The Music Culture of The Harlem Renaissance

Music of The Harlem Renaissance 

Sound is often referred to as the “universal language,” that which can touch the human soul. Music is able to transcend race and political preference while invoking the deepest of emotions sometimes without saying a word. During this time period, the musical style of blacks was becoming more and more attractive to whites.Harlem with respect to the cultural Renaissance, was the center of a musical evolution which uncovered amazing talent and created a unique sound that has yet to be paralleled.

Below are some of the most talented, influential, and remembered artists of the Harlem Renaissance Era.

- Billie Holiday

- Chick Webb

- Louis Armstrong 

- Duke Ellington

Billie Holiday (1915-1959)

- During the 1950’s Billie Holiday rose as a social phenomenon

- She was one of the first black women to work with a white orchestra.

- She cowrote  a few songs that became jazz standards. "God Bless the Child," "Don't Explain," "Fine and Mellow," and "lady Sings the Blues."






Chick Webb (1905-1939)

 - He became one of the best-regarded band leader and drummers of the new “Swing” style. Drumming legend Buddy Rich cited Webb’s technique and performances as heavily influential on his own drumming and referred to Webb as “the daddy of them all.


- Webb was deemed the most worthy recipient to be crowned the first "King of Swing."




Louis Armstrong (1901-1971)
- One of the most famous musicians of the Harlem Renaissance was Louis Armstrong. Having come from a poor family in New Orleans, Armstrong began to perform with bands in small clubs, and play at funerals and parades around town in New Orleans.

- Armstrong moved to New York City, and began playing his music with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra at the Roseland Ballroom in 1929. 

- All throughout the 1950's and 60's, Armstrong appeared in films and made many international tours. Louis Armstrong is one of the most appreciated jazz artists of the Harlem Renaissance, and of all times. People learned to appreciate both jazz, and African American music even more, because of this man. 




Duke Ellington (1899-1974)

- Duke Ellington was the most important composer in the history of jazz as well as being a bandleader who held his large group together continuously for almost 50 years.

- he moved to New York in 1923 and, during the formative Cotton Club years, experimented with and developed the style that would quickly bring him worldwide success and recognition

- Among Ellington's many honors and awards were honorary doctorates from Howard and Yale Universities

Below is one of my favorites, put together By Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong in 1930, a song titled " Mood Indigo" 

Mood Indigo

Spike Lee and The Harlem Renaissance

The artistic movement of the Harlem Renaissance had a profound influence on Spike Lee and his films.  Several of his films include many themes common to the Harlem Renaissance.  The development of black art during the Harlem Renaissance left a legacy and was a starting point for future filmmakers in the Black Arts Movement, including Spike Lee.

Racial Consciousness and racial pride was an important theme of the Harlem Renaissance, and is a common theme in all of Spike Lee's films such as Bamboozled and Do The Right Thing.

Lee includes a scene in Do The Right Thing that expresses pride for the African American race, as well as communicating several common stereotypes that were first challenged and expressed by artists during the Harlem Renaissance.   

 

The fact that Lee created his own production company, Forty Acres and  Mule, in order to have complete artistic control of his expression is exemplary of the developments of the Harlem Renaissance.  Lee tends to lean towards the cultural separatism in order to convey realism and uniqueness of the culture.  This can be seen in School Daze when the girls argue about good and bad hair.  Lee uses this scene to express black identity. 

LITERATURE OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE

The Harlem Renaissance was the defining movement in African American literature due to the outbreak of active creativity among writers. Literature was used to promote and praise the heritage of African Americans. African American literature was re-defined through the uniqueness of the culture. Literature also played a key role in the transformation from the "Old Negro" to the "New Negro".

IMPORTANT WRITERS

 Langston Hughes (1902-1967) 

• One of the main interpreters to the world of the black experience in the United States
• Attended Columbia University
• His poem The Negro Speaks of Rivers was published in The Crisis, which brought him a lot of attention
• Wrote poetry about black life in America from the 20s - 60s, but also wrote short stories, plays and novels
• Refused to differentiate between his personal experience and the common experience of black America
• Told stories in ways that reflected actual culture - showed both their suffering and their triumphs 



A Dream Deferred

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Countee Cullen (1903-1946) 

• Poet
• Went to New York University and received an M.A. from Havard University
• His formal education derived from white influences, which heavily influenced his creativity
• He lacked background to write about the black experience
• Preferred to use classical verse rather than rely on rhytms and idioms of his African American heritage
• Assitant editor for Opportunity magazine
• Believed poetry to be raceless, "I want to be a poet, not a negro poet"
• The Black Christ was a poem that compared the lynching of black people to the crucification of Christ - one of his poems that did take a racial theme
• His novel One Way to Heaven depicted life in Harlem

Jean Toomer (1894-1967)

• His writing centers around his longing for racial unity
• Grew up in a black community, went to a black high school
• Attened the University of Wisconsin and the City College of New York
• 'Light-skinned' black man that was trying to establish an identity in a society that had rigid race distinctions
• Cane is one of his most well known pieces of work, which is a series of vignettes based on the origins and experiences of African Americans in the United States

 

MAGAZINES

Main American magazines associated with the Harlem Renaissance include Opportunity, Fire!!! and The Crisis. All these magazines were crucial in the Harlem Renaissance as they published the work of many writers.

Opportunity Magazine

• Published from 1923 - 1949
• Edited by Charles S. Johnson
• Aim was to give voice to the black culture that was neglected by mainstream American publishing
• Encouraged young writers to submit their work
• There were three literary contests, winners included Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Countee Cullen 

 

References

http://www.poets.org
http://www.lib.subr.edu/BLACK_HISTORY/
http://www.britannica.com/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americannovel/timeline/harlemrenaissance.html
http://www.jcu.edu/harlem/literature/page_1.htm

Harlem Renaissance Art

It is expressed that between the years 1918-1935s a large range of creative African Americans created numerous types of art work.  Shortly after the outburst of art this cultural movement became known as “The New Negro Movement” which later is called the “Harlem Renaissance.”  The Harlem Renaissance attracted the middle class, which then sprouted an artistic center.  The African Americans were immediately encouraged to celebrate their heritage and to become “The New Negro” a term made by sociologist Alain LeRoy Locke.

 

Some of the main artists were:

• Aaron Douglas
• Lois Mailou Jones
• Jacob Lawrence
• Palmer Hayden
• Ellis Wilson
   

Aaron Douglas (1899-1979)

 

"...Our problem is to conceive, develop, establish an art era. Not white art painting black...let's bare our arms and plunge them deep through laughter, through pain, through sorrow, through hope, through disappointment, into the very depths of the souls of our people and drag forth material crude, rough, neglected. Then let's sing it, dance it, write it, paint it. Let's do the impossible. Let's create something transcendentally material, mystically objective. Earthy. Spiritually earthy. Dynamic."

 

• Born in  Kansas in 1898
• Received his BA in art from the University of Nebraska
• Headed to New York to earn his MA from Columbia University
• Work represented the "New Negro"
• 1928, Douglas became the first president of the Harlem Artists Guild
• 1940 he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he founded the Art Department at Fisk University and taught for 29 years
• Painted murals for public buildings, produced illustrations, and cover designs for black publications, for example, The Crisis and Opportunity.
• Painted these pictures below for the 135th street branch of the New York Public Library in Harlem.
• The four-panel series Aspects of Negro Life tracks the journey of African Americans from freedom in Africa to enslavement in the United States and from liberation after the Civil War to life in the modern city.

 

 

Lois Mailou Jones (1905-1998)

 

"Mine is a quiet explorations quest for new meanings in color, texture and design. Even though I sometimes portray scenes of poor and struggling people, it is a great joy to paint." -Lois Mailou Jones

 

• School of Museum of Fine Art in Boston during a time of strong discrimination against African Americans.
• When she handed in her paintings, she did not tell them she was an African American artist and had her white friends deliver her paintings in for her.  In a result of that, the prizes she was supposed to receive was taken away and given to her white competitors.
• She succeeded as an artist!

 

 

Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000)

 

"I've always been interested in history, but they never taught Negro history in the public schools... I don't see how a history of the United States can be written honestly without including the Negro." 

- Jacob Lawrence

 

•  First mainstream African American artist
• Starting succeed at the age of 24 until he pasted away
• Known for his "Migration" series of painting (shows the migration of African American from Africa to the United States)
• Focuses on the history in the south
• Won many awards and received a lot of recognition for all his works
   

 

                                 

 

Different photos that were expressed during the Harlem Renaissance

 

 

References
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/history/index.html
http://historyoftheharlemrenaissance.weebly.com/artists.html

HISTORY OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE

1917-1935 

History Channel: Harlem Renaissance 

The Harlem Renaissance, also known as the New Negro Movement, was a cultural movement that began after the end of World War I and continued into the 1930s.  Harlem became a cultural hub filled with talented African American writers, artists, musicians and scholars.  The Harlem Renaissance was defined by a transition from the "Old Negro," or the implied inferiority and lack of expressive control in publishing and production, to the "New Negro" which is characterized by assertiveness, articulation, and the control of their artistic expression.  Racial consciousness, self determination, and group expression emerged during this time period and the movement affected literature, art, music, drama, and movies.

Although Harlem at the time was called the "Negro capital of the world," the location in New York City allowed for a collaboration between both white and black artists, as well as wealthy patrons and other previously establish professionals.

ORIGINS OF THE MOVEMENT

• The Great Migration- movement from South to North and from rural to urban
• Increased literacy
• Emergence of national African American civil rights organizations
• Growing pride in the race 

THREE PHASES:

1.  The Bohemian Renaissance  (1917-1923): black artists were overshadowed and influenced by bohemian white writers who were radicals andwere interested in the African American Struggle

2.  The Talented Tenth Renaissance (1924-1926): a collaboration between wealthy white patrons known as "Negrotarians" and black civil rights leaders of the NAACP and NUL known as the "talented tenth"

3.  The Negro Renaissance (1926-1935):  dominated by black artists, many of whom were younger



COMMON THEMES

• stereotypes/discrimination
• racial consciousness
• racial pride
• folk traditions
• slavery
• black identity 
• alienation and desperation
• twoness

**There was an ongoing debate throughout the Harlem Renaissance of whether to integrate into mainstream America or focus more on the uniqueness of the black experience. This debate between cultural integration or cultural separatism still exists today.**



End of the Renaissance and Legacy

The stock market crash and the Great Depression caused a decline in the Harlem Renaissance. African Americans were hit especially hard during the depression as Jim Crow laws and segregation continued into the 1950s.  Interest and financial support for mainstream art greatly declined, leaving virtually no support for African American art.  The Harlem Renaissance did, however, allow the national representation of over 25 artists in mainstream America and jazz music became a part of popular culture.  Black art was also recognized internationally during the Harlem Renaissance, especially in European countries such as France.  Although the development of black arts  stalled during the Great Depression, it was a turning point for black artists to have control over the representation of the black experience and black culture.  
 

References

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_harlem.html

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/255397/Harlem-Renaissance

http://www.jcu.edu/harlem/ 

http://www.ndhs.org/s/1012/images/editor_documents/library/harlem_renaissance.pdf 

http://classes.berklee.edu/llanday/jazzage/spring03/hr.htm