Appropriations of jazz : voicings of cultural hybridity

While many critics note the numerous musical allusions in Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo, Jack Kerouac's On the Road, and Maxine Hong Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey, this thesis examines the appropriation of jazz in particular to these three American texts. Because of its own hybrid roots, jazz represents a voice of multiculturalism, and emerges as a symbol in all three texts of the inherent hybridity of American culture.