3 - Structural Patterns in Jazz Novels

Summary

JAZZ's ASSOCIATION WITH “FREEDOM” and its emphasis on elements of “improvisation, originality, [and] change”1 may conspire to create the mistaken impression that it is formless. On the contrary, like any variety of music, jazz relies on several levels of structure.2 Freedom must always be seen in relation to constraint, as the constraints of a form or structure are a prerequisite for experimentation. As a fellow musician says of Buddy Bolden in Michael Ondaatje's novel Coming Through Slaughter, “We thought he was formless, but I think now he was tormented by order, what was outside it” (37). Without expectations of a regular form— a source of order—deviations from it cannot be perceived as such. The relative freedom of improvisation in jazz, for example, is only possible because of structural patterns that provide a jumping-off point for the soloist, such as the repeating structure of the chorus with a set harmonic framework and a regular number of measures, the beat itself as a means of keeping time, repetitive melodic patterns such as riffs that produce familiarity, often occurring within a dialogic framework of call and response between members of the band. All these structural devices set up an expectation of continuity, provide a framework within which the soloist has an opportunity to anticipate the beat, modify familiar melodies, or engage in a conversation with another player. In each case, it is the upsetting of expectations that creates interest and excitement, but form and structure are required in order to establish those initial expectations.

This chapter considers several levels of structure within jazz music and the novels inspired by it. The most basic level of structural organization, the regular recurrence of the beat, has already been referred to in chapter 2 on rhythm. The present chapter argues that each level of structural organization may be adapted from a musical context to a textual one, whether repeated small melodic units such as the riff, larger structural units such as the chorus, the form of an album consisting of individual songs, or general patterns of antiphony or call and response.