Black Music in the Harlem Renaissance A Collection of Essays

Subjects:

• The Arts » Ethnomusicology
• Multicultural Studies » Black Studies

Reviews:

• This anthology, produced by the Center for Black Music (CBM), Columbia College, Chicago, shows how the distinctive role of African American music can make a decisive contribution to shaping our understanding of the past. No general history of American music, excepting Eileen Southern's The Music of Black Americans, has discussed the 1920s Harlem Renaissance as the focal point for a worldwide movement that attempted, first, to establish the significance of black culture and, second, to widen the scope of black contribution to culture at large. In his illuminating introductory essay, editor Samuel Floyd, who is also CBM director, argues that, although the Harlem Renaissance may have been literary in origin, music became the most decisive vehicle for achieving its aims. Not just classical music and the concert spiritual, but jazz and the black musical revues as well, made significant contributions toward increasing the publics respect for black culture. The articles that follow are of equally high quality. They include the philosophical (Paul Burgett's `The Writings of Alain Locke'), a genre overview (Rawn Spearman's `Vocal Concert Music'), two classical composer studies (Georgia A. Ryder's `Music of Robert Nathaniel Dett'; Rae Lina Brown's `William Grant Still, Florence Price, and William Dawson'), essays on popular music (John Graziano's `Black Music Theater'; Mark Tucker's `Duke Ellington'), a study of artistic interaction (Richard A. Long's `Writers and Music'), and international coverage (Jeffrey Green's `Negro Renaissance in England'). A bibliography by Dominique-René de Lerma listing 725 concert pieces by 14 Harlem Renaissance composers concludes this enlightening volume. Recommended for all libraries.
  —Choice
• This book, from the series Contributions in Afro-American and African Studies, examines African-American musical activity during the Harlem Renaissance, a movement that began in the mid-1920s as an effort to secure economic, social, and cultural equality. The musicians whose compositions, performances, and lives are described worked primarily in the United States and England; the book includes a bibliography of works composed from 1919 to 1936.
  —Music Educators Journal
• Ten interesting essays survey the relationship of musicians to a movement largely fostered by black literati in the '20s. An overview by the editor sets the scene very well, and there follow essays on Alain Locke's writing; vocal concert music; composers Robert Nathaniel Dett, William Grant Still, Florence Price and William Dawson; black musical theatre; Duke Ellington; interaction between writers and the music, and between art and music; and, rather surprisingly, the Negro renaissance in England. One may conclude that jazz was lucky to survive as it did the attentions of so many schooled intellectuals.
  —Jazz Times

Table of Contents:

• Preface
• Music in the Harlem Renaissance: An Overview
• Vindication as a Thematic Principle in the Writings of Alain Locke on the Music of Black Americans
• Vocal Concert Music in the Harlem Renaissance
• Harlem Renaissance Ideals in the Music of Robert Nathaniel Dett
• William Grant Still, Florence Price, and William Dawson: Echoes of the Harlem Renaissance
• Black Musical Theatre and the Harlem Renaissance Movement
• The Renaissance Education of Duke Ellington
• Interactions between Writers and Music during the Harlem Renaissance
• Interactions between Art and Music during the Harlem Renaissance
• The Negro Renaissance and England
• Bibliography of the Music: The Concert Music of the Harlem Renaissance Composers, 1919-1935
• Index