Lucy Heckenlively
Eng 1A 10-12-09
Aspect of American life for African-Americans living in the south during the
early 20th century (1900-1940)
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MUSIC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Henry_Ossawa
_Tanner_-_The_Banjo_Lesson.jpg
http://www.jcu.edu/HARLEM/index.htm
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“The Harlem Renaissance, also known as the New Negro Movement, was a literary, artistic, cultural,
intellectual movement that began in Harlem, New York after World War I and ended around 1935 during the
Great Depression. The movement raised significant issues affecting the lives of African Americans through
various forms of literature, art, music, drama, painting, sculpture, movies, and protests. Voices of protest
and ideological promotion of civil rights for African Americans inspired and created institutions and leaders
who served as mentors to aspiring writers. Although the center of the Harlem Renaissance began in
Harlem, New York, its influence spread throughout the nation and beyond and included philosophers,
artists, writers, musicians, sculptors, movie makers and institutions that “attempted to assert…a
dissociation of sensibility from that enforced by the American culture and its institutions.”
“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. Harlem was the center of a musical evolution which uncovered amazing talent and created a unique
sound that has yet to be paralleled.”
http://aae.greenwood.com.proxy.www.santarosa.edu:2048/doc.aspx?i=14&fileID=GR9838&chapterID=GR98381456&path=/books/greenwood/
“A new leitmof:oh freedom”
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“With the ending of the Civil War in 1865, African Americans were declared to be a free people. This new
status brought with it new opportunities: the establishment of learning centers, the growth of churches,
freedom to move geographically, opportunities to build secure and stable family units, new though limited
employment opportunities, and opportunities to participate in political processes. Accompanying these
opportunities were new and expanded musical expressions reflective of the changing times. In the
schools and churches that were established, music played a significant role.”
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“Old folk music forms were enhanced and new song types evolved. Both sacred and secular expressions
flourished. Spirituals and jubilee songs were performed in conjunction with European-derived religious song
styles. The blues evolved in the southern United States as a form of personal expression. Ragtime music
was created as a counterpart to the European classics, and the musical cells, which were to develop into
jazz also, had their origin during this period. African American music clubs sprang up with a focus primarily
on the performance of European classical music. Minstrelsy, initially a form of musical ridicule and imitation
of African American musicians, continued to flourish as African Americans adapted the genre to their own
expressions and helped pave the way for vaudeville and the Broadway show that was yet to come.From the
lyrics of the songs and the character of the instrumental music, one can learn much about the culture of the
changing times. Storytelling remained central to the lyrics even as new metaphors and double entendres
evolved. The blues was one of the new song forms to emerge, and individual expression was at the heart of
its existence. Beginning in rural communities, it spread to urban areas and became an entertainment music
with a life all its own.”
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“Many blues have been written and written about. William C. Handy’s Father of the Blues: An Autobiography
(1955) is a significant work because it focuses on the life of the person who first placed the blues in notated
musical form. But the blues owe so much of its existence to spontaneous storytelling, and the performers
have been many. The nature, character, and content of the blues have been analyzed by several writers.
Samuel Charters contributed two major works, The Country Blues (1959) and The Legacy of the Blues
(1977). In the second book, Charters describes the social perspective, which served as the backdrop for the
origin and development of the blues. In acknowledging the African American origin of the blues, he also
calls attention to the lyrics and suggests that they express social class as well as racial concerns. “
Musicians
Beginning in the late 1870s, composer and performer James A. Bland appeared with
several different minstrel troupes, and composed songs still widely known today. His "Carry
Me Back to Old Virginny" is today the state song of Virginia. Other songs composed by
Bland that are still frequently heard include "Oh, Dem Golden Slippers" and "In the Evening
by the Moonlight."
QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
http://www.jcu.edu/HARLEM/Performers/hot.htm
http://rs6.loc.gov/ammem/collections/sheetmusic/brown/aasmsprs2.html
http://aae.greenwood.com.proxy.www.santarosa.edu:2048/doc.aspx?fileID=GR3036&chapterID=GR3036355&path=encyclopedias/greenwood
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Armstrong, Louis (1901–1971)
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“Louis Armstrong was the preeminent jazz artist, a creative force whose influence on twentieth-century
American music—indeed, culture—defies calculation. He was arguably the most outstanding instrumental
soloist the genre ever produced, but that was only one of his contributions, for he also practically invented
the art of the jazz vocal. When Armstrong sang, we heard an extension of his trumpet work, and of course,
the timbre of his voice was unmistakable.
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Born in New Orleans, on August 4, 1901, he grew up in an impoverished milieu that had its own musical
score: the embryonic sounds of jazz. At age twelve, Armstrong and three friends formed a vocal quartet that
sang in the streets for change, but when he fired a celebratory gunshot into the air on a New Year’s Eve, it
landed him in reform school, the Colored Waif’s Home. That actually turned out to be an important step in a
right direction. The home’s bandmaster gave him a tambourine to play, but finding it less than satisfying,
Armstrong switched to snare drum, then alto horn, and finally, a bugle. The latter led to a cornet, and an
extraordinary career was launched.”
http://www.southernmusic.net/1900.htm
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t the turn of the century,. Sheet music and player pianos began selling in substantial quantities. Sheet
music in the 1890s was expensive and it was common to find a copy of a popular song selling for as much
as two dollars. After 1900, cheaper ways to print music were found and gradually booming sales brought
along the twenty-five cent song sheet.
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In 1899, Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" became the first Ragtime composition to become a sheet music
best-seller, detonating an explosion which made Ragtime the big noise in American music.
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Jazz flourished in Storyville, the red light district in New Orleans. Buddy Bolden is often credited for being
the first of the great Jazz figures -- "the blowingest man since Gabriel." He ushered in an era which saw a
long succession of artists who helped make New Orleans the capitol of Jazz.
In 1910, Tin Pan Alley sold $2 billion worth of sheet music. Ragtime was so popular in Tin Pan Alley that it
eventually replaced the ballad as its most marketable song product.
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The Blues invaded Tin Pan Alley in 1914, brought there by W.C. Handy, who composed the first
commercial blues to be published. Handy's "St. Louis Blues" became not only an American classic, but one
favored abroad.
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1915 - Alan Lomax was born in Austin, Texas. In the early 1930s, Alan Lomax and his father, folklorist
John A. Lomax, developed the Library of Congress’ Archive of American Folksong.
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Storyville was shut down during World War I, sending the Jazz musicians up the Mississippi river in
search of employment and spreading Jazz to cities on the river and to Chicago and New York.
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In 1917, The Original Dixieland Jazz Band released the first Jazz record. It became one of the first
records to sell a million copies.
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James Reese Europe is cited in books about ragtime and early jazz as the most respected black
bandleader of the 'teens', but he should also be recognized among World War I historians because of his
musical compositions inspired by wartime experiences, and the achievements of his band known as the
369th U.S. Infantry "Hell Fighters" Band. Recordings made by Europe's band in early 1919, within weeks of
the men's return to the States, are finally being reissued on compact disc.
http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-newsouth/5187
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In Winston-Salem a vibrant blues scene was emerging. With the boom of Reynolds Tobacco and other
smaller tobacco companies, Winston-Salem was becoming part of the magnetic field of the tobacco
industry that attracted African American bluesmen from all over the South, just as had occurred in the
eastern tobacco town of Durham. Southern bluesmen would follow the harvest, and when farmers brought
their tobacco to sell at auction houses in downtown Winston-Salem, bluesmen such as Blind Boy Fuller
were there, playing on streets such as Old Town Street, now Trade Street. Farmers had money in their
pockets, and for the bluesmen, there was profit to be made — from coins tossed into their hats to getting
hired by farmers to play at their house parties. According to Winston-Salem blues performer Peter May,
these bluesmen had versatile musical repertoires: “For whites, blacks… played mostly ragtime, popular
songs of the day. [If] they went to record, their records would sell to blacks, and they recorded blues.”1
Much more info on that site