'Jazz Writing' and the form 'Collage'

By Dilshan Boange

Jazz as a genre of music today is appreciated the world over with ever increasing variants and innovations and can be seen today with numerous sub-genres emerging through experimentation and cultural hybridization. This popular music form has its roots in African American communities, at the beginning of the 20th century in the southern states of the USA. It is a mixture of African and European music traditions that birthed this music art and at first was not part of 'main stream' music/art as it is today. Being a music form developed by Negro communities of the US, jazz was at first limited to those who were at the fringes of society. At the heart of this music form is 'improvisation' which certainly leaves space for innovation, experimentation and of course constant evolution and diversification.

As many art forms tend to influence one another the art of jazz music has found its place in literature of the western world in more than one way. 'Jazz writing' is now a style/mode found in contemporary writing which has gained favour amongst modernist writers. "Four Choruses on the Tropes of Jazz Writing" is an academic essay by Michael Jarrett (1994) published in the periodical American Literary History.

Jarrett's article is an educative piece of writing which presents an in depth and elaborate discussion on modes of 'jazz writing', in reference to the works of a host of modern writers. Jarrett is of the view that there can be two ways by which 'jazz writing' may be understood and identified. The first he says is to write 'about jazz' which as the phrase may indicate is of works/texts that provide discourse on jazz, dealing with the subject matter that represents this music. The second type is writing 'with jazz' which Jarrett states in his article as "perhaps more inventive". This second aspect appears to be a matter which significantly relates to works of some notable figures in contemporary writing and may be viewed as characterizes 'modernistic writing' of the present age.

On jazz writing Jarrett says- "Generally speaking, this means that jazz writing wants to be jazz; it aspires to the condition of improvisation." The 'tropes' or styles of jazz writing Jarrett's essay looks at are called Cadenza, Obbligato, Satura, Rapsody and charivari.

Note that the first two are words that are concerto and music related jargon which clearly convey the idea of musicality being involved while the last (charivari) connotes a meaning associated with noise and sound that creates a din and can be somewhat crude and jarring as well one may assume. It is the third of these (Satura) that this article will focus on.

'Satura' as Jarrett calls it is a form of jazz writing which he states may be labeled as 'collage'. As it is generally known collage finds its introduction with the layman as a form of 'art', but not so much as a form of writing. Collage is defined in one respect (in Merriam Webster's collegiate dictionary) as an assemblage of diverse fragments. To most people it is this fundamental of 'fragment fusion' that becomes a 'composition' which can be viewed as an assemblage presenting an artistic expression that registers as 'a collage'. The word 'collage' has a definitional expanse that grounds its meaning in art composition and broadens to incorporate the scope of interpreting narrative form.

How does 'collage' as a form connect with the trope called 'satura' which Jarrett propounds? Providing an etymological grounding Jarrett connects the two in terms of how they would indicate similarities in the nature of their form of elemental composite. Produced here is an extraction- "The trope of the satura influences jazz writing on the level of theme. But it also has implications on the level of form. Let me explain.

Satura, from which we get the English word satire, literally means "mixed dish", "farrago", "hodgepodge", or "medley"." (p.334) Thus a fusion of diverse materials in the creation of a textual composition would present a 'jazzy quality' in the form of a novel, reflecting a 'collage work'.

Sri Lankan born writer Michael Ondaatje's Coming Through Slaughter is a work which can be treated as a model example of a piece of creative writing which has artfully captured the jazz like quality of collage form.

Considered as Ondaatje's first novel, this work would seem to carry no sense of the traditional form of the novel, and demands a special kind of attentiveness and indulgence in order to fully 'register' with the reader who is unfamiliar with the type of narrative it presents. Jarrett cites Ondaatje's first novel as one of the best examples for a jazz novel that comes within the scope of the 'satura', and states that along with Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo (1971) and Ntozake Shange's Sassafarass, Cypress and Indigo (1982) is one of the best jazz novels ever written.

Further Coming Through Slaughter can be seen as important to those interested in styles of novel writing as a work which possibly provides insight into the 'layout' of a jazz novel. On this matter Jarrett observes- "Coming Through Slaughter is especially instructive because it illustrates one way to write The Story as a satura. A docu-novel or collage narrative, it recounts the tale of trumpeter Buddy Bolden, the first mythic figure of jazz:" (pp-344-345).

The range of devices that Ondaatje has used and woven together as a literary collage makes his first novels an interesting work to be studied in terms of its textual-structure as well as scheme and structure of story narrative. One finds in the book many elements that are markedly unconventional in relation to traditional narratives of a novel, and the most curious of them probably would be what is found in page 66, which is a spatially marked textual presentation of a photograph of Buddy Bolden's band.

And among the host of other devices that narrate the story of Buddy Bolden are a quasi-bio data type record sheet of events marking Bolden's life, what appear to be descriptive of contents in several 'film reels', two songs which are possibly of the 'ragtime' genre, an excerpt from an interview transcript are found.

Apart from such elements the text is composed of various fragmentary pieces that differentiate the novel from traditional prose narratives. Snippets of conversation, anecdotes, are found interspersed with prose narratives that switch between the authorial voice and characters in the novel, and thereby a medley of devices is distinguishable.

And thus this diversity of fragment fusion creates a textual collage which forms as a piece of jazz writing at both the thematic level (which relates at this point to the area of content and subject matter) as well as form, as observed by Jarrett. For those interested in the study of form and style in literature (especially in relation to the genre of the novel) Ondaatje's first novel will provide ground for a textual exploration where the innovative narrative scheme may be encapsulated as 'diversity abound-discoveries unbound'.

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