Cultural Renaissance -- A Glimpse of Harlem of the 1920s.

Transcription

1 Cultural Renaissance -- A Glimpse of Harlem of the 1920s. The Harlem Renaissance, or the New Negro Movement as coined by philosopher and writer Alain Locke, was a period of cultural renewal and celebration during the late 1910s through the 1930s. This burgeoning, creative deluge, which was centered in the northern-most neighborhood of Manhattan, New York, known as Harlem, was championed by writers such as Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes, painters like Aaron Douglas and Jacob Lawrence, and musicians such as Duke Ellington, James Price Johnson and Thomas Wright Fats Waller. Irrespective of the medium, the impetus behind the movement was to transcend the notion of African-American culture as subordinate to a position of sophistication, elegance, and dignity. For nearly two decades, this renaissance would drastically alter the landscape of American culture. Historical Context Prior to the twentieth century, nearly ninety percent of all African-Americans lived in the rural South. Following the Civil War, the promise of emancipation led to disenfranchisement and the proliferation of laws to denigrate and suppress the black population. The ideology of white supremacy was a dominant force and groups like the Ku Klux Klan were ascendant; lynchings of African-Americans became a part of everyday life. These conditions were the catalyst for a mass exodus, known as The Great Migration, of African-Americans to northern cities such as Chicago and New York. These cosmopolitan cities provided hope for economic security and freedom from the hate and hypocrisy of the South. During the Great Migration, which some historians consider to have taken place between 1915 and 1970, more than six million African-Americans moved out of the South to cities across the Northeast, Midwest and West. This relocation resulted in seismic demographic shifts across the United States. Between 1915 and 1930, cities such as New York saw their African-American populations grow by about forty percent, and the number of African-Americans employed in industrial jobs nearly doubled. Harlem, specifically, was home to over fifty thousand African-Americans at the onset of the Great Migration ; that figured quadrupled by With nearly a quarter of a million black residents, Harlem was poised to become a mecca for cultural activity. Perhaps the greatest known musical innovator of the Harlem Renaissance was Edward Kennedy Ellington. Ellington was born in Washington D.C. on April 24, 1899, to James Edward and Daisy Kennedy Ellington -- both of whom were talented, amateur pianists. Growing up in a middle-class neighborhood, Ellington was privileged to study piano and earned the nickname "Duke" for his sophisticated and elegant demeanor. Inspired by his job as a soda jerk, he wrote his first composition, "Soda Fountain Rag," at the age of fifteen. Despite being awarded an art scholarship to the Pratt Institute in New York, Ellington pursued his passion for ragtime and began to play professionally at age seventeen. In 1922, Duke mustered the courage to travel to Harlem, New York. He was instantly inspired by pianists such as James Price Johnson, Thomas Wright Fats Waller and Willie The Lion Smith. These three men championed a virtuosic piano style that

2 became known as Harlem Stride. Ellington was determined to learn the technique, which included improvised melodies in the right hand being juxtaposed to a syncopated, striding rhythm of the left hand. Using his new command of his instrument, along with his charm, Ellington found a position in a dance band led by banjoist, Elmer Snowden. By 1923, Ellington was leading the band and renamed it, The Washingtonians. As the bandleader, Duke was responsible for the repertoire of his ensemble; this forced him to learn music composition and arranging. Although the aggregate, aptly named The Duke Ellington Orchestra by 1926, performed contemporary tunes of Tin Pan Alley, Ellington was determined to compose what he called, American negro music. In 1927, the band debuted "Black and Tan Fantasy" and "Creole Love Call, both of which would be associated with him for rest of his life. These tunes, recorded within the three-minute 78RPM format, were staples in the band s repertory and conveyed an aesthetic that Ellington dubbed his jungle sound. The gritty, soulful sensibility of the orchestra captured an exoticism that captivated club audiences. Perhaps the greatest accomplishment for the Ellington Orchestra in 1927 was earning a residency at Harlem s famed Cotton Club. Radio broadcasts, initially via WHN and later WCBS, gave Ellington national exposure and afforded him the financial stability to assemble a top-notch orchestra for whom he could specifically compose. Although Ellington did not agree with the racially-charged themes of the club and its restrictive, whites-only admission policy, he was determined to use the publicity to share his music and express what it was like to be a negro in this country. The most profound example of this type of composition was his musical suite entitled, Black, Brown, and Beige. During his four-year tenure at the Cotton Club, Ellington expressed an interest to compose a work that would serve as a tone parallel to the black experience: beginning as Africans, serving as slaves in the American South, and finally arriving in Harlem, New York. The music would reflect this journey and the ultimate equality that Ellington so desperately wanted for the African-American population. Although Ellington was the most prolific of all African-American composers, he was certainly not the only musical influence during the Harlem Renaissance. Thomas Wright Fats Waller, although perhaps best known for his comic entertainment style, was a gifted jazz musician whose greatest contributions to music lay in his brilliant and virtuosic Harlem Stride piano compositions and poignant songwriting. Thomas Wright Waller was born on May 21, 1904 in Harlem, New York a city that was already well on its way to becoming the largest and most significant urban community of African-Americans in the northeast. Waller's parents, Edward, a Baptist lay preacher and Adeline, migrated to New York from Virginia in 1888, and by 1902 had permanently settled in Harlem. Fats, as he would come to be known in his youth, was the youngest of the couple's five children. Like many in the African-American community, Edward and Adeline were devout church-goers, and intensely musical as well; indeed, music in a religious context informed much of their everyday lives. This reverence for music, as espoused by his parents, had a tremendous impact on Fats; by the age of six, he was already at work playing the harmonium to accompany his father s sermons at open-air services.

3 Waller's musical education and professional growth intensified in his teenage years. In 1918, he won a talent contest for his rendition of James P. Johnson s Carolina Shout, which was considered to be the barometer by which all aspiring Stride pianists were measured. By 1920, he was under the tutelage of Johnson, the father of the Harlem Stride piano style. At about this time he also began to perform regularly at Harlem's Lincoln and Lafayette theaters. During the next few years, as a result of his increasingly frequent public appearances, Waller came to be acknowledged as one of the most gifted, inventive and virtuosic of the younger generation of Stride practitioners. He made his debut recording, Birmingham Blues and Muscle Shoals Blues in October of 1922; other early performance activity included accompanying blues singers, such as Bessie Smith, on recordings and cutting numerous piano rolls in 1923 for the Victor, QRS and Okeh labels. During the early years of this decade, he continued to play for rent parties, engaged in cutting contests, was an organist at movie theatres and served as an accompanist for various vaudeville acts. While still in his early twenties, Waller composed dozens of songs (although some were not published) and began critical collaborations with such songwriters as Spencer Williams and most importantly, Andy Razaf. In 1927 Waller recorded his own composition Whiteman Stomp with Fletcher Henderson s orchestra, one of the pioneering African-American bands of the Swing Era. Henderson used other compositions by Waller as vehicles for his arrangements and improvisations, including I'm Crazy Bout My Baby and Stealin Apples. In 1928, along with Razaf, he contributed much of the music for James P. Johnson s allblack Broadway musical Keep Shufflin. He would also make his Carnegie Hall debut on April 27, 1928, when he was the piano soloist in a version of James P. Johnson s Yamekraw, A Negro Rhapsody for piano and orchestra. Waller's star was rapidly ascendant in 1929; in that year alone, he was involved in numerous extensive recording sessions that documented some of his finest songs: ("Ain't Misbehavin'," "I've Got a Feeling I'm Falling," "Honeysuckle Rose," "(What Did I Do To Be So) Black and Blue?," "The Minor Drag," "Numb Fumblin'," and many others). This exposure gained him a certain cachet with record executives; he was permitted to use an interracial band (one of the earliest in recording history). Two of his most significant compositions, Ain t Misbehavin, and (What Did I Do To Be So) Black and Blue? were examples of the great American musical, Hot Feet. Hot Feet, an all African-American musical revue with words and music by Andy Razaf and Thomas Fats Waller respectively, opened at Connie s Inn in February of Connie s Inn, a Harlem nightclub owned by brothers George and Connie Immerman, was the primary competitor of the famous Cotton Club, and had similar elaborate floor shows, restrictive admission policies that were based on race, and purported ties to organized crime. Hot Feet was considered to be one of the best floor shows to emerge from a Harlem nightclub and its success prompted the Immerman brothers to move it to Broadway, where the show opened at the Hudson Theater in June of They had renamed the revue Connie s Hot Chocolates and asked Waller and Razaf to compose a few more numbers for the revamped show; these songs included (What Did I Do To Be

4 So) Black and Blue, Can t We Get Together, and the show s most popular tune, Ain t Misbehavin. Irrespective of the critical and commercial success of Ain t Misbehavin, it was the racially-charged Black and Blue that served as somewhat of an anthem of the burgeoning, cultural pride of the African-American community. Andy Razaf and Harry Brooks composed the lyrics and they appear below as performed by Louis Armstrong: Cold, empty bed / Springs hard as lead Feel like Old Ned / Wish I was dead All my life through / I ve been so black and blue Even a mouse / Ran from my house They laugh at you / And scold you too What did I do there / To be so black and blue I m white inside But that don t help my case Because I can t hide What is in my face How will it end? / Ain t got a friend My only sin / Is in my skin What did I do / to be so black and blue? The profundity and poignancy of the words are incredibly soul-stirring; these are the words of an oppressed people and act as a harbinger to the Civil Rights Movement. The music is jazz and Armstrong, its ambassador, serve as the clarion call to transcend the travesty of social inequity. In 1930 he appeared on radio as one of the earliest African-Americans hosts. And from he broadcasted his own show regularly for WLW in Cincinnati, "Fats Waller's Rhythm Club. When the WLW contract concluded in early 1934, Waller returned to New York where he broadcasted the "Rhythm Club" show over the CBS network to a still larger audience. This experience would prove to be invaluable as it offered an unparalleled opportunity to sing, satirize, and provide a running commentary while he was playing all traits for which he would become widely known. Waller's success on CBS convinced Victor to sign him to his first recording contract; Waller decided upon a six-piece band format similar in organization to a typical Dixieland band ensemble: clarinet, trombone, trumpet, piano, bass and drums. Maintaining the association with the "Rhythm Club" name, Waller dubbed the band "Fats Waller and His Rhythm." Between 1934 and 1942 the group recorded about four hundred sides, well over half of Waller's lifetime recorded output. Many critics consider that the band's best work was issued in 1935 and 1936, and many of these releases sold millions of copies. In February 1938, Victor extended Waller's contract through May In 1938 Waller undertook a European tour and recorded in London with his Continental Rhythm as well as making solo organ recordings for the HMV (His Master s Voice) label. His second European tour in the following year was terminated by the outbreak of World War II, but while in Britain he recorded (also for HMV) his London Suite, an extended series of six related pieces for solo piano: Piccadilly, Chelsea, Soho, Bond

5 Street, Limehouse and Whitechapel. It became Waller s greatest composition in scale and magnitude and is indicative of his aspirations to be a composer of concert works, along the lines of his mentor, Johnson. The final years of Waller s life involved frequent recordings and extensive tours of the United States. In early 1943, he traveled to Hollywood to make the film Stormy Weather with Lena Horne and Bill Bojangles Robinson, in which he led an all-star band. His professional responsibilities intensified in that year with more touring as well as collaborating with the lyricist George Marion for the stage show Early to Bed. This exhaustive schedule along with constant overindulgence of food and alcohol irrevocably damaged Waller s health. He died of pneumonia while returning to New York by train with his manager, Ed Kirkeby. Michael Conklin The College of New Jersey