From Slavery to Freedom
th
9 ed.
Chapter 16
The Arts at Home and Abroad
The Arts at Home and Abroad
 The Arts at Home and Abroad
 Explosion of black artistry in 1920s made
possible by:
 Electronic innovation
 Corporate publishing
 Mass advertising and distribution networks
 “New Negroes”; Jazz-age shift in artistic
expression toward the abstract
 Debate within black community about the role of
the arts in the struggle for racial equality
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Recorded Music and Radio
 Classic Blues
 Popularity of Mamie Smith’s recording of
“Crazy Blues” demonstrates strength of black
consumer market
 Opens doors for other “classic blues” black woman
singers
 Bessie Smith – “Down Hearted Blues”
 “Race records” market
 Country blues; Blind Lemon Jefferson
 Reaped huge profits for white companies
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Recorded Music and Radio
 Black Swan Records
 Black entrepreneur Harry Pace saw his musical
production company as a vehicle for racial
advancement
 Racial responsibility and middle-class values
central to his business model
 Complemented writers and literary critics of the
Harlem Renaissance
 Rival white record companies and the radio
ultimately put Black Swan out of business
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Recorded Music and Radio
 National and Live Broadcast Radio
 Radio introduced black talent and eroded cultural
and social isolation of southern blacks
 White listeners given opportunity to hear black
music; blacks who were otherwise excluded
from white venues could listen via radio
 Duke Ellington greatest beneficiary of live radio
music
 Came direct from Harlem’s Cotton Club
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Jazz Roots and Routes
 The Evolution of Jazz: New Orleans to
Chicago
 Jazz evolved from regional differences in music
 Shaped by migration of southern musicians and rise of
northern record industry
 New Orleans’ best musicians migrated to
Chicago
 New Orleans influence seen in jazz recordings of
Chicago-based bands in 1920s
 King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band
 Louis Armstrong
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The Great Blues Migration
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Jazz Roots and Routes
 Jazz in New York: Ragtime to Stride
 “Stride” piano style evidence of New York’s
small band tradition
 Big-band tradition more prominent in early
1920s
 The James Reese Europe Orchestra
 Key in New York’s black musical theater
 Music differed from Chicago jazz
 Influenced by Broadway, society dance; tight
orchestrations, little improvisation
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James Reese Europe’s Society Orchestra c. 1914
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Jazz Roots and Routes
 Fletcher Henderson took over after Europe’s
death
 Race-conscious; emphasized professionalism and
music reading skills
 Louis Armstrong Transforms Big Band Jazz
 Joined Fletcher Henderson’s orchestra in 1924
 Despite differing styles, Armstrong transformed New
York’s big-band jazz; new rhythmic momentum and
improvisational boldness
 Reconnected with Sidney Bechet; recordings
became template for post-1920s combo jazz
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Jazz Roots and Routes
 Duke Ellington and the Big Band Era
 By late 1920s, jazz a national craze; and New
York center of jazz world
 Duke Ellington central to New York’s big-band
era
 New Negro; racial pride and best interests of the race
important to him
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Motion Pictures
 Motion Pictures
 Black community outrage at Birth of a Nation
 First black film company appeared in Harlem
in 1916
 Early filmmakers made “race movies”
 Black versions of established Hollywood genres;
response to commercial demands of black audiences
 Some movies did make social statements
 Scar of Shame (1927)
 Within our Gates (1920) (response to Birth of a
Nation)
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Motion Pictures
 Black Talent in White Studios
 Musical short-subject and feature films; black
musical talent with national reputations tapped
by white studios
 Bessie Smith; Duke Ellington
 All-black musical Hallelujah! (1929) by white
filmmaker King Vidor
 Sympathetic rendition of southern black family life
 Complex and conflicted lead male, rather than the
stereotypical childlike or buffoonish black character
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Black Theater
 Black Theater
 African American theater flourished in Harlem in
prewar years
 Lafayette Players
 Postwar Theater
 Black actors began appearing before wider
audiences
 Charles Gilpin; Paul Robeson
 Plays about black life by white authors
 Porgy; The Green Pastures
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Black Theater
 Black Musicals
 Black-written and -produced musicals began to
appear on Broadway
 Shuffle Along; Put and Take
 The Charleston
 Theme music of the Roaring Twenties, “The
Charleston,” written by James P. Johnson for the black
musical Runnin’ Wild
 Broadway introduced talents Josephine Baker
and Florence Mills
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The Harlem Renaissance
 The Tenderloin
 Roots of black artistic talent planted in
Manhattan’s Tenderloin
 Home to most of city’s 60,000 black residents
 The Marshall Hotel
 Spot for black artists to network, mentor, and
collaborate
 Black bohemia short-lived; demographic
shift to Harlem
 Seen as “Race Capital of the World”; visited by
white tourists
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The Harlem Renaissance
 Black Periodicals
 Black authors and playwrights rose to
prominence, aided by civil rights organizations
 Jessie Fauset literary editor of NAACP’s The Crisis
 Charles S. Johnson edited National Urban League’s
Opportunity
 Johnson’s 1924 Civic Club event introduced
black writers to white literary establishment
 Alain Locke, the event’s MC, became architect of New
Negro renaissance
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The Harlem Renaissance
 Before the Civic Club
 Claude McKay
 Traditional poetic style but militantly defiant
 Jean Toomer
 Cane
 Countee Cullen
 Central Harlem Renaissance figure; body of
work contains both racial and nonracial subject
matter
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The Harlem Renaissance
 Langston Hughes
 Wrote in various genres; incorporated jazz and
blues rhythms
 Admired black vernacular culture; tackled politically
charged and leftist themes
 Harlem Renaissance Women
 Jessie Redmond Fauset – emphasized universal
qualities among races
 Nella Larsen – questioned “Talented Tenth”
 Zora Neal Hurston – anthropologist and literary
modernist
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French Connections
 French Connections
 Black artists got attention from international
white audiences
 1920s Paris resembled Harlem
 The vogue negre
 Josephine Baker
 Influence of African art and shapes – Pablo Picasso’s
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon
 René Maran awarded the Prix Goncourt
 Parisian diversity created linguistic and ethnic
challenges
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Visual Artists
 Photographers and Illustrators
 James Van Der Zee
 Photographs of black middle class and Harlem;
chronicled the emergence of the New Negro
 Aaron Douglas
 Preeminent visual artist of the period; stylized Africaninfluenced aesthetic
 Studied under Winold Reiss
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Couple wearing raccoon coats, with a Cadillac
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Visual Artists
 Painters
 Palmer Hayden
 Experimented with variety of subjects and styles
 Best known for scenes of urban black life
 Archibald J. Motley, Jr.
 Well known for Bronzeville paintings of Chicago’s
black working-class neighborhoods
 One of first black artists to gain critical and financial
success
 Sargent Johnson
 Restrained sculptural aesthetic of African forms
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Clashing Artistic Values
 Art as Propaganda
 Argument over the images of blacks that art gave
whites
 W. E. B. Du Bois – “all Art is propaganda…”
 Felt art should counter stereotypes and racial images
 Countee Cullen
 Denounced pejorative representations of black people
 Argument took place in the white press
 Black writers clashed over meaning of black creative
expression
 Fire!!
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Clashing Artistic Values
 Race Literature
 Racial distinctiveness in the arts
 Victoria Earle Matthews – development of body of
literature separate from larger American literature
 Du Bois – spiritual and psychical racial differences
 Schuyler – black American art same as white, both
influenced by Europeans
 Hughes – affirmation of cultural uniqueness
 Toomer – advocated “melting pot” solution
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Clashing Artistic Values
 Art and Social Change
 Artists in the civil rights vanguard
 James Weldon Johnson
 “Civil rights by copyright”
 Renaissance man; accomplished literary artist and executive
director of NAACP
 Du Bois
 Walter White
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