The jazz trope : a theory of African American literary and vernacular culture / Alfonso W. Hawkins, Jr.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hawkins, Alfonso W. (Alfonso Wilson), 1957-

Series:

African American cultural theory ; 1.

African American cultural theory ; 1

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--African American authors--History and criticism.

American literature.

American literature--African American authors.

American literature--19th century--History and criticism.

American literature--20th century--History and criticism.

African Americans--Intellectual life--19th century.

African Americans.

African Americans--Intellectual life.

African Americans--Intellectual life--20th century.

Jazz in literature.

Music and literature.

Physical Description:

xxv, 243 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Lanham, Md. : Scarecrow Press, 2008.

Summary:

The Jazz Trope looks at the African American lifestyle through the lens of jazz, blues, and spirituals and pays homage to the pioneering efforts of Albert Murray, Ralph Ellison, Houston Baker, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Ishmael Reed, Amiri Baraka, and other notable scholars who have related music to African American life and culture.

Transcending structure and its limitations, African American music was produced out of the human need for freedom. Jazz, for example, can be seen as a metaphor for escaping slavery and struggling against restriction by improvising; it also takes a known melody and changes it in order to create a personal identity. The literary genre of African American life reflects a melding of musical milieux, which tell-through the tropes of folktale, novel, self-script, slave narrative, myth, and legend-a unique American experience.

Contents:

Booker T. Washington : Up from slavery in the valley of the shadow of death

Jazz as exoticism

Zora Neale Hurston and Billie Holiday : improvisation through interpretation

Lamentations or the blues : the proverbial moan

The elusive undertone : a nonnegotiable performance of time, text, and melody

A jazz schematic : the concluding Naturalistic trope.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 221-230) and index.

ISBN:

9780810861268

0810861267

OCLC:

183928598