Music, Identity and the Urban Space: Toni Morrison’s America in Jazz.

The present paper explores the relation between music and the City, the peculiar urban space depicted in Jazz by Tony Morrison, as loci of cultural defeat for the African- American population. Translated into a sophisticated formal structure mirroring a jazz performance, music pervades the urban space portrayed in the novel, never openly denominated but easily identifiable with Harlem, the “Promised Land” where thousands of African-Americans sought refuge in the 1920s. Lured by the sights and sounds of Harlem, the narrator depicts it as a totally utopic space. Nevertheless, as the narrating voice penetrates the urban space, she gradually loses herself in the supremely rational configuration of the City grid, which appears paradigmatic of the reification of the Enlightenment spirit in America as described in Dialectic of Enlightenment. Philosophical Fragments by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno. The epitome of an oppressive facet of progress, the grid restrains the narrator’s vision and locks her within the boundaries of a predetermined frame of signification, thus preventing her from perceiving the corroding power of urban life on the African-American population.