All that Jazz

I guess the Larkin poems got pinched, ultimately. Maybe that just won't do -- that is, maybe I'll have to put a couple more of them on the wall for us to contemplate for some moments before Monday's and/or Wednesday's main discussions. Thus, might I ask that you keep "For Sidney Bechet," "Reference Back," and "Aubade" somewhat freshly aligned in your mind's queue? Better yet, might some of you be inclined to make a few observations about one or more of them in this space in advance of next week's meetings? Do you see, for example, any similarities between "Reasons for Attendance" and "For Sidney Bechet"? At least one critic has noted that the latter can almost be read as a reworking of those two lines from the former that read: "It speaks; I hear; others may hear as well, / But not for me, nor I for them." And then the subtly powerful "Reference Back": with all of our focus on time and the (painful) operations of memory in this course, maybe this poem connects into some recognizable circuitry (strangely, I find myself thinking of Springsteen's "The River" as I consider this one). Anyway, I know you'll be plenty busy working with the Morrison novel, but it'd be great to gather some of your reactions to the poems here.

And what did you think of A Love Supreme?? Were you able to follow its development pretty well with the aid of the handout? Did you enjoy it? Can you assimilate it into any of our course contexts and discussions at this point? As I noted in class, jazz privileges rhythm rather than melody (unlike classical music, which puts melody at the top of the hierarchy), which was probably apparent from your experience of this piece. Melodies are present in A Love Supreme, but only briefly, at which point Coltrane (or the other soloists) take them out for a ride and stretch them harmonically. Coltrane, by the way, died at the youthful age of 40, in July of 1967. His health had been steadily deteriorating until he finally succumbed to liver cancer. The music of A Love Supreme seemed to help some make sense of his death: Wayne Shorter, for example, noted a fatalism in "the tone of the tenor [sax] on A Love Supreme. I think he knew he was sick -- it's as if he were seeing the light -- that grand light." So, two of the most influential figures in the history of jazz in the second half of the twentieth century -- Coltrane and Charlie Parker -- were both dead before their 41st birthdays.

You will find Morrison's Jazz to be a rather unconventional historical novel, one that seeks to capture the mood of Harlem in the 1920s but that ranges across time (mostly within the 1906-26 period, though) and suggests a kind of improvised narration (improvisation, at this point, becomes a key word & notion for us). The genius of A Love Supreme lies mostly in the imagination of Coltrane and in the improvised dynamics between the bandmates -- not in any written score. The same might be said of Jazz, which is going to demand your participation to bring it to life. It's a strange novel, in a sense, in that the very first paragraph will tell you the entire story of the novel -- and yet when you get to the very end of the novel it will all seem rather unfinished to you. So, be thinking of women's blues, of the oral tradition, of the spirit of improvisation, etc.