These poems are considered her greatest. Grimke wrote compellingly about blacks, but her preferred theme was love. In most of her poems, Grimke displays remarkable skills as an imagist. Aside from her poetry, Grimke wrote Rachel, a play sponsored by the NAACP in 1916. It is remembered as one of the first American plays written by and for blacks.
2011). Through fiction, poetry, essays, music, theatre, sculpture, painting and illustration, participants in this first Black arts movement produced work that was both grounded in modernity and an engagement with African-American history, folk culture and memory. In the 1920s the African Americans culture arose and was viewed and accepted by many whites in America. Music was very important to society in this decade with Jazz music being the soundtrack of the decade. Jazz music was a combination of African American traditional styles (blues) with the ragtime beats.
He is usually considered to be one of the most prolific and most-recognized black poets of the Harlem Renaissance. He broke through barriers that very few black artists had done before this period. Another important person was Claude McKay; he was involved with political and literary radicals. He was a journalist for The Steven Arts, and Liberator. He is most famous for his authentic to the black culture when he wrote his poems (Hill).
“The Harlem Renaissance emerged amid social and intellectual upheaval in the African American Community.”(Wintz1). Jazz was a specific type of music that black professionalized in. Blacks prospered significantly from Jazz. “Louis Armstrong became the first great jazz soloist when he moved from King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band in Chicago to Fletcher Henderson's band in New York City in 1924”(Britannica). Armstrong was a famous jazz artist during the Harlem renaissance.
Several writers, including Hughes, Hurston, Larsen, and Toomer relied particularly on the rich folk tradition (oral culture, folktales, black dialect, jazz and blues composition) to create unique literary forms. Other writers, such as Cullen, McKay and Helene Johnson wrote within more conventional literary genres as a way to capture what they saw as the growing urbanity and sophistication of African Americans. The literature of the Harlem Renaissance, therefore, reflects the multiple ways that black experience in America was perceived and expressed in the first decades of the twentieth
Jazz became so popular during these times, because life in America back than was rough for a lot of people. Some jazz was sung about these problems and how people dealt with them and their opinions on life. Other types of jazz were played to bring excitement to people’s everyday lives and give them a time where they could dance and enjoy life. One of the first types of jazz that contributed a lot to the jazz we know today was ragtime. Ragtime was big during the late 1800’s to the early 1900’s and originated in the southern United States.
Gwendolyn Brooks wrote many poems as the African American Civil Rights demanded equality. I think race is important to this author and to this poem. Another famous poet, Langston Hughes was making a lot of noise within his writing like the poem, “A Dream Deferred” Clugston, R.W. (2010). Both of these poems were written around the same time.
Langston Hughes captured the joys and pains of the African American experience through plays, short stories, essays, and poetry. His poetic language was lofty and lyrical, his writing was political and personal (Harper). He was a very prolific writer; he composed over 800 poems and became the most prominent voice among the writers and artists of the Harlem Renaissance. Langston Hughes immersed himself in the culture of his people while in Harlem and became the leader of the Harlem Renaissance. The power of Langston Hughes’s words hoisted writing about black Americans.
When a couple of white composers introduced "ragtime" music, many black performers took it and adapted it to their out style After beginning in New York City , progressive, or cool, jazz developed primarily on the West Coast in the late 1940s and early 50s. Intense yet ironically relaxed tonal sonorities are the major characteristic of this jazz form, while the melodic line is less convoluted than in bop. Lester Young's style was fundamental to the music of the cool saxophonists Lee Konitz, Warne Marsh, and Stan Getz. Miles Davis played an important part in the early stages, and the influence of virtuoso pianist Lennie Tristano was all-pervasive. The music was accepted more gracefully by the public and critics than bop, and
By creating art, which they weren’t able to do before, the African Americans felt as though they were American. But by being black, having a different background and facing life differently as a typical American would, those same African Americans also felt an altered sense of self beyond American. Numerous African Americans from the Harlem Renaissance created works of art which portrayed that experience of “double-consciousness” and one of those African Americans was poet, Langston Hughes. Through his poem “The Weary Blues”, Hughes creates a scene that is perfect for showing the reader an African American’s experience in the Harlem Renaissance and how they faced two sides of their own being. In Langston Hughes’ poem “The Weary Blues”, the speaker describes an evening of listening to a blues musician in Harlem.