The Mysteries and Intricacies of Jazz
Jazz, to Barry Ulanov “obsesses the player or singer and haunts his or her audience” (245). The haunting nature though, is the realization that although a piece may not have been liked, it is still a great piece of music. Jazz paints against the wooden grain of white/western archetypical “classical” style and does so with a flair and panache that sneers at its critics. Pure jazz lacks the puritanical structure of “classical” music with its incorporation of many soloists in a seemingly random fashion. Many of these solos are improvised on the spot—which has now become a pillar of jazz itself—and in a way makes the experience of jazz irreproducible in its pure form. All of these characteristics touch upon the independence and anti-mainstream efforts of the 1920’s era African American which ultimately lead to the white recognition of a black culture. Morrison’s characters in her novel Jazz mimic the workings of jazz music: they do not make regular appearances throughout the novel and when they do show up it is in a fashion not thought of as part of the accepted behavioral patterns of typical white culture. In this way, Morrison uses her characters as a jazz ensemble would use its various musicians: randomly, rhythmically, and rebelliously in order to highlight how a segregated America forced African Americans into donning atypical class, gender, and sexual roles.
Interestingly, even Morrison’s choice of characters doesn’t seem to fit the in the canonical literary norm. For example, “the City” itself, to Morrison and those enthralled within her plot, is as much of a character as Dorcas. Moreover, “the City” as a character is a shining illustration of class differences in segregated America. “I like the way the City makes people think they can do what they want and get away with it,” the narrator explains, “I see them all over the place: wealthy whites…pile into mansions decorated and redecorated by black...