African American Influence On Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance was “variously known as the New Negro movement, the New Negro Renaissance, and the Negro Renaissance, the movement emerged toward the end of World War I in 1918, blossomed in the mid- to late 1920s, and then withered in the mid-1930s. The Harlem Renaissance marked the first time mainstream publishers, critics took African American literature seriously, and that African American literature and arts attracted significant attention from the nation as a whole (1).”

African American influence in music has been an ever present and controversial subject in American history. Stemming from many different cultures, religions and backgrounds, large portions of American music was introduced by, and credited to African Americans. Although in many cases, this music was used for entertainment by the masses or majority, contrary to popular belief, black music served a greater purpose than just recreation. Dating all the way back to the beginning of slavery in the U.S. during the 17th century, music has been used to make a statement and send a message. As African American music progressed over the years, there were common themes expressed as the genres evolved. It has been an open letter to the world, documenting and protesting the ongoing oppression faced by blacks in the United States, as well as an outlet for frustration. For many African Americans, the music gave them the only voice that couldn’t be silenced by their oppressors.

The Harlem Renaissance was regarded as a blossoming of African -American culture particularly in the genre of creative art and one of the most influential movement in African- American literary history. While the Harlem Renaissance embraced musical, theatrical, literary and visual arts, the participants within the movementsought to re-conceptualize

The Harlem Renaissance was a time period where African American influencers of the arts found cultural identity in a white domain in the city of Harlem New York. The Harlem Renaissance is the rebirth of African American culture in the United States. The rebirth of the African American Culture was not limited to Harlem, because it also took root in other places, such as Washington DC, Chicago, and Illinois. The positive culture of the Harlem Renaissance pointed out some of the injustices African Americans were experiencing throughout the United States, and it was portrayed in their literary arts. Original leaders in the Harlem Renaissance included James Weldon Johnson. James Weldon Johnson was one of the first publishers of contemporary black poetry of the 20th century. The name of the book he published titled “The book of American Negro Poetry” was a reflection of the writings of African American poets in the 1920s. James Weldon Johnson helped revitalize African American culture through his literary works and poetry; the Harlem Renaissance continues to influence the African American culture through the literary arts, poetry, and the influence of the originators of the Harlem Renaissance.

The early 1900s was a time marked with tragedy in America. Started and ended with the Great Depression in between, it was not America 's finest moment. Prohibition was in place, the Klu Klux Klan was still marching, and the Lost Generation was leaving for Paris. But despite the troubling times, people still found beauty and meaning in the world around them. They still created art and celebrated life. The Harlem Renaissance was an artistic and literary movement that developed a new black cultural identity through artistic expression. It fused African traditions with slave history and American culture, and revealed to the world what life was like as a black person in America.

The Harlem people group was viewed as one of the music realms of the world in the mid-1900s. Relatively insufficient of the desire black craftsmen, artists, or scholars of the time were from Harlem; however, it appears that all had achieved or sought after their vocations there. James Weldon Johnson, Claude McKay, Alain Locke, and Charles S. Johnson were all magnificent motivations for rising craftsmen destined to be. They helped tutor individuals, for example, Langston Hughes into being a world-known name. These inventors existed vocally gifted and given as vivid good examples to the new stars. Near 1920 and 1930, tremendously approximately thousands African Americans left the South. These individuals sang and assured through their encounters amongst defeat and Civil War; this made their music and artistry meaningfully additional deep with even more feeling and enthusiasm. Natives crosswise over America appreciate hearing the stories of the difficulties in the newest era and how they overwhelmed these.

The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural, social, and artistic movement that took place in Harlem, New York. This mainly took place starting from the end of the First World War until the mid-1930s. Harlem, at this time, was the center of the African-American culture, and Harlem appealed lot of black artists, writers, scholars, musicians, poets, and photographers. Lots of these artists had fled from the South because they needed to get away from their oppressive caste system so that they could express themselves freely, and display their talents. The Harlem Renaissance was considered to be the “rebirth of African-American arts”. This movement mainly started around 1918 and ended during the mid-1930s. Some of the major writers during this time of the Harlem Renaissance were Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois, Countee Cullen, Zoe Neale Hurston, and Marcus Gravey. Lots of these themes that these writers wrote about are themes that to this day artists try to make a point of emphasis, including the American Dream, effects of racism on the black population, black identity, and human rights (Wormser).

To most people the infusion of African tonality into Duke Ellington's music to create "Negro art", questions the connection between European music and Jazz. Here Constant Lambert responds to this.

The Harlem Renaissance represents the rebirth and flowering of African-American culture. Although the Harlem Renaissance was concentrated in the Harlem district of New York City, its legacy reverberated throughout the United States and even abroad, to regions with large numbers of former slaves or blacks needing to construct ethnic identities amid a dominant white culture. The primary means of cultural expression during the Harlem Renaissance were literature and poetry, although visual art, drama, and music also played a role in the development of the new, urban African-American identity. Urbanization and population migration prompted large numbers of blacks to move away from the Jim Crow south, where slavery had only transformed into institutionalized racism and political disenfranchisement. The urban enclave of Harlem enabled blacks from different parts of the south to coalescence, share experiences, and most importantly, share ideas, visions, and dreams. Therefore, the Harlem Renaissance had a huge impact in framing African-American politics, social life, and public institutions.

Also known as The New Negro Movement, the Harlem Renaissance was an abstract and scholarly blooming that encouraged African American social character in the 1920s and 1930s. The movement was mainly caused by racial tensions in the southern United States after World War I. Many of the African-Americans who had served in World War I were angered by the prejudice that they confronted when they came back. Furthermore, the African Americans working in farms had very low pay. Even though they did backbreaking work for long hours, they did not receive their fair share, and were almost always paid less than the whites in the south.

During the 1920’s a new movement began to arise. This movement known as the Harlem Renaissance expressed the new African American culture. The new African American culture was expressed through the writing of books, poetry, essays, the playing of music, and through sculptures and paintings. Three poems and their poets express the new African American culture with ease. (Jordan 848-891) The poems also express the position of themselves and other African Americans during this time. “You and Your Whole Race”, “Yet Do I Marvel”, and “The Lynching” are the three poems whose themes are the same. The poets of these poems are, as in order, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Claude Mckay.

America has been described as a nation founded for the people by the people. Critics argue that it was founded by and for white male Europeans. So which one is it? By viewing this exhibition, it shall become quite clear that this country was not founded by and for all the people. Indeed, African Americans did not found this nation nor was it founded for their benefit. Their white counterparts founded it on their backs. And unfortunately, they are still looked down upon today. By whites castigating them as black or even by stereotyping themselves, it does still matter today if you are black or white. The following exhibition will show American art's progressive

Du Bois is concerned with three main ideas within his essay, those being beauty, art as propaganda and how African Americans and their art will be ultimately judged. Beauty, however, is not how you view something’s allure to Du Bois, but rather who is it that will describe what is classical and beautiful? Suggesting that African Americans fit this role perfectly, Du Bois states “pushed aside as we have been in America, there has come to us not only a certain distaste for the tawdry and flamboyant but a vision of what the world could be if it were really a beautiful world.” He is also interested in how Negro art will distinguish itself from the works of other non-black artists.

As African culture increasingly diminished, African American conservatives contested such “whitening” of Black culture and called for the revival of their cultural roots (Reviewing the Harlem Renaissance Website). Such contestment of Black “whitening” became advanced during the early twentieth century, in particular during the 1920s during which a movement known as the Harlem Renaissance rose to prominence. The leaders of the movement consisted of middle class African Americans who not only promoted the revival of Black culture, but defined a fresh new culture in which they combined traditional African practices with common American practices. American author and poet, Langston Hughes was among the prominent figures of the movement and a strong advocate of resurgence and rejuvenation of his culture. Langston Hughes awakened American society to the unjustified hostility directed towards African Americans through his pieces of literature, thus providing African American communities with a sense of unity and

Our world as we know it is fascinating, multifaceted, and cultured because of the literary aura that has been present throughout time. Just like the people that fill our world, some literature has been hurtful, some is beneficial to certain groups and cultures, and some is for pure entertainment. However, the great thing about it is that literature has the ability to connect any form of art through the past and present. Literature has no age and therefore can speak to generations and help enlighten future leaders of communities. No matter the topic, there is always a way to connect the piece of literature, whether that be a song, poem, or script, to the conditions of society. In the lives of African Americans, this idea of literature being a centerpiece of culture has continued in the past and into the present. Writers, songwriters, and poets alike all share a commonality that unites the African American community through similar aspirations, realizations, and views of the world around them. The circumstance in most literature of the past done by African Americans shares what their place in American society is like. Literature acted, at the time, as a glue that kept thoughts and morals together in the African American community in America. Today, African American culture is shared through various forms of illumifying arts that have roots given by the African American literary leaders of the past. Specifically, the “Black Lives Matter” movement and forms of media creations