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Example research essay topic: Mississippi River Jazz Music - 827 words

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Quincy Troupe is world-renowned for his love of jazz music and for his poetry, which reflects that love. The rhythm and meter of his poems lend themselves easily to live readings, and have a very solid musical quality about them, reminiscent of the very songs that he has listened to his whole life. In his Snake-back Solo 2, he references several famous Jazz artists, including Louis Satchmo Armstrong and Miles Davis, two of the most famous jazz artists in history. The structure of this poem, when read aloud, sounds like it could be a jazz song from that era years ago when jazz music was the most prevalent in American culture, especially in New Orleans, widely considered to be the birthplace of jazz music.

The rhythm part of any jazz song is usually very repetitive, pushed steadily along by the bass and backed up by the drums. In early jazz recordings, the only rhythm heard was the bass (either a double-bass or stand-up bass) with no drums, or the drummer tapping on the floor or the table. The reason for that was because the drums were too loud and overpowering for the primitive recording devices commonly used back then. The loudness and dominance of the drums and the bass is what drives a jazz song, and is what drives Troupes Snack-Back Solo from start to finish.

Readers can see Troupes prominent use of repetition throughout the solo, signifying the rhythm section of his song. In the first stanza, moon / on in, spain on in on a riff full of rain / ruffin on in full of rain & pain / spain on in on a sound / like coltrane (ll. 3 - 7) is full of repetition (on in) and rhyme, setting the reader (or listener) into a rhythm right from the start. Even the use of hard consonants can make the reader feel the bass pushing and the drums kicking: boogaloo in / bass down/ up & under, eye come sliding the second stanza repeats the phrase to see several times, which can bring to mind the sliding of a hand up the fretboard of the bass accompanied by the crash of a cymbal. A jazz solo, usually played by a trumpet or a coronet, would try to bring such soul out of those instruments that it could sound almost like a human expression instead of just a mere dead piece of metal. The horn cries, laughs, yells and tells a story throughout its solo. Like a human telling a story, it changes tone, stops, starts back up, and uses a rhythm of its own to keep the listener interested.

One way that words can suggest all these things is through the use of assonance, alliteration, consonance, or any literary device that repeats a soft sound or brings an image to the reader that is not explicitly defined in the text, but defined only by its sound. One such image is that of the mighty Mississippi River, mentioned by name only once in the poem, although all the sounds and structure point to it. The curvy, winding Mississippi is the same river on which many of Troupes idols grew up and learned their craft, which earns it a special place in his heart. On any map of the United States, one can see quite easily how the Mississippi River resembles a snake, the way it winds itself vertically across the country. Troupe brings that image to mind directly calling it snake river (l. 45).

Throughout the poem, most notably in the third and fourth stanzas, there is an overabundance of the letter s, m, n, l and w sounds, all of which bring forth the image of something flowing smoothly the s itself actually creates the audible sound made by a snake (hiss). This particular solo sounds just the way that a snake looks winding and curving and looping, and at the same time very intriguing. A listener could imagine the horn going from the top to the bottom of several blues scales during the song. A scale is a collection of notes that are all related to each other musically and can all be used with each other in any order (which comprises a solo) while at the same time remaining in harmony with chords played by the rhythm section. It is interesting to note that a scale, an integral piece of music, is also an integral part of a snake without its scales it wouldnt live, and the same could be said for any piece of jazz music.

Through Troupes use of rhythm and rhyme, his repetition of certain sounds to produce certain images, the readers mind and ears are placed inside of a concert hall, listening to a real jazz song. His clever use of those literary devices command his poetry to be not just read, but heard, like the jazz music that has been such a huge part of his life.


Free research essays on topics related to: rhythm, jazz music, jazz, mississippi river, bass

Research essay sample on Mississippi River Jazz Music

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