Harlem Renaissance

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c. 1918 – 1937 · Americas · literature, music, painting · origin: Harlem, New York

The 'New Negro' speaking for himself: blues, jazz and African roots as high art

How to recognise it

• Poems in blues and jazz rhythm
• Southern Black vernacular in prose
• Silhouetted figures in concentric rings of light
• African masks beside skyscrapers

Why it emerged

The Great Migration brought hundreds of thousands of Black Southerners north, making Harlem the largest Black community in the world. Returning WWI veterans, NAACP magazines and white patrons gave a new generation a voice and a stage.

Examples

The New Negro1925 · Alain Locke (editor)The movement's manifesto anthology, gathering Hughes, Cullen, Hurston and Toomer in one volumeThe Weary Blues1926 · Langston HughesHughes's debut collection brought the form and beat of the blues into American poetryAspects of Negro Life1934 · Aaron DouglasMurals tracing Africa, slavery and jazz-age Harlem in silhouettes and rings of lightTheir Eyes Were Watching God1937 · Zora Neale HurstonA Black woman's quest for selfhood in Florida dialect, written in seven weeks in HaitiBlack and Tan Fantasy1927 · Duke Ellington, Bubber MileyGrowling muted trumpet and a Chopin funeral-march coda: an early Ellington orchestra landmark

More in this style

• 1923 Cane — Jean Toomer

Meanwhile elsewhere

• Peredvizhniki (The Wanderers) Eastern Europe & Russia
• Expressionism Europe
• Cubism Europe
• Russian avant-garde Eastern Europe & Russia
• Modern architecture (International Style) Whole world
• Constructivism Eastern Europe & Russia
• Art Deco Europe
• Mexican muralism Americas
• Surrealism Europe
• Socialist realism Eastern Europe & Russia

Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English)

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