Transcript Harlem Rennaissance

The
Harlem Renaissance
Harlem is vicious
Modernism. BangClash.
Vicious the way it's made,
Can you stand such beauty.
So violent and transforming.
Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones)
Background
outburst of creative activity from 1920-1930 among
African-Americans
began in New York City
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Greenwich Village
Harlem
first called “The New Negro Movement”
African Americans encouraged to become “The New
Negro”
term coined by sociologist and critic
Locke
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1925
Alain LeRoy
Contributing Factors
The Great Migration
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to northern cities
between 1919 and 1926
trend in American society toward experimentation during
1920s
rise in radical Black intellectuals
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Alain Locke
Marcus Garvey
W.E.B. DuBois
"(Harlem) is romantic in its own right. And it is hard
and strong, its noise, heat, cold, cries and colours are so.
And the nostalgia is violent too; the eternal radio
seeping through everything day and night, indoors and
out, becomes somehow the personification of
restlessness, desire, brooding."
Nancy Cunard, Harlem Review, 1933
Characterized by
New ways of thinking led to new ways of self-expression
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Art
Music
Literature
The Crisis
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literary magazine
started by W.E.B. DuBois
run by NAACP
outlet for many authors and artists
Louis Armstrong
"Louis Armstrong's station in the history
of jazz is umimpeachable. If it weren't for
him, there wouldn't be any of us."
Dizzy Gillespie, 1971
born in New Orleans
influenced many musicians while in Chicago and New
York
considered the “King of Jazz”
Jelly Roll Morton
first great Jazz composer and
piano player
important transitional figure
between ragtime and jazz piano
styles
as teenager worked as piano player in Storyville whorehouses
other jobs included
gambler
 pool shark
 pimp
vaudeville comedian
 pianist
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after 1930 fell on hard times
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even lost diamond in his front tooth
Bessie Smith
one of 1920s most popular
Black recording stars of
popular with Black and
White audiences
“Empress of Blues”
Aaron Douglas
work exemplified “New
Negro”
showcases of work
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murals on buildings
cover art
illustrations to works
in The Crisis
"...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."
Aaron Douglas
Langston Hughes
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15722
self proclaimed calling
was "to explain and
illuminate the Negro
condition in America“
work was important in
shaping art of Harlem
Renaissance
writing influenced by life and art of African Americans
wanted to tell stories of people in way that reflected their
culture including
suffering
love of laughter
 language
 music
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Countee Cullen
raised and educated in primarily white community
differed from other Harlem Renaissance poets
 lacked background
to comment from personal experience on lives of
other blacks
use popular black themes in writing