Harlem Renaissance - Boston Symphony Orchestra

Music of the
Harlem Renaissance
Arts-integrated lesson
plans for students in
grades 8-12.
BOSTON
SYMPHONY
ORCHESTRA
E D U C AT I O N A N D C O M M U N I T Y P R O G R A M S
Credits
Director of Education and Community Programs
Myran Parker-Brass
Coordinator of Research and Curriculum Development
Shana Golden
© 2006 Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Cover
Jazz Musician © Corbis
The Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Department of Education and Community Programs has a
variety of curriculum kits that are available for teachers and educators for grades K-12. For more
information on our educational materials and programs, please contact the Education Office at:
301 Massachusetts Ave, Boston, MA 02115, (617) 638-9373.
Table of Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Poetry and the Blues
Lesson Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Supplementary Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
W.C. Handy, “Beale Street Blues”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
W.C. Handy, “St. Louis Blues” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Langston Hughes, “The Weary Blues” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Sterling A. Brown, “Southern Road” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
What is the Blues? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Great Blues Singers
Lesson Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Supplementary Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Carl Van Vechten, “Negro Blues Singers”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Duke Ellington at the Cotton Club
Lesson Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Supplementary Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns, “Duke Ellington at the Cotton Club” . 33
R.D. Darrell, on Ellington’s “Black and Tan Fantasy” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Langston Hughes, “Elements of Jazz” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
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BSO Harlem Renaissance Kit 3
The Afro-American Symphony
Lesson Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Supplementary Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
William Grant Still, on the “Afro-American Symphony” . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Additional Resources
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Massachusetts Arts Curriculum Framework . . . . . . . . . 45
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Introduction
T
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA’S Harlem Renaissance
kit was created in order to raise awareness about the rich
artistic heritage of African-Americans. These materials
are intended for use by classroom teachers to supplement existing curriculum. The kit is divided into three series: Foundations,
Great Artists, Musical Figures.
HE
This kit is a production of the Boston Symphony Orchestra Department of Education and Community Programs. Feedback is
welcomed, please contact the BSO with any comments or questions.
Shana Golden
BSO Education Department
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Music
BSO Harlem Renaissance Kit 5
Poetry and the Blues
Objectives
Students will:
• Learn about the characteristics of a blues song
• Analyze a poem(s) inspired by blues music
• Examine a contemporary social issue
Materials
Recordings and lyrics (by W.C. Handy):
“Beale Street Blues”
“St. Louis Blues”
(Note: A CD of these works is included with this kit.)
Hughes, Langston, “The Weary Blues”
Brown, Sterling A., “Southern Road”
Introduction
Give the students some biographical information on W.C.
Handy and his blues tunes. Tell them that W.C. Handy (b. 1873
in Alabama) was the first person to collect and write down
blues melodies. In 1907, he and Harry Pace formed a music
publishing company. After publishing “Memphis Blues” in 1912
he became known as “The Father of the Blues.” He spent his
life transcribing and composing blues tunes, which he published
in a book called Blues: An Anthology in 1926. His songs were
performed and recorded by all the major blues singers of the
early 20th century.
Have the class listen to a recording of the W.C. Handy blues
song “Beale Street Blues.”
Development
Pass out copies of lyrics for the W.C. Handy blues song “Beale
Street Blues.”
Identify the basic elements of a Blues Song:
What is the subject of this song?
(Blues songs often comment on the social climate of the
time. Is there symbolism in the text? Allusions to historical
events? Are figures of speech used?)
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What is the mood of the song?
(The word “blues” was a slang term used in the mid-19th
century to describe sadness and misery. The blues were sung
by one person, and often spoke of personal or social problems. )
What is the form of the song?
(Blues songs are usually written in AAB form, which means
that the first line often presents an idea or issue, the second
line repeats it, and the third line responds to the idea presented in the first and second lines.)
What are the poetic elements?
(Organized into stanzas (strophic); uses rhyme, repetition,
or assonance; often has symbolism or figures of speech)
Play another W.C. Handy blues song called ”St. Louis Blues”,
and pass out copies of the song text. Discuss the “blues” characteristics of this song: subject, mood, form, poetic elements.
Pass out copies of “The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes, and
“A Southern Road” by Sterling A. Brown.
Discuss the “blues” characteristics of each poem.
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Activity
What is the subject matter? Does this poem have a
“blues” subject?
What is the mood?
What is the form?
Is the poem strophic (organized by stanzas like a blues
poem) or strichic (organized by lines)? How does the
poem incorporate the blues form?
What voice is used? What kind of language?
How does the poem sound like a blues song? Does
Langston use rhyme? Repetition? Assonance?
Assign students to write a blues song about a contemporary
social issue. Students should share their work with the class.
Students should use:
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Music
The 12-bar blues (AAB form)
Colloquial language
Poetic elements such as rhyme, repetition, assonance
Activity Extension
Poetry “Slam.” Set aside a day or evening for students to read
their poems. Students can also read their own poems with instrumental music.
Music
BSO Harlem Renaissance Kit 9
Supplementary Materials
The next few pages include materials that may be used with the Poetry and the Blues lesson plan.
Included are photos and biographical information on the artists, lyrics for the “St. Louis Blues”
and the “Beale Street Blues,” Langston Hughes’ poem “The Weary Blues,” Sterling Brown’s poem
“Southern Road,” and an introduction to Blues music called “What is the Blues?”
Biographies of W.C. Handy • Langston Hughes • Sterling Brown
W.C. Handy (1873-1958)
The title of W.C. Handy’s autobiography, Father of the Blues, is
an accurate assessment of his contribution to American music.
The man who composed the immortal “St. Louis Blues,” written
in 1914, and other classics—such as “Beale Street Blues,”
“Memphis Blues,” “Careless Love,” and “Yellow Dog Blues”—
forever changed the course of American music by integrating a
blues idiom with ragtime.
William Christopher Handy was born on Nov. 16, 1873, in
Florence, Ala., the son of former slaves. As a 15-year-old he
left home to work in a traveling minstrel show, but he soon returned when his money ran out.
He attended Teachers Agricultural and Mechanical College in Huntsville, Ala., and worked as a
schoolteacher and bandmaster. In 1893, during an economic depression, he formed a quartet to
perform at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. For several years afterward he drifted
around the country working at different jobs. Eventually he settled in Memphis, Tenn.
Handy wrote music during the period of transition from ragtime to jazz. The music he had
absorbed during his youth consisted of spirituals, work songs, and folk ballads. His own work
consisted of elements of all of these in addition to the popular ragtime and the blues notes that
he inserted. His work developed the conception of blues as a harmonic framework within which
it was possible to improvise. His own chosen instrument was the cornet. Although he lost his
eyesight at age 30, he conducted his own orchestra from 1903 until 1921. His sight partially
returned, but he became completely blind after a fall from a subway platform in 1943.
Composing the blues began in 1909 when Handy wrote an election campaign song for the mayor
of Memphis, Edward H. “Boss” Crump. With some changes, the song was published in 1911 as
“Memphis Blues.” In all he wrote some 60 compositions. Handy spent his last years in New York
City, where he died on March 28, 1958.
-from “W.C. Handy”, The Brittanica Student Encyclopedia 2006, http://www.brittanica.com.
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Langston Hughes (1902-1967)
James Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin,
Missouri. His parents divorced when he was a small child, and
his father moved to Mexico. He was raised by his grandmother
until he was thirteen, when he moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live
with his mother and her husband, before the family eventually
settled in Cleveland, Ohio. It was in Lincoln, Illinois, that
Hughes began writing poetry. Following graduation, he spent
a year in Mexico and a year at Columbia University. During
these years, he held odd jobs as an assistant cook, launderer,
and a busboy, and travelled to Africa and Europe working as
a seaman. In November 1924, he moved to Washington, D.C.
Hughes’s first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926. He
finished his college education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania three years later. In 1930 his
first novel, Not Without Laughter, won the Harmon gold medal for literature.
Hughes, who claimed Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman as his primary
influences, is particularly known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in America
from the twenties through the sixties. He wrote novels, short stories and plays, as well as poetry,
and is also known for his engagement with the world of jazz and the influence it had on his
writing, as in “Montage of a Dream Deferred.” His life and work were enormously important in
shaping the artistic contributions of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Unlike other notable
black poets of the period—Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, and Countee Cullen—Hughes refused to
differentiate between his personal experience and the common experience of black America. He
wanted to tell the stories of his people in ways that reflected their actual culture, including both
their suffering and their love of music, laughter, and language itself.
Langston Hughes died of complications from prostate cancer in May 22, 1967, in New York.
In his memory, his residence at 20 East 127th Street in Harlem, New York City, has been given
landmark status by the New York City Preservation Commission, and East 127th Street has been
renamed “Langston Hughes Place.”
In addition to leaving us a large body of poetic work, Hughes wrote eleven plays and countless
works of prose, including the well-known “Simple” books: Simple Speaks His Mind, Simple
Stakes a Claim, Simple Takes a Wife, and Simple’s Uncle Sam. He edited the anthologies The
Poetry of the Negro and The Book of Negro Folklore, wrote an acclaimed autobiography (The
Big Sea) and co-wrote the play Mule Bone with Zora Neale Hurston.
- from “Langston Hughes”, Poets.org, http://www.poets.org.
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BSO Harlem Renaissance Kit 11
Sterling Brown (1901-1989)
Sterling Brown was born in Washington, D.C., in 1901. He
was educated at Dunbar High School and received a bachelor’s
degree from Williams College. He studied the work of Ezra
Pound and T. S. Eliot, but was more interested in the works
of Amy Lowell, Edgar Lee Masters, Robert Frost and Carl
Sandburg. In 1923, he earned a master’s degree from Harvard
University and was employed as a teacher at the Virginia
Seminary and College in Lynchburg until 1926. Three years
later, Brown began teaching at Howard University and in 1932
his first book, Southern Road, was published.
His poetry was influenced by jazz, the blues, work songs and spirituals and, like Langston
Hughes, Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, and other black poets of the period, his writing expresses
his concerns about race in America. Southern Road was well received by critics and Brown
became part of the artistic tradition of the Harlem Renaissance, but with the arrival of the
Depression, Brown could not find a publisher for his second book of verse. He turned to writing
essays and focused on his career as a teacher at Howard, where he taught until his retirement in
1969. He finally published his second book of poetry, The Last Ride of Wild Bill, in 1975. Brown
is known for his frank, unsentimental portraits of black people and their experiences, and the
incorporation of African-American folklore and contemporary idiom into his verse. He died in
1989 in Takoma Park, Maryland.
- from “Sterling Brown”, Poets.org, http://www.poets.org.
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“Then one night in Tutwiler, as I nodded in the railroad station that had been delayed nine hours,
life suddenly took me by the shoulder and wakened me with a start. A lean, loose-jointed Negro
had commenced plunking a guitar beside me while I slept… as he played he pressed a knife on the
strings of the guitar in a manner popularized by Hawaiian guitarists. The effect was unforgettable.
His son, too, struck me instantly. ‘Goin’ where the Southern cross’ the Dog.’ The singer repeated
the line three time, accompanying himself on the guitar with the weirdest music I had ever heard.”
-W.C. Handy, Father of the Blues (1903).
Music
BSO Harlem Renaissance Kit 13
Beale Street Blues
by W.C Handy
I’ve seen the lights of gay Broadway,
Old Market Street down by the Frisco Bay,
I’ve strolled the Prado, I’ve gambled on the Bourse;
The seven wonders of the world I’ve seen,
And many are the places I have been,
Take my advice, folks, and see Beale Street first!
You’ll see pretty browns in beautiful gowns,
You’ll see tailor-mades and hand-me-downs,
You’ll meet honest men, and pick-pockets skilled,
You’ll find that business never ceases ‘til somebody gets killed!
If Beale Street could talk, if Beale Street could talk,
Married men would have to take their beds and walk,
Except one or two who never drink booze,
And the blind man on the corner singing “Beale Street Blues!”
I’d rather be there than any place I know,
I’d rather be there than any place I know,
It’s gonna take a sergeant for to make me go!
I’m goin’ to the river, maybe by and by,
Yes, I’m goin’ to the river, maybe by and by,
Because the river’s wet, and Beale Street’s done gone dry!
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“Music did bring me to the gutter. It brought me to sleep on the levee on the Mississippi River, on
the cobblestones, broke and hungry. And if you’ve ever slept on cobblestones or had nowhere to
sleep, you can understand why I began [‘The St. Louis Blues’] with ‘I hate to see the evening sun
go down.’” –W. C. Handy
St. Louis Blues
by W.C. Handy
I hate to see that evening sun go down,
I hate to see that evening sun go down,
‘Cause my lovin’ baby done left this town.
If I feel tomorrow, like I feel today,
If I feel tomorrow, like I feel today,
I’m gonna pack my trunk and make my getaway.
Oh, that St. Louis woman, with her diamond rings,
She pulls my man around by her apron strings.
And if it wasn’t for powder and her store-bought hair,
Oh, that man of mine wouldn’t go nowhere.
I got those St. Louis blues, just as blue as I can be,
Oh, my man’s got a heart like a rock cast in the sea,
Or else he wouldn’t have gone so far from me.
I love my man like a schoolboy loves his pie,
Like a Kentucky colonel loves his rocker and rye
I’ll love my man until the day I die, Lord, Lord.
I got the St. Louis blues, just as blue as I can be, Lord, Lord!
That man’s got a heart like a rock cast in the sea,
Or else he wouldn’t have gone so far from me.
I got those St. Louis blues, I got the blues, I got the blues, I got the
blues,
My man’s got a heart like a rock cast in the sea,
Or else he wouldn’t have gone so far from me, Lord, Lord!
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BSO Harlem Renaissance Kit 15
At any rate, when I was a kid in Kansas City very often I used to hear the blues. There were blind
guitar players who would sing the blues on street corners. There were people plunking the blues
on beat up old pianos. That was of course before the days of the jukebox and the radio. In those
days, almost everybody who could afford to have a piano had one, and played them in their
homes. And so you heard a lot of music. Well, at any rate, I was very much attracted to the blues.
I remember even now some of the blues verses that I used to hear as a child in Kansas City. And so
I, in my early beginnings at poetry writing, tried to weave the blues into my poetry.
- Langston Hughes (1959)
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Music
The Weary Blues
Langston Hughes
(1923)
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Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway ....
He did a lazy sway ....
To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
O Blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
Sweet Blues!
Coming from a black man’s soul.
O Blues!
In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan-“Ain’t got nobody in all this world,
Ain’t got nobody but ma self.
I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’
And put ma troubles on the shelf.”
Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang some more-“I got the Weary Blues
And I can’t be satisfied.
Got the Weary Blues
And can’t be satisfied-I ain’t happy no mo’
And I wish that I had died.”
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.
Music
BSO Harlem Renaissance Kit 17
Southern Road
Sterling A. Brown
Swing dat hammer--hunh-Steady, bo’;
Swing dat hammer--hunh-Steady, bo’;
Ain’t no rush, bebby,
Long ways to go.
Burner tore his--hunh-Black heart away;
Burner tore his--hunh-Black heart away;
Got me life, bebby,
An’ a day.
Gal’s on Fifth Street--hunh-Son done gone;
Gal’s on Fifth Street--hunh-Son done gone;
Wife’s in de ward, bebby,
Babe’s not bo’n.
My ole man died--hunh-Cussin’ me;
My ole man died--hunh-Cussin’ me;
Ole lady rocks, bebby,
Huh misery.
Doubleshackled--hunh-Guard behin’;
Doubleshackled--hunh-Guard behin’;
Ball an’ chain, bebby,
On my min’.
White man tells me--hunh-Damn yo’ soul;
White man tells me--hunh-Damn yo’ soul;
Got no need, bebby,
To be tole.
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Chain gang nevah--hunh-Let me go;
Chain gang nevah--hunh-Let me go;
Po’ los’ boy, bebby,
Evahmo’ . . .
What is the Blues?
Harmony and Structure
The 12-bar blues has twelve measures, or bars, divided into three groups of
four bars each. The structure is supported by a fixed harmonic progression
that all blues performers know, and could play almost automatically. Such a
progression can be played in any key, though blues musicians favor E or A and
jazz musicians B-flat.
When this pattern is repeated in performance, the V (five) chord is used in bar
12; called the turn-around, it is used as a preparation for going back to the
beginning. The I (one) chord is used in bar 12 during the final passage through
the 12-bar sequence.
Meter and Rhythm
The blues generally uses a 4/4 time signature and there are four beats to each
of the 12-bars. Characteristic of the blues style is the rhythmic momentum
described as “swing”, a relationship between long and short note durations that
may be represented (although not exactly) by triplet subdivisions.
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BSO Harlem Renaissance Kit 19
The Blues Scale
Improvides melodies often incorporate “blues notes,” which are lowered 3rd,
7th, and to a lesser extent, 5th degrees of the major scale. These inflected
pitches are among the most distinctive features. The “blues scale” is a
chromatic variant of the major scale and suggests the notes that a musician
might use in performance.
Lyrics
The 12-bar blues usually has two successive lines of text forming a pair known
as a single couplet. The second line generally repeats the first; enabling a blues
singer time to improvise a rhyming third line, while singing the second.
- adapted from “What is the Blues?”, BSO Online Consevatory, http://www.bso.org.
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Great Blues Singers
Objectives
Students will:
• Learn about two prominent Harlem Renaissance blues
singers: Bessie Smith and Clara Smith
• Analyze the lyrics of two Blues songs
• Learn techniques for analyzing vocal and musical style
Materials
Recordings:
Smith, Bessie, “Down Hearted Blues’”
Smith, Clara, “Broken Busted Blues”
(Note: A CD of these works is included with this kit.)
Van Vechten, Carl, “Negro ‘Blues’ Singers: An appreciation of
Three Coloured Artists Who Excel in an Unusual and Native
Medium.”
Introduction
Tell the students that they are going to learn about two singers
from the Jazz Age: Bessie Smith and Clara Smith. Provide brief
biographical accounts of each singer.
Bessie Smith (1894-1937) b. Tennessee. Blues singer, known as
“The Empress of the Blues”. Began touring in her teens. At the
age of 29 her Columbia recording “Down-Hearted Blues/Gulf
Coast Blues” sold 780,000 copies in six months. Played almost
entirely in all-black theaters. Died in 1937 after a car accident.
Clara Smith (1894-1935) Blues singer who was the second bestselling artist after Bessie Smith on the Coumbia label. Moved to
New York in 1923. Died in 1935.
Development
Listen to the recording of Bessie Smith, “Down Hearted
Blues.”
Discussion:
What is the mood of the music?
What is this song about?
How does Bessie Smith convey the mood and meaning of
the text?
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BSO Harlem Renaissance Kit 21
Tell the students that Bessie Smith was known for her voice.
She made no attempts to sound “pretty”. Her direct, forceful,
growling voice and her songs reflected her working class background.
Listen to the recording of Clara Smith, “Broken Busted Blues.”
Discussion (from worksheet):
What is this song about?
What is the mood of the music?
How does the singer convey the mood and meaning of the
text?
Read excerpts from the article, “Negro Blues Singers” by Carl
Van Vechten.
Tell the class that Van Vechten was a writer who was born
in 1880 (d. 1964). He moved to New York in 1906 where he
worked as a music and dance critic. He was of Caucasian descent, but he was very interested in promoting the work of black
artists. In 1926 he wrote a controversial novel entitled “Nigger
Heaven.” Throughout his life he photographed and wrote about
life in New York, and often visited Harlem.
Discussion:
What does Van Vechten say about Bessie Smith and Clara
Smith?
How does he describe their voices? Their performances?
What are the factors that he says contributed to their popularity?
Do you agree with his observations?
Activity
Have students plan a 30 minute radio show for a musician from
the Harlem Renaissance, including:
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Activity Extension
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A brief introduction to the performer, including background, musical style, and importance
A playlist
A written script to introduce each work on the show
Have students record their “radio shows” on tape or CD,
featuring themselves as the host.
Supplementary Materials
The next few pages include materials that may be used with the Great Blues Singers lesson plan.
Included are photos and biographies of the artists, and an essay by Carl Van Vechten: “Negro
‘Blues’ Singers.”
Bessie Smith (1894-1937)
Bessie Smith began her professional career in 1912, performing
in various touring minstrel shows and cabarets. By the 1920s,
she was a leading artist in black shows on the TOBA circuit and
at the 81 Theatre in Atlanta. Her first recording, Down-Hearted
Blues, established her as the most successful black performing
artist of her time. She recorded regularly until 1928 and toured
throughout the US, performing to large audiences. In 1929, she
appeared in the film St. Louis Blues. By then, however, alcoholism had severely damaged her career, as did the Great Depression. She died in 1936, following an automobile accident.
Smith was unquestionably the greatest of the vaudeville blues singers and brought the emotional
intensity, personal involvement, and expression of blues singing into the jazz repertory with unexcelled artistry. Her broad phrasing, fine intonation, blue-note inflections, and wide, expressive
range made hers the measure of jazz-blues singing in the 1920s. She made almost 200 recordings,
of which her remarkable duets with Armstrong are among her best. Her voice had coarsened by
the time of her last session, but few jazz artists have been as consistently outstanding.
- adapted from “Bessie Smith”, The New Grove History of Jazz, Oxford University Press.
Clara Smith (1834-1935)
Little is known about Clara Smith’s early life other that that she
was from Spartanburg, South Carolina. She worked in vaudeville in the late Teens and early 1920s and eventually became
a popular performer. In 1923 she moved to Harlem where she
worked in cabarets and theaters and began recording exclusively for Columbia. Many critics consider her late 1920’s Blues
recordings to be second only to Bessie Smith’s records in quality. She was billed as the Queen of the Moaners and the World’s
Greatest Moaner.
She recorded three duets “Far Away Blues” and “I’m Going
Back To My Used To Be” and “My Man Blues” with Bessie Smith. Bessie and Clara were not related, but they were close personal friends until Bessie got drunk one evening in 1925 and beat up
Clara. Clara Smith continued to record until 1932 and performed live until she died of a heart attack in Detroit in 1935. -adapted from “Clara Smith”, Red Hot Jazz, http://www.redhotjazz.com.
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BSO Harlem Renaissance Kit 23
Negro “Blues” Singers (1926)
An Appreciation of Three Coloured Artists
Who Excel in an Unusual and Native Medium
by Carl Van Vechten
Editor’s notes—New York is celebrated for its transitory fads. For whole seasons its mood is dominated by one popular
figure or another, or by a racial influence. We have had Chaliapin winters, Moscow Art Theatre winters, Jeritza winters,
Jazz winters, Russian winters, and Spanish winters. During the current season, indubitably, the Negro is in the ascendancy. Harlem cabarets are more popular than ever. Everybody is trying to dance the Charleston or to sing Spirituals,
and volumes of arrangements of these folksongs drop from the press faster than one can keep count of them. Since September, at least four white fiction writers have published novels dealing with the Negro, while several novels and books
of poems by coloured writers are announced. Paul Robeson, Florence Mills, Taylor Gordon and Rosamond Johnson,
Roland Hayes, and Bill Robinson are all successful on the stage or concert platform. Soon, doubtless, the homely Negro
songs of lovesickness known as the Blues, will be better known and appreciated by white audiences.
A trip to Newark is a career, and so I was forced to rise from the dinner table on Thanksgiving
night shortly after eight o’clock if I wished to hear Bessie Smith sing at the Orpheum Theatre in
that New Jersey City at a quarter of ten. I rose with eagerness, however, and so did my guests.
Bessie Smith, the “Queen of the Blues,” whose records sell into figures that compete with the circulation of the Saturday Evening Post, was to sing in Newark arid Bessie Smith, who makes long
tours of the South where her rich voice reaches the ears of the race from which she sprang, bad
not been heard in the vicinity of New York, save through the horn of the phonograph, for over a
year.
The signs and tokens were favorable. When we gave directions to the white taxicab driver
at Park Place, he demanded, “Going to hear Bessie Smith?” “Yes,” we replied. “No good trying,”
he assured us. “You can’t get in. They’ve been hanging on the chandeliers all the week.” Nevertheless, we persevered, spurred on perhaps by a promise on the part of the management that a
box would be reserved for us. We arrived, however, to discover that this promise had not been
kept. It had been impossible to hold the box; the crowd was too great.
“Day jes’ nacherly eased into dat box,” one of the ushers explained insouciantly. However,
Leigh Whipper, the enterprising manager of the theatre, eased them out again.
Once seated, we looked out over a vast sea of happy black faces—two comedians were
exchanging jokes on the stage. There was not a mulatto or high yellow visible among these
people who were shouting merriment or approval after every ribald line. Where did they all come
from? ln Harlem the Negroes are many colors, shading to white, but these were all chocolate
browns and “blues.” Never before had I seen such an audience save at typical Negro camp-meetings in the far South.
The comedians were off. The lights were lowered. A new placard, reading BESSIE SMITH,
appeared in the frames at either side of the proscenium. As the curtain lifted, a jazz band, against
a background of plum-coloured hangings, held the full stage. The saxophone began to moan; the
drummer tossed his sticks. One was transported involuntarily, inevitably, to a Harlem cabaret.
Presently, the band struck up a slower and still more mournful strain. The hangings parted and a
great brown woman emerged—she was the size of Fay Templeton in her Weber and Fields days,
and she was even garbed similarly, in a rose satin dress, spangled with sequins, which swept away
24 BSO Harlem Renaissance Kit
Music
from her trim ankles. Her face was beautiful, with the rich, ripe beauty of southern darkness, a
deep bronze brown, like her bare arms.
She walked slowly to the footlights.
Then, to the accompaniment of the wailing, muted brasses, the monotonous African beat of the drum, the dromedary glide of the pianist’s fingers over the responsive keys, she
began her strange rites in a voice full of shoutin’ and moanin’ and prayin’ and sufferin’, a wild,
rough Ethiopian voice, harsh and volcanic, released between rouged lips and the whitest of teeth,
the singer swaying slightly to the rhythm.
“Yo’ treated me wrong;
I treated yo’ right;
I wo’k fo’ yo’ full day an’ night.
Yo’ brag to women
I was yo’ fool,
So den I got dose sobbin’ h’ahted Blues.”
And now, inspired partly by the lines, partly by the stumbling strain of the accompaniment, partly by the power and magnetic personality of this elemental conjure woman and
her plangent African voice, quivering with pain and passion, which sounded as if it had been
developed at the sources of the Nile, the crowd burst into hysterical shrieks of sorrow and lamentation. Amens rent the air. Little nervous giggles, like the shivering of venetian glass, shocked the
nerves.
“It’s true I loves yo’, but I won’t take mistreatments any mo’.”
“Dat’s right,” a girl cried out from under our box.
“All I wants is yo’ pitcher in a frame;
All 1 wants is yo’ pitcher in a frame; When yo’ gone I kin see yo’ jes’ duh same.”
“Oh, Lawdy! Lawdy!” The girl beneath us shook with convulsive sobbing.
“Use gwine to staht walkin’ cause
I got a wooden pah o’ shoes;
Gwine to staht walkin’ cause I got
a wooden pah o shoes;
Gwine keep on walkin’ till I lose
dese sobbin’ h’ahted Blues.”
The singer disappeared, and with her her magic. The spell broken, the audience relaxed
and began to chatter. The band played a gayer tune.
Once again, Bessie Smith came out, now clad in a clinging garment fashioned of beads of
silver steel. More than ever she was like an African empress, more than ever like a conjure woman.
“I’m gwineter sing dose mean ornery cussed Wo’khouse Blues,” she shouted.
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BSO Harlem Renaissance Kit 25
“Everybody’s cryin’ de wo’khouse
Blues all day
All ‘long,
All ‘long.
A deep sigh from the gallery.
“Been wo’kin’ so hard—thirty days
is long,
long, long,
long, long...
The spell once more was weaving its subtle sorcery, the perversely complicated spell of African voodoo, the fragrance of china-berry blossoms, the glimmer of the silver fleece of the cotton
field under the full moon, the spell of sorrow: misery, poverty, and the horror of jail.
“I gotta leab heah,
Cotta git duh nex’ train home..
Way up dere, way up on a long lonesome road;
Duh wo’khouse ez up on a long lonesome road...
Daddy used ter be mine, but look who’se got him now;
Daddy used ter be mine, but look who’se got him now;
Ef yo’ took him keep him, he don’t mean no good nohow.”
II
If Bessie Smith is crude and primitive, she represents the true folk-spirit of the race. She sings Blues
as they are understood and admired by the coloured masses. Of the artists who have communicated the Blues to the more sophisticated Negro and white public, I think Ethel Waters is the best.
In fact, to my mind, as an artist, Miss Waters is superior to any other woman stage singer of her
race.
She refines her comedy, refines her pathos, refines even her obscenities. She is such an expert mistress of her effects that she is obliged to expend very little effort to get over a line, a song,
or even a dance. She is a natural comedienne and not one of the kind that has to work hard. She is
not known as a dancer, but she is able, by a single movement of her body to outline for her public
the suggestion of an entire dance. In her singing she exercises the same subtle skill. Some of her
songs she croons; she never shouts. Her methods are precisely opposed to those of the crude coon
shouter, to those of the authentic Blues singer, and yet, not for once, does she lose the veridical Negro atmosphere. Her voice and her gestures are essentially Negro, but they have been thought out
and restrained, not prettified, but stylized. Ethel Waters can be languorous or emotional or gay,
according to the mood of her song, but she is always the artistic interpreter of the many-talented
race of which she is such a conspicuous member.
26 BSO Harlem Renaissance Kit
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III
When we listen to Clara Smith we are vouchsafed another manifestation of the genius of the Negro for touching the heart through music. Like Bessie Smith—they are not sisters despite the fact
that once, I believe, they appeared in a sister-act in vaudeville—Clara is a crude purveyor of the
pseudo-folksongs of her race. She employs, however, more nuances of expression than Bessie. Her
voice flutters agonizingly between tones. Music critics would say that she sings off the key. What
she really does, of course, is to sing quarter tones. Thus she is justifiably billed as the “World’s
greatest moaner.” She appears to be more of an artist than Bessie, but I suspect that this apparent
artistry is spontaneous and uncalculated. As she comes upon the stage through folds of electric
blue hangings at the back, she is wrapped in a black evening cloak bordered with white fur. She
does not advance, but hesitates, turning her face in profile. The pianist is playing the characteristic
strain of the Blues. Clara begins to sing:
“All day long I’m worried;
All day long I’m blue;
I’m so awfully lonesome,
I don’ know what to do;
So I ask yo’, doctor,
See if yo’ kin fin’
Somethin’ in yo’ satchel
To pacify my min’.
Doctor! Doctor!
(Her tones become poignantly pathetic; tears roll down her cheeks.)
Write me a prescription fo’ duh Blues
Duh mean ole Blues.”
(Her voice dies away in a mournful wail of pain and she buries her head in the curtains.)
Clara Smith’s tones uncannily take on the colour of the saxophone; again of the clarinet.
Her voice is powerful or melancholy, by turn, it tears the blood from one’s heart. One learns from
her that the Negro’s cry to a cruel Cupid is as moving and elemental, as is his cry to God, as expressed in the Spirituals.
- Reprinted from Vanity Fair, Vol. 26, no. 1 (1926): 67, 106, 108.
Music
BSO Harlem Renaissance Kit 27
28 BSO Harlem Renaissance Kit
Music
Duke Ellington at the Cotton Club
Objectives
Students will:
• Listen to the music of the Duke Ellington Orchestra
• Learn to identify the general characteristics of jazz music
• Learn about “trade clubs” from the 1920’s, such as the
Cotton Club
Materials
Recordings:
Duke Ellington Orchestra, “Black and Tan Fantasy”
(Note: A CD of this work is included with this kit.)
Ward, Geoffrey C., and Burns, Ken, “Duke Ellington at the Cotton Club” from Jazz: A History of America’s Music
Quote from R.D. Darrell, a NY music critic
Hughes, Langston, Ten Basic Elements of Jazz
Background
The Cotton Club Located on 133rd st. in Harlem, NY. One
of the three largest nightclubs, or “trade clubs” in Harlem that
catered to an exclusively white clientele during the 1920’s.
The Cotton Club featured all-black entertainers such as
Ethel Waters, Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway. It was known
for its two hour “floor shows”, which included a band, dancer,
comedian, and other stars. Patrons sat at elegant tables and
were served by black waiters.
The club was owned by white mobsters, charged high
prices, and maintained strict divisions between the performers
and audience.
Duke Ellington Orchestra The Duke Ellington Orchestra
played at the Cotton Club for twelve years, beginning in 1928.
It was founded by Duke Ellington (b.1899), a composer/arranger/pianist who lived in Harlem from 1922-74. During this time
he arranged/composed over 1,000 pieces.
Ellington’s music is known for its originality, spontaneity,
and orchestration. He chose his band members for their distinctive styles, and wrote individual parts for them. His music
explored the very high and very low registers of the instruments,
paired unusual combinations for melodies, and experimented
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BSO Harlem Renaissance Kit 29
with changes of mood.
The band quickly became famous from making recordings
and radio broadcasts, which ensured its survival during the
Great Depression.
Introduction
Provide students with some background information on the
Cotton Club and the Duke Ellington Orchestra. If there is time,
have students read the excerpt “Duke Ellington at the Cotton
Club,” from Jazz: A history of America’s Music.
Discussion:
The Cotton Club provided a “comfortable” environment
for whites in Harlem. How did the Cotton Club help black
musicians such as Ellington to receive recognition for their
work? How did it hurt?
Pass out and read the 10 Basic Elements of Jazz by Langston
Hughes.
Development
Listen to the recording of “Black and Tan Fantasy” by Duke
Ellington.
Use the 10 Basic Elements of Jazz guide to discuss this music.
How many of the “basic elements” can the students identify?
Pass out/read quotation about the “Black and Tan Fantasy” by
R. D. Darrell, a New York critic who lived during the Harlem
Renaissance.
Discussion:
What was Darrell’s initial reaction to the music? Was his
overall impression negative or positive?
What jazz elements did Darrell write about?
How does Darrell’s description of this piece help explain the
popularity of jazz at the Cotton Club?
Activity
30 BSO Harlem Renaissance Kit
Design a scene from the Cotton Club. Have students sketch or
paint the scene in the Cotton Club and write a description of
what is happening.
Music
Students should do one or more of the following:
•
•
•
Choose a piece by Ellington to feature on the program
Listen to the piece and write an analysis using the 10
Basic Elements of Jazz
Write a review of the piece, noting any interesting or
innovative sounds
Music
BSO Harlem Renaissance Kit 31
Supplementary Materials
The next few pages include materials that may be used with the Duke Ellington at the Cotton
Club lesson plan. Included is biographical information on Duke Ellington and his band, an excerpt from the book Jazz: A History of America’s Music, a quotation by New York music critic
R.D. Darrell, and the “Ten Basic Elements of Jazz” by Langston Hughes.
Duke Ellington (1899-1974)
Edward Kennedy Ellington was born in Washington, D.C., in
1899 and began piano lessons as a young boy. He soon learned
ragtime piano and began his professional career organizing
bands to play for dances and social gatherings. In 1923 he
moved to New York, where an African-American cultural revolution known as the Harlem Renaissance was under way. Ellington immersed himself in the musical life of the city, playing
and studying alongside many of his heroes, including composer
Will Marion Cook and pianists James P. Johnson and Willie “The Lion” Smith. Johnson and Smith played a style called
stride: a complex, often rapid form of piano playing in which
the left hand quickly moves between bass notes and chords
while the right hand creates a series of variations on the melody.
Drawing on these and numerous other influences, Ellington fashioned his own distinctive piano
style, a rich blend that went beyond anything that had come before.
In 1927, Ellington’s ten-piece outfit landed the important job of house band at Harlem’s Cotton
Club, where he developed skills as a composer and arranger that would lay the foundation for
his legendary swing orchestra a few years later. “The music,” Duke said, “must be molded to the
men,” and, accordingly, the Cotton Club band’s handpicked members each had an immeasurable
impact on the group sound In his compositions for the nightly floor shows, Ellington drew on
every type of music available, from sentimental songs and classical melodies to the blues and West
Indian folk dances.
It was Duke’s special ability to create utterly new music from these traditional forms that set him
apart from the other musicians of his time. The celebrated African-American writer Ralph Ellison,
still a high school student in the 1920s, recalled the Cotton Club days: “It was as though Ellington had taken the traditional instruments of Negro American music and modified them, extended
their range and enriched their tonal possibilities ... It was not until the discovery of Ellington that
we had any hint that jazz possessed possibilities of a range of expressiveness comparable to that of
classical European music.” Indeed, over the next 40 years Ellington would reach audiences around
the world, filling concert halls and ballrooms alike, playing music that was as popular among the
masses as it was revered by great musicians. He had created a music that was, as Duke himself
would say, “beyond category.”
- from “Lesson 2: The Jazz Age and the Swing Era”, NEA Jazz in the Schools,
http://media.jalc.org/nea/.
32 BSO Harlem Renaissance Kit
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Duke Ellington at the Cotton Club
-excerpt from Jazz: A History of America’s Music, by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns.
Duke Ellington and his orchestra opened at the Cotton Club on December 4, 1927, and stayed for
almost four years. “When I began my work,” Ellington recalled, “jazz was a stunt, something different. Not everybody cared for jazz and those who did felt that it wasn’t the real thing unless they
were given a shock sensation of loudness or unpredictability, along with the music.” American
popular music had always exploited the “exotic”- Oriental-sounding dances, songs with Hawaiian
or American-Indian or African-American themes- anything that seemed to add novelty and spice.
Cotton Club audiences now thought they heard in Ellington’s new music, with its array of growls
and moans and cries, its novel voicings and pervasive sensuality, echoes of Africa- which was just
what they had trooped up from Harlem to hear.
Ellington fully understood the absurdity of much that went on at the Cotton Club. “That part was
degrading and humiliating to both Negroes and whites,” he said. “But there was another part of
it that was wonderful.” The Cotton Club was “a classy spot,” he remembered: unruly guests were
politely asked to be quiet and if they failed to take the hint were gently and firmly removed. (At
the Kentucky Club they’d been given Mickey Finns.) He loved all the elegance, enjoyed meeting
celebrities and getting to know the women in the chorus, even came to like playing cards with the
mobsters who ran the place. The club provided him with a priceless training ground, taught him
how to produce on deadline, how to showcase talented people, even how to disguise the limitations of those less talented. “A lot of people worked as hard as hell to put those shows togehter,”
he remembered. “That was the Cotton Club spirit. Work, work, work. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. Get it down fine... We knew we had a standard of performance to match every night. We
knew we couldn’t miss a lick. And we rarely did.” In any case, nothing could demean Duke Ellington because he refused ever to be demeaned.
Even in the jittery old film of him enjoying his success at the Cotton Club, surrounded by dancers wearing some white choreographer ludicrous notion of African costume, he remains somehow
set apart at the piano in his white tails, invincibly dignified, in on the joke that is being played on
everybody else. In 1929, when he appeared in a short called “Black and Tan,” in which two black
comedians performed stereotyped roles-stumbling, shiftless, illiterate, overly fond of alcohol- he
was portrayed precisely as what he already was, a handsome, elegant, hardworking composer.
And, while the “jungle music” tag would remain with him for a time, neither distant Africa nor
the perverse version of it that helped lure hites to Harlem was ever his source of inspiration. For
that, he would always draw upon what he called “the everyday life and customs of the Negro,”
as the titles of the tunes that seemed to pour effortlessly from his pen during his Cotton Club
years attest: “Black Beauty”, “Jubilee Stomp”, “New Orleans Low Down”, “Swampy River”,
“Stevedore Stomp”, “Dicty Glide”, “Parlor Social Stomp”, “Harlem River Quiver”, “Harlem
Flat Blues”, “Memphis Wail”, “Mississippi Moan”, “The Breakfast Dance”, “Rent Party Blues”,
“Saturday Night Function”. Like his mother and father, like his teachers at William Lloyd Garrison High School in segregated Washington, Duke Ellington continued to manifest what he called
“pride... the greatest race pride” no matter what else was going on around him. His goal was to
write “Negro music,” he said, to express “Negro feelings put to rhythm and tune.” “I am not
playing ‘jazz’,” he told one of his first interviewers. “I am trying to play the natural feelings of a
people.” He was, in the admiring parlance of the time, A Race man.
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BSO Harlem Renaissance Kit 33
NY music critic R.D. Darrell, on Ellington’s “Black and Tan Fantasy”:
“With the majority I did not recognize it when it first came to my ears in the form of the ‘hottest,
funniest record you ever heard.’. . . I laughed like everyone else over its intrumental wa-waing and
garbling and gobbling, the piteous whinnying of a very ancient horse, the lugubrious reminiscence
of the Chopin funderal march. But as I continued to play the record for the amusement of my
friends I laughed less heartily and with less zest. In my ears the whinnies and wa-was began to resolve into new tone colors, distorted and tortured, but agonizingly expressive. The piece took on
a surprising individuality and entity as well as an intensity of feeling that was totally incongruous
in popular dance music. Beneath all its oddity and perverseness there was a twisted beauty that
grew on me more and more and could not be shaken off.
A work like this was alien to all my notions of jazz. It had nothing of the sprightly gusto of Gershwin, . . . nothing of the polish of the Whiteman school, nothing of the raoucous exuberance
of the Negro jazz I had known. Nor was it in the heavily worked “spiritual” tradition except in
that it sounded an dqual depth of poignance. For all its fluidity and rhapsodic freedom it was no
imprvisation, tossed off by a group of talented virtuosi who would never be able to play it twice
in the same way. It bore the indelible stamp of one mind, resourcefully inventive, yet primarily occupied not with the projection of effects or syncopated rhythms, but the concern of great musictapping the inner world of feeling and experience . . . seizing the human heart.”
-from Jazz: A History of America’s Music, by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns. © 2000 The Jazz
Project, Inc.
34 BSO Harlem Renaissance Kit
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TEN BASIC ELEMENTS OF JAZZ
From The First Book of Jazz by Langston Hughes
SYNCOPATION This is a shifting of the
normal rhythmic stress from the strong beat
to the weak beat, accenting the offbeat,
and playing one rhythm against another in
such a way that listeners want to move, nod
heads, clap hands, or dance. Syncopation is
basic and continuous in jazz, and upon it are
built very complex rhythms.
IMPROVISATION This is composing as one
plays, or making up variations on old themes
directly on the instrument being played
rather than from written notes. The interest
and beauty of improvisation depends on the
talent and the ability of the individual performer.
PERCUSSION The drums provide jazz with
its basic beat, but the banjo or guitar, the
string bass or tuba, and the piano also provide percussion. Any or all of these instruments may make up the rhythm secton of a
jazz band. Chords may be used as a beat to
create harmonized percussion.
RHYTHM In jazz this is not limited to percussion beats alone. The variations of volume, tone, and pitch may also be used in
such a way as to give to a jazz performance
additional accents of sound-rhythm, played
against a variety of counter-rhythms supplied by the percussion.
BLUE NOTES These are glissando or slurred
notes, somewhere between flat and natural,
derived from the blues as sung, and sliding into intervals between major and minor
Blue notes are impossible to notate exactly,
but when written down on paper they are
frequently indi cated by the flatted third or
seventh notes of the scale.
TONE COLOR Jazz instruments may take
on the varied tones of the singing or speaking voice, even of laughter or of groans, in a
variety of tonal colorations. At one time different instruments may be playing different
melodies.
HARMONY In jazz, harmony makes frequent use of the blue note, the blue scale,
the seventh and ninth chords, and the “close”
harmony of the old barbershop style or
chromatic singing, which is carried over into
instrumentation.
BREAK This is a very brief syncopated interlude, usually of two to four bars, between
musical phrases — often improvised in
unwritten jazz. Armstrong is famous for his
breaks.
RIFF This is a single rhythmic phrase repeated over and over. usuaily as a background to
the Lead rrelody. A riff may be used also as a
melodic theme in itself.
JOY OF PLAYING This is the element that
gives jazz its zest and verve, its happy dancing quality, that brings musicians of all races
together in impromptu jam sessions. Here
new musical ideas are born as the musicians
play together for hours without written music — just for fun.
Music
BSO Harlem Renaissance Kit 35
The Afro-American Symphony
Objectives
Students will:
• Learn about the life and work of Harlem Renaissance
artist William Grant Still
• Analyze the use of the “blues” idiom in a piece of
modern American classical music
• Write a critical review of the “Afro-American
Symphony”
Materials
Recording:
Still, William Grant, “Afro-American Symphony”
(Note: A CD of this work is included in this kit)
Quotes from William Grant Still, on the “Afro-American
Symphony”
Introduction
Have students listen to the first part of the “Afro-American
Symphony.”
Give the students some biographical information on the
composer, William Grant Still.
•
•
•
•
•
•
born 1895 in Mississippi
Award-winning African-American composer
Wrote serious American classical music
Went to school at Wilberforce, Oberlin, and New
England Conservatory
Lived and worked in New York in the twenties
Moved to LA in the 30’s, died in 1978
Accomplishments:
•
•
First African-American composer to have a work performed by a major symphony
First African-American to conduct a major symphony
(LA Phil 1936)
Discuss the historical context of the piece:
What did the music of the times reflect?
Music
BSO Harlem Renaissance Kit 37
•
•
Post World War I, spirit of nationalism
The race issues which dominated the social and political
landscape
The early 20th century saw the birth of three new kinds of
music that all had African-American roots: Ragtime, Blues,
and Jazz. These genres featured mainly black performers, but
were becoming more popular with white listeners; because of
black (nightclubs)“speakeasies”, availability of recordings, and
increased recognition in arts for African-Americans.
Classical music was an imported European tradition which was
just starting to find an American voice. It had a history of being
patronized by the aristocracy, and associations with the upperclass were still prevalent in the 1920’s.
How did Grant Still fit into the American musical scene in the
20’s?
•
•
Development
He was a serious classical composer who sought to write
a uniquely American brand of classical music
He integrated a recognizable modern American musical
idiom (blues) into a classical European form
Tell students about the Afro-American Symphony:
The Afro-American Symphony is a piece in four parts, written
for a full symphony orchestra. It is based on a 12-bar blues tune
that Still composed.
Listen to the tune. (Oboe)
Discussion:
How is this recognizable as a blues tune?
Rhythm, same length (12 bars), melody
Why would Still have wanted to write his own tune?
To avoid associations or messages inherent in other songs
(lyrics)
How does this blues tune sound “classical”?
It’s played by an orchestral instrument called the oboe, and
doesn’t have any lyrics
Discuss the use of traditional classical form in this piece…
• it uses a symphony orchestra
38 BSO Harlem Renaissance Kit
Music
•
•
it has three or more sections that divide the piece
it uses themes/motives as a basis for the structure
…and the way Still modernized the symphony and departed
from tradition:
•
•
•
•
he called the sections “parts” instead of “movements”
he prefaced each section with a poem by Lawrence
Dunbar
he based the entire symphony on a “blues” tune that he
wrote
he arranged some parts in the style of popular music
Read the excerpts from Grant Still’s speech, “A Composer’s
Viewpoint.”
Discussion:
Why did Grant Still integrate the blues into his symphony?
He wanted to change the way people thought about AfricanAmerican music, and make it more accessible to everyone
What are the political/social implications of this piece?
By fusing (what had previously been considered) a “highart” and a “low-art”, Grant Still helped to break down stereotypes about music and art in terms of race and ethnicity
Activity
Have students listen to part of the “Afro-American Symphony”
by William Grant Still, and write a review as if they are a music
critic hearing the premiere of this piece.
Students should:
•
•
•
Activity Extension
Describe the piece: What instruments? How many?
What does it sound like?
Point out any interesting characteristics: new sounds,
familiar tunes, unusual rhythms;
Comment on whether they like the piece, and the reasons why or why not: Is this music they would normally
listen to? Is it enjoyable? Does it evoke any images or
emotions?
Have students attend a classical music concert and write a review of one of the pieces.
Music
BSO Harlem Renaissance Kit 39
Supplementary Materials
The next few pages include materials that may be used with the William Grant Still and the AfroAmerican Symphony lesson plan. Included is a photo of William Grant Still, and quotations from
his written works.
William Grant Still was an American composer and conductor, and the first black to conduct a
professional symphony orchestra in the United States. Though a prolific composer of operas, ballets, symphonies, and other works, he was best known for his Afro-American Symphony (1931).
Still was brought up by his mother and grandmother in Little Rock, Ark., and studied medicine
at Wilberforce University, Ohio, before turning to music. He first studied composition at Oberlin
Conservatory of Music in Oberlin, Ohio, then under the conservative George W. Chadwick at the
New England Conservatory of Music, Boston, and later under Edgard Varèse during the latter’s
most radical avant-garde period. The diversity of Still’s musical education was extended when, in
the 1920s, he worked as an arranger for the dance-band leader Paul Whiteman and for the blues
composer W.C. Handy. In 1939 he married and settled in Los Angeles. Early orchestral works
include Darker America (1924) and From the Black Belt (1926) for chamber orchestra.
Still’s concern with the position of the blacks in U.S. society is reflected in many of his works,
notably the Afro-American Symphony; the ballets Sahdji (1930), set in Africa and composed
after extensive study of African music, and Lenox Avenue (1937); and the operas The Troubled
Island (1938; produced 1949), with a libretto by Langston Hughes, and Highway No. 1, U.S.A.
(produced 1963 and 1977).
Still’s compositions from the mid-1930s show the jazz band as a major influence on his
eclectic musical style. He made considerable use of material in the Negro style—though rarely
borrowing actual melodies—and preferred simple, commercial harmonies and orchestration,
the use of which, however, was characterized by the highest professionalism and seriousness of
purpose.
- adapted from “William Grant Still”, The Encyclopedia Brittanica Online 2006,
http://www.brittanica.com.
William Grant Still (1895-1978)
Composer, conductor, arranger. Born in Little Rock,
AK. The first African-American to conduct a major
symphony orchestra, and also the first AfricanAmerican to have his works performed in concert by
a major symphony orchestra. Died in 1978.
40 BSO Harlem Renaissance Kit
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William Grant Still on the “Afro-American Symphony”:
“I knew I wanted to write a symphony; I knew that it had to be an American work; and I wanted
to demonstrate how the Blues, so often considered a lowly expression, could be elevated to the
highest musical level.”1
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“Long before writing this symphony I had recognized the musical value of the Blues and had
decided to use a theme in the Blues idiom as the basis for a major symphonic composition. When
I was ready to launch this project I did not want to use a theme some folk singer had already created, but decided to create my own theme in the Blues idiom.”2
_______________________________________
“I had chosen a definite goal, namely, to elevate Negro musical idioms to a position of dignity and
effectiveness in the fields of symphonic and operatic music… American music is a composite of all
the idioms of all the people comprising this nation, just as most Afro-Americans who are “officially” classed as Negroes are products of the mingling of several bloods. This makes us individuals,
and that is how we should function, musically and otherwise.”3
W.G. Still, from liner notes for a recording of the “Afro-American Symphony”, made by Karl Krueger and
the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of London, 1965.
1
W.G. Still, from a speech to a Composer’s Workshop, annual convention of National Association of Negro Musicians, Los Angeles, CA, August 17, 1967.
2
W.G. Still, from “A Composer’s Viewpoint”, Black Music in Our Culture. Ohio: Kent State University
Press, 1970.
3
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BSO Harlem Renaissance Kit 41
Additional Resources
*Not included in this kit
The Blues
Anderson, Paul Allen. “Beneath the Seeming Informality,” Deep
River: Music and Memory in Harlem Renaissance Thought,
Duke University Press, Durham/London, 2001, 179-84.
Davis, Angela Y. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, Vintage
Books, NY, 1998.
*Handy, W.C. Father of the Blues: An Autobiography by W.C.
Handy, Da Capo Press, NY, NY, 1941.
Guralnick, Peter, Robert Snatelli, Holly George-Warren,
Christopher John Farley, ed. Martin Scorcese Presents The
Blues: A Musical Journey, Harper Collins/Amistad, NY, NY,
2003.
Tracy, Steven, ed.Write Me a Few of Your Lines: A Blues
Reader, University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, MA, 1999.
W.C. Handy’s Memphis Blues Band, CD, 1994. Memphis, TN:
Memphis Archives.
Heroes of the Blues: The Very Best of Ma Rainey, CD, 2003.
New York, NY: Shout! Factory.
Bessie Smith: The Collection, CD, 1989. New York, NY: CBS
Records.
Clara Smith: Complete Recorded Works, Vol. 3, CD, 1995.
Document Records (USA).
Duke Ellington
at the Cotton Club
Anderson, Paul Allen. “Saving Jazz from Its Friends” in Deep
River: Music and Memory in Harlem Renaissance Thought,
Duke University Press, Durham/London, 2001, 219-256.
Floyd, Samuel A. “The Renaissance Education of Duke
Ellington”, Black Music in the Harlem Renaissance, Greenwood
Press, NY, NY, 1990, 11-128.
Hill, Laban Carrick. Harlem Stomp!: A Cultural History of the
Harlem Renaissance, Little, Brown, and Co., NY, NY, 1993.
Music
BSO Harlem Renaissance Kit 43
Huggins, Nathan Irvin. “Afro-American Art: Art or
Propaganda?”, Voices from the Harlem Renaissance, Oxford
University Pres, NY, NY, 1995.
Locke, Alain, ed. “Negro Youth Speaks: Music”, The New
Negro, Touchstone, NY, NY, 1997, 199-227.
Watson, Steven. The Harlem Renaissance, Pantheon Books, NY,
NY, 1995.
The Best of Ken Burns Jazz, CD, 2000. New York, NY: Sony
Music Entertainment.
Afro-American
Symphony
*Floyd, Samuel A. “William Grant Still, Florence Price, and
William Dawson: Echoes of the Harlem Renaissance”, Black
Music in the Harlem Renaissance, Greenwood Press, NY, NY,
1990, 71-86.
William Grant Still: Afro-American Symphony, CD, 2005.
Canada: Naxos.
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Massachusetts Arts Curriculum Framework
This packet has been designed with the following organizational structure from the Massachusetts
Arts Curriculum Frameworks as a guide.:
CORE CONCEPT:
Learning in, through and about the arts develops understanding of the
creative process and appreciation of the importance of creative work.
Strand I: Creating and Performing
Lifelong learners:
LS 1. Use the arts to express ideas, feelings, and beliefs.
LS 2. Acquire and apply the essential skills of each art form.
Strand II: Thinking and Responding
Lifelong learners:
LS 3. Communicate how they use imaginative and reflective thinking during all
phases of creating and performing.
LS 4. Respond analytically and critically to their own work and that of others.
Strand III: Connecting and Contributing
Lifelong learners:
LS 5. Make the connections between the arts and other disciplines.
LS 6. Investigate the cultural and historical contexts of the arts.
LS 7. Explore the relationship between arts, media and technology.
LS 8. Contribute to the community’s cultural and artistic life.
It was our goal to provide examples that will help you begin exploring the Harlem Renaissance
through an interdisciplinary approach. We hope that you will build upon each of the suggested
ideas and activities as you introduce the Harlem Renaissance to your students.
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BSO Harlem Renaissance Kit 45