Transcript black music

The Harlem Renaissance:
“masterful improvisation”
Brown Bag Discussion
The Set-Up:
1904: Economic prosperity of Harlem,
New York ceases due to excessive
construction and high rents
• Phillip A. Payton, Jr. founds AfroAmerican Reality Company and opens up
Harlem to black Americans (building of
churches, cabarets)
European immigration is interrupted by
World War I -- Blacks migrate from the south
to escape racism and look for wartime work;
this changes Harlem’s makeup…
A black middle class develops…
1919: Black soldiers returning from the
war are greeted with racism and denied
the racial equality promised in return
for military service
• riots ensue in what come to be known as
the Red Summer
• the tone is set for economic, social, and
political change…
Three Phases:
• 1917 to 1923: writings in confluence with
white bohemians and revolutionaries
fascinated with black culture
• 1924-1926: collaboration between whites
and blacks by the NAACP and The Urban
League
• 1926-1935: African American dominance
(rebellion against the Civil Rights
establishment)
The Renaissance was encouraged by
“Negrotarians” for various reasons:
• Political
• Entertainment
• Romantic or Revolutionary (“Lost
Generation”: cynical of the Victorian
notions and gender ideals)
• Commercial
• Philanthropic
• Jewish sympathy (similar oppression and
intolerance)
• Harlem houses
the Headquarters
of the NAACP and
National Urban
League (NUL)
• Home to two
major black
newspapers (New
York Age, The
Amsterdam News)
Harlem is the
Headquarters for
UNIA (United
Negro
Improvement
Association,
Marcus Garvey’s
Pan-African
organization to
promote racial
freedom, pride
and black
business
autonomy)…
Common themes:
• Roots of 20th century African American
Experience
• Racial pride
• Social and economic equality
• Diversity of expression
Harlem Renaissance reflects the
“New Negro” of self respect and selfdependence…
Major Formative Events
• National Urban League Dinner to
recognize and introduce new literary talent
to white literary community in NY (1924)
• Special issue of Survey Graphic (the
monthly illustrated number of Survey
magazine, the premier journal of social
work in America in the 1920s) devoted to
the African American "Renaissance" in
progress in Harlem
• Publishing of the
books The New
Negro (1925) and
Nigger Heaven
(1926) created
“negro vogue”
• Publishing of
literary magazine
“Fire!!” (1926) to
showcase new
black writers and
artists
• Renaissance is national in scope, but
Harlem is the capital
• So-named from an article in the New York
Herald Tribune that “the Country was on
the edge [of] what might not improperly be
called a negro renaissance”
• Harlem becomes the center for music,
popular dance and theater
The 1920s Heyday: Harlem experiences an
upsurge in African American literature, art,
music and theater…
Harlem’s Apollo Theater accommodates
mixed audiences…
Literature
• Alain Locke (The
New Negro
anthology)
• Countee Cullen
(Colors)
• Nella Larsen
(Quicksand)
• Langston Hughes
(The Weary Blues)
• Zora Neale Hurston
(Their Eyes Were
Watching God)
• Jean Toomer (Cane)
• Claude McKay
(Harlem Shadows:
The Poems of
Claude McKay)
• James Weldon
Johnston (The
Autobiography of
an Ex-Colored
Man)
• Jessie Redmon
Fauset (editor, The
Crises)
• W.E.B. Du Bois
(The Gift of Black
Folk: The Negroes
in the Making of
America)
Popular music forms were included in
the movement:
• Music central to black life
• Musical entertainment was an important
diversion from manual labor
• Stereotyping of Black music
(Condescension to jazz and blues)
• Bessie Smith (jazz with ragtime)
• Jelly Roll Morton (ragtime)
• Louis Armstrong
• Duke Ellington
Fine Arts
• Aaron
Douglas
(painter and
graphic
artist)
• Jacob
Lawrence
(painting)
• Romare
Bearden
(collage)
• Augusta Savage
(sculpture)
• Lois Mailon
Jones (painting)
• James Van Der
Zee
(Photography)
Theatre and Dance
• Josephine Baker
• Paul Robeson
• Florence Mills (Vaudeville)
Decline:
• Great Depression of the 1930s
• NAACP and Urban League concentrated
on economic / social issues
• Influential people left NY
• Momentum replaced by the WPA
• Harlem Riot of 1935 (started by a rumor
that a black man had been beaten and
killed by police; fueled by general charges
of police brutality and merchant
employment discrimination)
Major Accomplishments:
• College education proposed over vocational
training prescribed by Tuskegee and
Hampton institutes
• Opened doors to mainstream publications
• Influence on civil rights, nationalist
movements
• Works appealed to mixed audiences (W.E.B.
Du Bois critical)
• Established Harlem as a cultural capital for
many decades
The creativity of a distinct cultural people
was established…
• 35 luminaries
• 26 novels
• 10 volumes of
poetry
• 5 Broadway plays
• 3 performed ballets
/ concertos
• Numerous short
stories, essays and
artworks
Analysis:
• The Renaissance not all inclusive of the
African American experience
• Luminaries were mostly literary or visual
arts figures
• Seen by some as an elitist response to
economic and social conditions
• Black evangelism and manifestations (e.g.
Black Zionism) were viewed as cultural
regression by many black intellectuals
• Garvey’s UNIA parallel but different (racial
segregation and autonomy)
Lasting Effects:
• Interracialism
• Publishers and the public more open to
African American art and literature
• Inspiration for others to follow careers in
art and literature (e.g. Ralph Ellison and
Richard Wright)
• Influence spread to Europe and the
French Caribbean (Negritude Movement)
• Influence on the civil rights movement
References
Africana : the encyclopedia of the African and African
American experience
CARLSON Reference DT14 .A37435 2005 v. 1-5
Biography resource center (Online)
[electronic resource through the University of Toledo
Libraries research databases]
Encyclopedia of African-American culture and history : the
Black experience in the Americas
CARLSON Reference E185 .E54 2006 v. 1-6
Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance /
CARLSON Reference PS153.N5 A24 2003
The Harlem Renaissance : an annotated reference guide
for student research / [Online Resource - NetLibrary
book in the Carlson Library UTMOST catalog]
Accompanying music from The History of Jazz: the early
days, Prism Leisure, PLATCD 712, c2001
[Search Harlem Renaissance as a keyword on the Carlson
Library webpage to find more information…]
For more information visit the Library of Congress at:
http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/harlem/harlem.html