Jazz and Syncopation in Jack Kerouac's On the Road

Introduction: Jazz as an American Art Form

As perhaps the only truly American musical art form, jazz was created mainly by African Americans in the early years of the 20th century through an amalgamation of elements drawn from European American and tribal African musical traditions. As Barry Kernfeld acutely points out, jazz "has had a profound effect on American culture, not only through its considerable popularity but also through the important role it has played" in shaping the numerous forms of American popular music that developed around it and out of it (580). This role can also be applied to other forms of artistic expression, particularly in the field of American literature in categories like poetry, the short story, and the novel.

One pivotal literary work in which the elements of jazz serve as a sort of rhythmic foundation is Jack Kerouac's 1951 opus On the Road, inspired by "the drug-fueled cross-country car rides that Kerouac made with Neal Cassady" and narrated in a "headlong style . . . based on beauty, alcohol, sex, drugs, mysticism" and, of course, jazz music (Liukkonen, "Jack Kerouac," Internet).

Not surprisingly, Kerouac's lifelong appreciation for American jazz also appears in a number of his other works written in the 1950s, when Hollywood actor James Dean symbolized the true American "bad boy" and stood as the quintessential American rebel. One of these works is Visions of Cody, written between 1951 and 1952, which "Beat poet" Allen Ginsberg — serving as the novel's unofficial editor — "considered a 'holy mess'" yet did not alter its "rambling style and discontinuous structure" because of its improvisational quality reminiscent of jazz music (Liukkonen, "Jack Kerouac," Internet).

Kerouac, the Beat Generation, and Jazz Identity

As added support, Kerouac as a member of the Beat Generation personally identified with jazz and recognized it as "a fundamental part of the Beat sub-culture" while also viewing jazz musicians as "heroes and sages" — figures like Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk, appreciated by Kerouac as "true American geniuses, heroes and rebels" in protest against traditional white American, middle-class values ("The Influences of the Beat Generation," Internet).

Certainly, Kerouac's deep understanding and appreciation of American jazz served as his foundation for the syncopation found within the pages of On the Road. In this respect, syncopation in musical terms can be described as "an effect of rhythmic displacement created by articulating weaker beats or metrical positions" (Kernfeld, 1178), but in the case of On the Road, these rhythmic displacements and articulations were accomplished through the use of certain words and phrases — a form of "confessional, jazz-like prose" ("Influences of the Beat Generation," Internet) — which takes the reader on a strange, musical journey, much like listening to a jazz band while under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Thus, Kerouac's approach to utilizing the elements of American jazz inspired him to insert poetical, jazz-like assonance and alliteration into the text in order to give it rhythm and colorization, much like one would find in a composition by Charlie Parker under the banner of bebop.

Exactly why Kerouac decided to approach On the Road in such a manner has much to do with his personal sense of lyrical and poetical movement, wherein the words on the printed page exhibit a kind of syncopated rhythm which the reader can easily recognize via sounded musical beats and measures — strong at one point and weak at another — a type of rising and falling comparable to notes issuing from a saxophone played by Charlie Parker or piano notes so brilliantly executed by Thelonious Monk.

Syncopation and Jazz-Influenced Prose Style

In On the Road, the character of Sal Paradise exclaims to his fellow passenger, Dean Moriarty, while passing through the southern section of Louisiana: "Man, do you imagine what it would be like if we found a jazz joint in these swamps, with great big fellas moanin' guitar blues and drinking snakejuice and makin' signs at us? Yes!" (Kerouac, 131). Obviously, Sal Paradise, much like Kerouac himself, loves American jazz music, especially as played on the acoustic guitar by an African American jazz and blues giant like Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Leadbelly.

As Mark Richardson sees it, writing in "Peasant Dreams: Reading On the Road," "the strain of the basic primitive" — in this case jazz — "is what Sal and Dean listen to in order to hear" what they call "wailing humanity" (Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Internet) — or, in other words, the vocals of someone like Leadbelly wailing out the blues, another original form of American music with roots sunk deep in the elements of jazz. For Richardson, Kerouac's application of jazz in the text of On the Road serves not only as a theme but also as the basic framework for the personalities of Sal and Dean, two rebels "on the road" and "on the beat," exploring the endless complexities of the American musical landscape.

Conclusion: Being 'On the Beat'

Jack Kerouac would almost certainly agree with Richardson when he declares that "To become hip to jazz . . . is to enter into a new relation to the body and to sexuality" — something which Kerouac fully realized and understood when penning On the Road, all the while knowing that "jazz is orgasm" ("Peasant Dreams," Internet). This truth is exemplified by those "squiggling saxophones" under the control of Charlie Parker and so many other African American jazz musicians of the late 1940s and 1950s, who demonstrated to writers like Kerouac that being "on the beat" was far more attractive and far more enjoyable than the conformist alternative.