The Influence of African American Culture and Musical Structure in Toni Morrison's Jazz

In Jazz, Toni Morrison sought to create a novel that expressed the essence of jazz. In her introduction to Jazz, Morrison writes, "I wanted the work to be a manifestation of the music's intellect, sensuality, anarchy; its history, its range and its modernity" (xix). Morrison explains that her intent is to create a novel that not only reflects the evolution of Jazz music but that captures the soul of the jazz movement. From its roots in the slave dances held in Congo Square and its cultivation by the early ensembles of New Orleans, jazz spread across American, affecting a nation's conscious throughout the Jazz Age (Gioia 5). According to Toni Morrison, the so-called Jazz Age was "The moment when an African American art form defined, influenced, reflected a nation's culture..." (xix). Morrison molds the settings, plot lines, characters, and structure of her novel to invoke the rich history, revolutionary spirit, and progressive style of jazz, as well as to illustrate characteristics of the music.

Morrison uses the settings in Jazz to reflect the history of the jazz movement, as well as address its extensive influence on the Harlem Renaissance-the period during the 1920s where there was a flowering of African American cultural, artistic, and intellectual awareness in Harlem (Huggins 15). Morrison invokes a world of Harlem addresses, rent parties, speakeasies, women's clubs, and jazz music, in order to illustrate the significant link between the jazz movement and the Harlem Renaissance. In addition, Morrison uses flashbacks to addresses significance settings associated with the Great Migration-the period after the Civil War when masses of African Americans from the post-Reconstruction South moved to urban centers around the country such as New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Chicago, hoping to find better opportunities (Tolnay). Morrison uses the settings in the novel to reflect the connection between jazz and African American culture and history.