Music and Morrison

 The “quality of hunger and disturbance that never ends . . . that is what I want to put in my books.” ~ Toni Morrison Specifically here, she is talking about jazz, yet there are many deep-rooted connections between black music and literature that can impact the reading of Morrison’s work. Indeed, Morrison’s serious aspiration to…

“Sth, I know that woman.  She used to live with a flock of birds on Lenox Avenue.  Know her husband too.  He fell for an eighteen-year-old girl with one of those deep down, spooky loves that made him so sad and happy at the same time he shot her just to keep the feeling going.”…

  “Great Jazz Musicians have the ability to take different musical perspectives and to integrate them into their own.  They symbolize the potential that everyone has to draw on many sources and bring different understandings together in the perspective of their own lives. ” — Arthur  Rhames, jazz critic  This blogpiece invites you to consider Toni…

  “The neighbors seemed pleased when the babies smothered”(21). The opening of one section of Paradise begins with a striking example of a double-voiced, “signifying” discursive style.  On a hot day, Mavis had left her two babies in the car—for what she recalled as being just for a few minutes—while she went to the grocery store…

Walking figures form a prominent motifs in Morrison’s trilogy.  There are many figures who are on treks, from the first few pages of Beloved (Sethe through the field of chamomile; Paul D across the country) through the story-endings of Paradise (Pallas’ ghostly figure float-walking through the walls of her mother’s house; Deacon Morgan’s barefoot walk…

According to lore, jazz was an amalgamation.  In 1894, New Orleans Creoles lost their separate status from African Americans, so Jelly Roll Morton and Sidney Bechet started mixing it up with Buddy Bolden, Joe “King” Oliver, and Louis Armstrong. The birth of jazz was a dialogue. The hallmarks of jazz—however one defines its origins—“are improvisation,…