Jazz 217Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, Amiri Baraka’s poems per-
haps would be the closest verbal translation of jazz music.
Most recently, Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo (1972) and
Toni Morrison’s Jazz (1993) utilize the codes of jazz music
with felicity. Morrison’s Jazz in particular not only capital-
izes on the term “jazz” to explore the ethos of the Harlem
period, which provides the setting of the novel, but also
profi ts from its presumed sexual origins. Furthermore,
improvisation and call-and-response patterns of jazz
music are brought to bear on the text in order to delin-
eate the contingency of identity and the sensual nature of
the characters in the novel. Even Morrison’s recent novel
Love (2003) references the stupendous jazz players of the
previous century, such as Joe “King” Oliver and Th omas
“Fats” Waller. Louis Armstrong’s Satchmo: My Life in New
Orleans (1954), Sidney Bechet’s Treat It Gentle (1960), and
Charles Mingus’s Beneath the Undergo (1971) are some
infl uential jazz autobiographies, among others. Jazz festi-
vals (New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival), jazz studies
departments, and formal academic courses, as well as nu-
merous sociological and anthropological treatises, all in-
disputably testify to the centrality of jazz in the American
cultural terrain.
Th rough addressing realities and shaping perceptions,
jazz remains one of the greatest expressive cultures and so-
cial forces of America. Furthermore, through its dedicated
articulation of the anxieties, attitudes, chaos, and optimism
of American society, jazz remains, as Paquito D’Rivera ex-
plained, a way to view life. To say this is to insist on in-
describable and interpretative challenges off ered by jazz,
which compels one to agree with Louis Armstrong’s defi ni-
tion: “If you gotta ask, you’ll never know.”
See also: Africanisms; Armstrong, Louis; Bebop; Black Folk
Culture; Coltrane, John; Davis, Miles; Jas; RagtimeSathyaraj VenkatesanBibliography
Baker, Houston, A., Jr. Blues, Ideology and Afro-American Litera-
ture. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1984.
Collier, James Lincoln. Jazz: Th e American Th eme Song. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1993.
Collier, James Lincoln. Th e Making of Jazz. New York: Delta,
1978.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. Signifying Monkey: A Th eory of African-
American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1988.
Gioia, Ted. Th e History of Jazz. New York: Oxford University Press,
1997.Aft er the 1950s, informed by black radicalism and cul-
tural nationalism, jazz became a signifi cant component of
the Civil Rights movement. Inaugurated by such warriors
as John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, this decade partic-
ularly witnessed the dissonance within and between solos
and chaotic group improvisations, giving momentum to the
“protest” aspect of jazz music. Although there were many
major performers, such as Jimi Hendrix, Wilson Pickett,
Curtis Mayfi eld, and Curtis Redding, it was John Coltrane
echoing the utter disillusionment and affl uent optimism
of the era who captivated the audience. Ornette Coleman’s
“Free Jazz” and John Coltrane’s “Ascension” set the tone of
the decade. In addition, the rise of the women’s liberation
movement and feminism in the late 1960s benefi ted women
bands and veteran performers such as Mary Lou Williams,
Melba Liston, and Betty Carter.
Fusion, pluralism, and fragmentation characterized
the later jazz. If the 1970s saw signifi cant cross-cultural
infl uences and the use of sophisticated instrumental pop
mixes resulting in the birth of new styles of jazz music, the
post-1980s witnessed a revival of interest in traditional jazz
music and big-band style in Th ad Jones, Mel Lewis, and
Woody Herman. Today, jazz thrives in the form of post-
bop, retro swing, neobop, rap, gangsta rap, and smooth jazz.
Th e contemporary performers, unlike the past masters, are
trained artists and utilize the strengths of the electronic
medium. However, the bulk of mass media (movies, televi-
sion) and popular culture, the splintering of jazz into many
styles, avant-garde self-indulgence, and entrenched racism
robbed the relevance and urgency of jazz over the years.
Interestingly, jazz as an aesthetic model did not re-
main solely in the domain of music but infl uenced virtu-
ally all the national culture, such as photography (William
Claxton, Roy DeCarava), fi lm (Th e Jazz Singer, Blues in
the Night), classical music (Aaron Copland), and painting
(Romare Bearden, Jackson Pollack, Stuart Davis). Most
notably, with its spontaneity and deep spiritualism, jazz
has always fascinated black American authors, leading to
its features being meaningfully syncretized as a dominant
interest of the narrative. Some of the prominent literary
texts that tap the metaphoric strength and multifaceted-
ness of jazz include Langston Hughes’s poem “Jazzonia,”
from his 1926 collection of poems Th e Weary Blues; James
Baldwin’s Sonny’s Blues (1957); and James Weldon John-
son’s novella Th e Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
(1912). Deeply infl uenced by jazz musicians such as John