“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 (1925)
When I think about a renaissance movement I think about the broad range of the arts such as the literary work, the music, the philosophy, the sculptures and paintings. So, my first thought was to compare the similarities to both the Italian and Harlem Renaissance periods. Briefly, of course. The Italian Renaissance was not just about the influence in Florence, Rome or other areas around Italy, it was about the various activities and great cultural change going on throughout Europe at the time. And much like the Italian Renaissance, during the Harlem Renaissance there was an outburst of African American creativity, not just in New York City but in Chicago, Washington D.C., London, Paris and the Caribbean all of which were circling around people of African background. And the Harlem Renaissance had the same cultural influence and strength. There were literary artists like James Weldon Johnson collaborating with visual artists like Aaron Douglas in God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse. There was a sort of fusion among artists during this time period. The musical was written by four vaudevillians who first met in 1920 at a NAACP benefit held in Philadelphia (Glass, 2012). That’s what makes a renaissance a renaissance, by feeding each other in expression about the arts and culture. In a letter written by Douglas to poet Langston Hughes were commendable ideas of a new kind of artists trying to mirror their racial experiences and praising their cultural personality by creating new art forms, art forms that were genuine to themselves and genuine to all African Americans.
Theater
Shuffle Along was a satirical musical about a mayoral race. With its jazzy music styles, Shuffle Along was the modern, edgy contrast to the mainstream song-and-dance styles that audiences were accustomed to on Broadway. It had the right amount of mixture of satire, attraction and respectability, minstrel blackface humor and romance, to please the African American community. A chorus line of sixteen-girl was one of the contributing factors the show became so successful. The success of Shuffle Along musical revue in 1921 indicated a step forward for the African-American musical performer and while making musical theatre history. In the “Black Manhattan” writer James Weldon Johnson described Shuffle Along as being created by an arrangement of brilliantly talented Black Americans whose work struck a major blow against racial stereotyping (Johnson, 1968). The revue demonstrated to producers that audiences would pay to see African-American talent on Broadway. In 1948, President Harry Truman selected “I’m Just Wild about Harry”, a Shuffle Along hit tune, for his campaign song.
Shuffle Along made a huge impact on Broadway and audiences. It was the model for future African-American musicals well into the 1930s (Woll, 1989). It paved the way for Runnin’ Wild in 1923 which ignited the Charleston craze. And for the following years, black theater would lead the way for more dance pioneers. The Blackbirds of 1928 featured tap dancing legend, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, who became the first black dance star on Broadway. In 1929, Wallace Thurman and William Rapp, introduced the Slow Drag in the drama Harlem. The Slow Drag would become the first African-American social dance to reach Broadway. With dance styles like the Charleston, tap, Slow Drag, and jazz dancing, the greater part of African-American musicals followed the same formula of variety shows featuring specialty acts, comedians, singers, dancers, musicians and a chorus of attractive females (Woll, 1989).
Literature
![Pictured here are Langston Hughes [far left] with [left to right:] Charles S. Johnson, E. Franklin Frazier, Rudolph Fisher and Hubert T. Delaney, on a Harlem rooftop on the occasion of a party in Hughes' honor, 1924.](https://robertituarte.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/harlemrenaissance.jpg)
An attribute of the Harlem Renaissance was a move toward suggested “high art” in black literature, instead of using folk expressions, comic writing, and language that had previously been considered the usual scope of African-American writing. In some respects this shift mirrors the change from rural to urban life for many blacks in this period. In The Nation’s 1926 June issue Langston Hughes referenced classically trained African American writer, Countee Cullen, as believing that an African-American poet should be free to write in the traditional mainstream conventional way, and should not have to add race into poetry. Cullen had told Hughes, “I want to be a poet, not a Negro poet.” Hughes, however, made powerful use of folk expressions such as the blues. The artistic differences between Hughes and the Cullen were informative. But Hughes saw this approach as being disloyal to their ethnic identity, and he explored and accepted his “blackness” using forms and expressions that he related to it. Both are major poets but their differences point to the relative extent of the ideals and the change in variations of African-American writing in the Harlem Renaissance.
“Po’ Boy Blues”
When I was home de
Sunshine seemed like gold.
When I was home de
Sunshine seemed like gold.
Since I come up North de
Whole damn world’s turned cold.
I was a good boy,
Never done no wrong.
Yes, I was a good boy,
Never done no wrong,
But this world is weary
An’ de road is hard an’ long.
I fell in love with
A gal I thought was kind.
Fell in love with
A gal I thought was kind.
She made me lose ma money
An’ almost lose ma mind.
Weary, weary,
Weary early in de morn.
Weary, weary,
Early, early in de morn.
I’s so weary
I wish I’d never been born.
– Langston Hughes (1926-1927)
Hughes’ use of alliteration or repetition of letter sounds between multiple words in this poem adds a sort of steady melody for the reader. Hughes puts rhyme and alliteration to the most somber of lines, “a gal I thought was kind. She made me lose ma money an’ almost me mind.” I felt sympathy for the narrator. In this poem, the narrator tells the story about their recent arrival to a northern city thinking of the south they left behind. The narrator suspends two worlds, the rural world they left and the harsh new city life they began. The blues structure of the poem reinforces a sense of being halfway. By incorporating both rural and urban feelings, that are continuously changing, Hughes, in some respects mirrors the change from rural to urban life for many blacks in this period.
In his autobiography, Hughes marked the end of the Harlem Renaissance with the stock-market crash of 1929. The crash that, in his words, “sent Negroes, white folks, and all rolling down the hill toward the Works Progress Administration” (Hughes, 1940). And while the era may have ended, its impact on American literature and the arts was enduring.
Art
In keeping with ideals of Alain Locke’s “The New Negro”, which also encouraged African American artists to create a discipline of African American art with an identifiable style and to look to at African culture and African American living for substance and motivation. Locke’s ideals, together with the new ethnic awareness that was happening in urban areas, inspired new African American artists. These new artists rejected traditional landscapes for the symbolic backdrops, rural scenes for urban scenes and centered on culture, class and Africa to bring ethnic awareness into art and establish a new black identity. And it was no wonder that Locke chose Aaron Douglas to illustrate “The New Negro”. Douglas was well-known for his graphic art, such as “Rebirth.” This work, produced to illustrate magazine articles and poetry, linked him to the literary Harlem Renaissance. Heavily influenced by African figures, jazz music, dance and angular forms, Douglas’ hard-edged style made it possible to see within the black-and-white, abstracted patterned work of “Rebirth”. And in paintings like “Building Stately Mansions” he created a rhythmic pattern that dominated his later work
In 1928, Aaron Douglas became the first President of the Harlem Artists Guild, which was later effective in facilitating African American artists getting projects under the Works Progress Administration.
Here’s a great rendition of “Po’ Boy Blues” with music recorded at Elmhurst High School in Fort Wayne Indiana before it was closed.
Sources:
Enoch Pratt Free Library. African American Department Collection and State Library Resources. Literature. Web 16 July, 2015. http://www.prattlibrary.org/locations/afam/?id=8590
Enoch Pratt Free Library. African American Department Collection and State Library Resources. Art. Web 16 July, 2015. http://www.prattlibrary.org/locations/afam/index.aspx?id=8982
Glass, Barbara S. African American Dance, an Illustrated History, MacFarland & Company, Inc., Jefferson, North Carolina, and London. 2012.
Hughes, Langston. The Big Sea, New York: American Century series, 1940.
Hughes, Langston, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” The Nation. June 1926.
Johnson, James Weldon. Black Manhattan. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1940. Reprint. New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1968.
Kirschke, Amy Helene. Aaron Douglas: Art, Race & The Harlem Renaissance.Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995.
Locke, Alain. Forward to The New Negro: An Interpretation. New York: Albert and Charles Boni, 1925, p. ix.
Woll, Allan L., Black Musical Theater: From Coontown to Dreamgirls. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1989.
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