own "improvisatory soloing"). Character relationships in Jazz are also reminiscent of the choppy, improvised style of jazz music. In the middle section of the novel, the naпator weaves Joe and Violet's pasts together to connect the couple through а maze of distant re!ationships. Joe's Ьirthmother, Wild, is rescued Ьу Golden Gray, the Ьi-racial son ofVera Louise Gray, whose maid is True Belle, who has а daughter named Rose Dear, who is the mother of Violet. This string of choppy and overly coincidental connections reveals itself as less and less be\ievaЫe, and the narrator doesn't even assert the veracity of her claims. Since the narrative, up to this point, has already described how Joe and Violet met, the maze of complicated associations appears wholly unnecessary. Nevertheless, choppy connections and improvisations are what make up jazz music, making its reflections in the relationship between Joe and Violet unique\y necessary in order to fit in the jazz format of the novel. Jое' s relationship with Dorcas is even more characteristic of jazz because it is set in а landscape where jazz soaks the streets and personifies itself in Dorcas. Her sexuality is the incarnation of the "lowdown" quality ofjazz music that Alice Manfred hates and tries so stemly to suppress (Moпison, 56). Like jazz music, Dorcas is described as bold: "even as а nine-year­ old in elementary school she was bold" and despite Alice's efforts, Dorcas' sexuality cannot Ье stifled: "she is gracefu\, in spite of those shaming shoes, and she is provocative" (Morrison, 61, 66). The relationship that Joe and Dorcas share is bold, too. It begins with а whisper and grows into а "deepdown spooky love" that elicits extreme emotions of euphoria and despondency, and ends with а muffled shot (3). The course of this relationship follows the rhythm of ajazz piece, and Morrison uses practically the same words to describe Joe's love for Dorcas and jazz music: "deepdown" and "lowdown," respectively (3, 56). Morrison's allusions to jazz music in Jazz run as deep as the very language of the narration. The first word in the novel, in fact, is not а word at all, but а sound: "Sth" (Morrison, 3). Moпison carries on with this musical tone of her prose throughout the novel, tuming Jazz into what appears as а composition of notes, more so than а composition of language. Euseblo Rodrigues' article, "Experiencing Jazz," notes the rhythm present in Morrison's prose, stating: That the whole of Jaz.z resonates becomes clear only after we slowly discover how to respond to its rhythms. Then sentences .sing, then adjectives turn into breathless run-ons. Dorcas has а "cream-at-the-top-of-the-milk-pail" face ( 12). Violet lies under а quilt made of "no-question-about-it" satin (224). (Rodrigues, 736) The rhythmic quality of the text is jazz music at the most organic level. Morrison turns up this singing feature of her prose when describlng Dorcas: "her hand, the one that wasn 't holding the glass shaped like а flower, was under the tаЫе drumming out the rhythm on the inside of his thigh, his thigh, his thigh, thigh, thigh" (Morrison, 95). Interpreted in these constructs of jazz music, the question of the narrator (the most puzzling aspect of Jaz.z) reveals itself. After а!!, the narrator is the composer of the work; she lays the choppy structure, improvises relations and events, and is consistently unreliaЬle. In short, the narrator of Jazz. is jazz. Her unreliabllity is unabashed, and her sentiments completely puЫic: What was I thinking of? How could I have imagined him so poorly? Not noticed the hurt that was not linked to the color of his skin, or the Ыооd that beat beneath it, But to some other thing that longed for authenticity, for а right to Ье in this р!асе, effortlessly without needing to acquire а false face, а laughless grin, а talking posture. I have been careless and stupid and it infuriates me to discover (again) how unreliaЫe I am. (Morrison, 160) Тhе reason that the word 'jazz" is never uttered iп the novel itself, therefore, is because jazz is narrating in the first person (and how ridiculous would а first person narrator referring to herself in the third person sound?). The narrator's appeaJ to the reader at the end of the novel now takes on new meaning: "that I have loved оп/у уои, surrendered ту whole seif reckless to уои алd nobody else [... ] But I can't say that out loud. "This declaration is а confessiou: the narrator is the book, which is jazz: reckJess and with а voice, but without words so much as rhythm. One of the most prominent critiques of the literary jazz analysis of Morrison's novel is Alan Munton's article, "Misreading Morrison, Mishearing Jazz: А Response to Toni Morrison's Jazz Critics," in which Munton argues that Morrison' s writing does not truly emulate jazz music. Most notaЬ!y, he argues against the technical readings that many critics have made that compare Morrison's prose to jazz compositions. Не focuses on the riff, offering а very technical and historical definition of the term and ultimately arguing that, оп top of the riff being out of popularity when Morrison began writing fiction, the riff is too complex - has too much going оп both in history and in musical terrns - to Ье pinned as simple Iiterary repetition in Morrison's novel. However, Munton does not address the comp!exity with which Morrison uses her repetitions, or riffs. The narrator' s earlier mentioned repetition of the word "thigh" evokes а sense of jazz rhythm and it's association with promiscuity and power, the overarching themes of the nove] itself. Munton's over]y technical analysis of the jazz riff and concentration оп how he believes critics have misinterpreted this term reveals an inabllity towards metaphor and translation of complexity across artistic media. Munton's assertion throughout his article is that music and literature cannot Ье merged, that while the artistic process of composition тау Ье simiJar with music and literature, the end results are inherently different: Тhе jazz musician, for Morrison, is an interpreter of experience, as is the writer of fiction in her own medium [ ... ] This does not say, or mean, that Morrison believes her fiction is imbued with jazz rhythms. It says, and means, that the Ыасk writer of fiction is in а position analogous to that of а jazz musician: both must work hard at their respective arts in order to make them appear effortless, whether upon the printed page or upon the bandstand. (Munton, 238) Claiming that Morrison does not necessarily believe thatjazz permeates her fiction takes unwarranted liberties with the author' s intentions. Four years prior to the puЬ!ication of Munton's article, Toni Morrison was interviewed Ьу Claudia Brodsky Lacour and Elissa Schappell for the Fall 1993 No. 134 edition of the Paris Review. Early on in the interview Morrison states: The difficulty for me in writing--among the difficulties-is to write language that can work quietly on а page for а reader who doesn't hear anything. Now for that, one has to work very carefully with what is in between the words. What is not said. Which is measure, which is rhythm, and so оп. So, it is what you don't write that frequently gives what you do write its power. (Morrison, 1993) Тhе value of rhythm in prose is clearly not lost оп Morrison. Moreover, her response to the interviewer's prompt, "How would you describe the controlling image of Jau" very descriptively illustrates her integration of jazz music into Jazz the novel: Jazz was very complicated because I wanted to re-represent two contradictory things­ artifice and improvisation-where you have an artwork, planned, thought through, but at the same time appears invented,likejazz ( ... ] [With] the willingness to fail, to Ье wrong, because jazz is performance. ( ... ] [Y]ou have to Ье аЬ!е to risk making that error in performance. Dancers do it all the time, as well as jazz musicians. Jazz predicts its own story. Sometimes it is wrong because of faulty vision. It simply did not imagine those characters well enough, admits it was wrong, and the characters talk back the way jazz musicians do. It has to listen to the characters it has invented and then learn something from them. (Morrison, 1993) Later, Morrison states, "the jazzlike structure wasn't а secondary thing for me-it was the raison d'etre ofthe book" (Morrison, 1993). Тhese responses highlight Morrison's use ofrhythm in her prose, as well her full integration ofjazz music into Jazz, the novel. She describes Jazz as "re­ representing" what is found in jazz music, constantly borrowing from jazz to express the overarching image of her novel. Munton's argument thatjazz rhythms cannot Ье found in the prose of Jazz, therefore, ignores the author's entire concept of the novel itself, and basis on which it is founded. If, as Munton argues, jazz music is an inherently different art form, and cannot Ье integrated with literature, what would he have to say about the works of famous Harlem Renaissance writers such as Langston Hughes and Ralph Ellison? Munton' s final argument against jazz centered analyses of Moпison' s fiction contends that while many critics assert that Moпison uses jazz in her writing to "Africanize" it, jazz music is not exclusive to the Ыасk experience: It is today ап international "language," generating distinctive European, Scandinavian, South African, South American, Russian, and Japanese voices. Black Americans originated not "jazz itself' (ап essence), but а music so rich at the core that it still possesses the potential for adaptation and change. (Munton, 251) Munton concludes his argument Ьу ripping jazz from its roots and invalidating it as ап African American art form. Yet despite foreign adaptations and white influence, jazz music is founded in the African American culture and experience. Moпison's writing is her own adaptation of jazz music, and its versatility in the case of her fiction does not depreciate its value or refute its African American roots. Munton 's argument that white European influence makes jazz less of а Ыасk art form and therefore less relevant in Ыасk literature completely disregards the basis оп which jazz was founded - its true organic roots from which artists draw influence - which Munton himself agrees was "the !ived alternative to а literacy suppressed Ьу slavery" (Мunton, 251). Just because Ыасk artists couldn't merge jazz into literature during the suppression of slavery doesn't mean that it must still Ье kept separate with the oppression of slavery lifted and Ыасk literacy achieved. In her foreword to Jazz., Morrison reflects, "I had written novels in which structure was designed to enhance meaning; here the structure would equal meaning" (Moпison, Foreword). Jazz., through the techniques of language, imagery, and structure, does exactly that. The essence of jazz music permeates the entire landscape of the novel from the narrator' s first musical utterance to her final арреа! to the reader. The setting of the City, character relationships, and narrative techniques conform to the musical genre (and title) that Moпison assigns to her text: Jazz..