Kinds of Blue: Toni Morrison, Hans Janowitz, and the Jazz Aesthetic

African American Review, Summer, 2004 by Jurgen E. Grandt

Moreover, the consonant cluster st of the hi-hat is complemented by the voiceless alveolar fricative ss of the sizzle cymbal, accentuating the flow of the language: "Dissonanzen," "Russland," "aufgerissen," "Dissonanz" (twice), "hiess," and finally "Jazz" (twice, as well). (9) Here, the fricative resonates across the physical boundaries of pagination and spacing as well as the grammatical boundaries of punctuation--" ... hiess: / Jazz, / und Jazz ..."--a combination of syncopation, semantics, grammar, syntax, and spacing that has a polyrhythmic effect. Because the opening paragraph does not really deal with the music itself, jazz functions, much as in Rodrigues's analysis, as both a warning (of the ostensibly chaotic nature of these jazzy times) and a promise (jazz as the "program" that can make sense of these "wild" times). The passage also contains two riffs, the recurring phrases "es war die Zeit" and "Dissonanzen zwischen Ost und West." Moreover, a call-and-response pattern emerges, with "es war die Zeit" the call and the historical elaborations the response. Lastly, the isolated word "Jazz" is polyvocal too, as it is both the narrator's voice we hear and the voice of the time declaring itself the Jazz Age, another instance of call-and-response. (10) Clearly then, what Rodrigues says of Morrison's jazz also pertains to Janowitz's jazz: "What we experience is language trying to become music as it tries to capture the flow of human time" (751).

Thus, if we are to adopt the theoretical framework of literary jazz put forth by Morrison's jazz critics, we must also concede that Janowitz's novel is, in fact, a jazz novel-and perhaps it very well is. But what is more, many of Morrison's jazz critics reference jazz as a marker of authentic blackness. Alan J. Rice, for example, concludes that "Morrison's jazzy prose style is ... an aesthetic device to foreground her blackness" (394), while

Robin Small-McCarthy emotes that, "in her consistent use of selected conventions of the jazz aesthetic, and in concert with our African ancestors, Morrison seems to sing out that 'The [holy] spirit will not descend without song'" (295). Both of these statements are emblematic of the fact that "few cultures are as concerned with 'authenticity' as jazz is," as E. Taylor Atkins points out (32). This, then, forces the provocative question: Since Janowitz's Jazz fits so neatly into the critical framework demarcated by Morrison's jazz critics, is it also a "black" novel?

Obviously, it is not. And yet, the challenge that the preceding comparative analysis poses is this: If indeed the literary jazz aesthetic transcends culture, race, and even language itself, how can a critical aesthetic of jazz still be useful for the study of African American literature? Part of the problem is the theoretical template that Morrison's jazz critics use in their efforts to make Jazz jazz, as most of their interpretations avail themselves of a primarily structuralist approach. That is, they argue that because the text's structure and style contain certain elements derived from jazz music--improvisation, the rift, call-and-response, et cetera--Morrison's novel thus becomes jazz literature. What these critics either misrepresent or ignore altogether is how the novel's aesthetic gesture connects with jazz history. Clearly, then, a critical theory of literary jazz must be grounded much more firmly in the history of jazz music and cannot rely on an analysis of form and structure only. A more fruitful approach, perhaps, may be initiated by examining how Toni Morrison's novel--a novel in which the word jazz occurs only once, on the title-page--is grounded in the history of the music, specifically the aesthetic of the jam session and the cutting contest.