A 10-12 page essay defining a literary or visual artwork as a jazz work. Offer close, detailed readings of specific works using the readings attached as files. “Remember that a successful essay is an experimental argument: use the form to think freshly about jazz and its impact on forms of art that are not, strictly speaking, musical–but which are influenced by the forms and functions of jazz.” Notes that may help guide: – What elements define Jazz? – Rhythms/polyrhythms; stacked rhythms; swing – Afro-dance beat orientation – The triumvirate of instrumentalists, singers, dancers – Conversation; call-response, call-recall – The prevalence of the blues-form, feeling, function – Glissant on traces, echoes, fragments (Gayl Jones, Bechet); Morrison on parts and pieces – Precarity, trembling – Individual assertion with and against the group – Intertextual connections with the Jazz tradition – The sound of the black American community; voices, etc. – Albert Murray speaks of locomotive onomatopoeia – What does improvisation mean?
