African Americans -- History; Slavery -- United States -- History
In New Orleans, the folk tradition and formal music came together for the
first time. There, the Latin tradition had permitted the Creoles to
participate in education and culture. They had developed a rich musical
tradition, and many of them had received training in French
conservatories. However, they preferred the sophisticated European music
to the more earthy sounds of their blacker brothers. With the growth of
Jim Crow legislation, the Creoles lost their special position in society,
and they found themselves forcibly grouped with the blacks, whom they had
previously shunned. Out of this fusion of technical musicianship and folk
creativity emerged a new, vigorous music which became known as jazz.
Jelly Roll Morton was one musician who had begun by studying classical
guitar but preferred the music of the street. He became a famous jazz
pianist and singer. Over the years, he played his way from night spots in
New Orleans to those in St. Louis, Chicago, Los Angeles, and scores of
smaller cities. The musical quality of jazz, instead of adopting the pure
tones of classical music, was boisterous and rasping. Instruments were
made to imitate the human voice, and they deliberately used a "dirty"
sound. Both the trumpet playing and singing of Louis Armstrong
illustrate this jazz sound particularly well. When Armstrong appeared in
Chicago with King Oliver as the band's second trumpeter, he was
immediately recognized as a jazz trumpet virtuoso, and his playing sent
an electric shock through the jazz world.
The most famous jazz musician and composer to appear in New York City
during and after the Negro Renaissance was Duke Ellington. His well-known
theme song "Take the A Train" made reference to the subway line which
went to Harlem. By the time jazz had reached Harlem the Negro Renaissance
was in full swing. This renaissance, unlike previous art produced by
Negroes, consciously built on the Afro-American folk tradition.
Langston Hughes, the most prolific writer of the renaissance, wrote a
kind of manifesto for the movement. He said that he was proud to be a
black artist. Further, he said that he was not writing to win the
approval of white audiences. At the same time he claimed that he and the
other young Negro artists were not attempting to gain the approval of
black audiences. They were writing to express their inner souls, and they
were not ashamed that those souls were black. If what they wrote pleased
either whites or blacks, Hughes said, they were happy. It did not matter
to them if it did not.
In "Minstrel Man", Hughes expressed the inner emotions of the
stereotyped, well-behaved Negro which white America thought it knew so
well:
Because my mouth
Is wide with laughter
And my throat
Is deep with song,
You did not think
I suffer after
I've held my pain
So long.
Because my mouth
Is wide with laughter
You do not hear
My inner cry:
Because my feet
Are gay with dancing,
You do not know
I die.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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