Music of the Harlem Renaissance
April 25, 2022
View of Harlem storefronts, 1939. │Photograph Credit score: The New York Public Library through Unsplash
by Phil Radoff and Jack Curley
In January and February, a big group of BOLLI members attended a collection of complimentary lectures on features of the Harlem Renaissance, that interval in American Historical past from roughly the early Twenties to the late Thirties or the tip of World Warfare II (relying on one’s perspective) that noticed an explosion of creativity within the arts in Harlem’s African American group. The primary lecture — on literary features of the Harlem Renaissance — was given by common SGL Ben Railton, Professor of English Research and Coordinator of American Research at Fitchburg State College. His lecture centered on the works of three icons of the Harlem Renaissance: W.E.B. DuBois, Nella Larsen, and Langston Hughes.
DuBois was an influential determine, prolific author, and founding father of the NAACP whose guide The Soul of Black People dealt nominally with black historical past however with broader implications for American historical past and was instrumental in bringing in regards to the Harlem Renaissance. Nella Larsen wrote three extensively learn novels within the Nineteen Twenties — Quicksand, Passing, and Sanctuary — that explored problems with race, intercourse, and relationships from ladies’s views. Passing, specifically, pursues the very completely different marital relationships of three mixed-race ladies whose pores and skin colour is gentle sufficient to allow them to “cross” as white. The very best identified of the three writers was poet Langston Hughes, whose prolonged poem I, Too addresses the position of the Negro in America. The remaining lectures within the five-session collection had been delivered by Eric Elder, a Ph.D. candidate in Musicology at Brandeis. His displays, which had been enhanced by pictures, film clips, and classic recordings, afforded attendees a wide-ranging pattern of the folks and numerous music of the Harlem Renaissance and their precursors.
Harlem grew to become a gathering place not just for southern blacks who traveled north in the course of the Nice Migration, wherein roughly six million folks moved from the American South to Northern, Midwestern, and Western states, but additionally for Caribbeans, whose indigenous music was an integral part within the growth of the African American repertoire. Seminal figures of the time included Scott Joplin, Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, Ethel Waters, Louis Armstrong, and the lesser-known James Reese Europe, whose 1912 Live performance of Negro Music was the primary Carnegie Corridor live performance carried out by African Individuals. Minstrel reveals, jug bands, cabaret, ragtime, spirituals and blues had been all a part of the Harlem scene. Army bands organized in cities all through the nation grew to become an unlikely however vital affect, as contributors had been usually supplied with free musical coaching. One beneficiary was the younger Louis Armstrong, a member of the New Orleans “Coloured Waif ’s Dwelling Band.” Racism, each refined and overt, was, in fact, in proof. Sheet music, which on the time was extensively distributed and extremely worthwhile, ceaselessly depicted African Individuals in vulgar and objectionable methods. Songs of the period had been usually formed to enchantment to a white viewers. As one instance, Elder cited Hoagy Carmichael’s Outdated Man Harlem, which, when carried out by Carmichael, portrays Harlem as a den of iniquity, whereas later performances by Eddie South and Ethel Waters paint a fairly completely different image.
Elder made frequent reference to the writings of African American educator and thinker Alain Locke and his pursuit of “a really perfect Harlem Renaissance aesthetic.” Deemed by Elder “a cultural constructionist,” Locke felt that the music of the Harlem Renaissance ought to aspire to an “evolutionary purpose” and noticed it as caught between the “people kind” and the coaching and custom of a “greater European artwork kind.” As for the viewers, it’s secure to say that almost all got here away from the lectures happy that, whereas Locke pursued his philosophical musings, the gifted musicians of the Harlem Renaissance performed on.
This text was initially posted in March 2018. Minor edits have been made to the unique model.
