Written in Jazz

When we were reading Ragtime, we talked about how it was written like the music itself. There was syncopation and the words flowed together in the rhythm of ragtime. Mumbo Jumbo is the same way, only its music is jazz. Upon first reading Mumbo Jumbo, the sentences seem like utter nonsense. Grammar and syntax are all wrong, and there are all these made up words that don't make any sense. Reading and trying to understand what's going makes your head heart. But you can't read it to really understand it; you have to hear it.

When you read sentences aloud like, "Sprawled upon his knees is Zuzu, local doo-wack-a-doo and voo-do-dee-odo fizgig" (Reed 3) you think, "What is he even talking about?" The words make no sense. Doo-wack-a-doo? Fizgig? But when you think about them in relation to music, it all makes sense. The words are scatting. It's jazz improvisation literally written on to the page, and when this sentence is read aloud it sounds like music. I find that when you read parts of Mumbo Jumbo out loud, sentences and paragraphs that once were confusing, are now understandable, and it's because Mumbo Jumbo  is written in jazz. You have to listen to jazz to get the full experience and understand what it's saying, and it's the same with Mumbo Jumbo. It's really marvelous how the sentences actually flow together rhythmically, interspersed with scat and other jazz improvisations. Reed is making music with words.

The jazz literary style of Mumbo Jumbo also helps to convey the time period and the plot. It feels like the 1920's when you read the sentences, and you can practically hear someone wailing on a trumpet in the background. But the jazz style also really helps with identifying with and understanding Jes Grew. Like jazz, Jes Grew is free and flowing, prone to changes and improvisations. People make Jes Grew what they want it to be just like how they play or sing a song however they want to in jazz. Similarly, both can not be captured on the page or in a text. Honestly, you lose the meaning of scat if you literally write out on sheet music "dot da ba da da ba zoop zop whee" because it takes away all the improvisation and spontaneous feeling and emotion that scat provides. (You can see my previous post for why Jes Grew can not be contained in a text.)

I love the idea of writing in music, and I think that if I had listened to Mumbo Jumbo  on audiotape, I would've enjoyed it much more, understand it better, and gotten a whole lot more out of it than I actually did. I always felt I knew what was going on more in the book if passages were read out loud than if I read them on my own, and I think it's really because of the jazz style. It's hard and difficult to read jazz, but listening to it is as easy and breezy as sop op di dop bop wow zee.