Harlem Renaissance: Black Creativity and Modernism

Black Creativity and Modernism

• Black Creativity was seen as a response to Modernist Eurocentrism.
  • They were occurring at the same time, but their relation was complex.
  • Modernism was a largely European white movement brought to America, and it focused on questions of alienation, marginality, the use of folk primitive materials, and the problem of writing for an elite audience.
  • The Harlem Renaissance shows and proves that the center and the margins of the culture were always subject to redefinition.
  • Modernism was a white, Western European movement.
  • The New Negro movement:
    • Struggled for a definition of identity in Modern terms, that is, with a new social and intellectual background.
    • Art is the only way that Africans could express themselves, having been excluded for such a long time. Therefore, Creativity adopted a variety of forms (painting, literature, dance, music, sculpture, etc.).
    • All the art forms in the Harlem Renaissance strived to make conscious use of Africanism as valid cultural and aesthetic practices and to celebrate black heritage.
• Black American literature existed from the time of slavery, but there was a slow process of self-awareness. In this period, it experienced a moment of revival, and the literature produced a series of common themes: alienation, marginality, use of folk material, use of blues tradition, problems of writing for an elite audience.

Recovery and Celebration of Black Rhetorical Tradition

• Development of spirituals, blues, gospel, jazz, and later rap.
• The “guerrilla rhetoric”: because it is used to resist the established order.
• The practice of musical performance helped to preserve and transform their African roots.
• The language and tradition were closely interrelated: because most languages possessed structural elements of music, so they transformed the “whiteness” of English language into another sign of “blackness”. That is, they speak English (white language) incorporating elements of their own language, which means that the musicality that characterized English speech is thanks to the black elements.
• It was also the time of radio broadcasting; then, white Americans misinterpreted their way of speaking, and they were seen as nonsensical and uncultivated.
• “Orature”: important term that refers to this connection between black speech and black music, that is, the oral transmission of narrative and customs. It included native myths, fairy tales, and jokes.
• The use of the folk material arose in two contexts:
  • The life and culture of the blacks who lived in the South, and the world of folk music, especially in most modern forms (blues and jazz). Folk tale with the use of mythic material, schematic patterning, and the slave narrative with its emphasis on testimony and integrity.
  • The North was filled with black readers: a sense of stories were shaped by traditions of European realism.

Emphasis on Racial Solidarity

• They felt it was their duty to represent their brothers and sisters.
• There was an interest in black tradition and folklore as sources of inspiration.
• This primitivism to the roots of the race is related to Romanticism and to Jazz.
• Paradox: white people were attracted to it, and they were the audience and the sponsors in the clubs.
• Emphasis on the simple, sincere, unspoiled.
• Jazz and Black consciousness.
• The authenticity of black writing depended on the use of black vernacular, which has been avoided before.
• It was characterized by the realistic and colloquial, and it shows that there was not a shape over the language.