The topic I plan to focus on is a discussion of the events and the cultural and chronological location of the Harlem Renaissance. To accomplish this feat in an effective manner I will discuss the events in civil rights and African American Culture that preceded the Harlem Renaissance. These include African American Music, Poetry, Literature, and Political changes. When it comes to African American music, I will mostly focus on Jazz and the Blues as those were integral to the Harlem Renaissance. As far as poetry and literature, I will focus on the influences of the movement and the poets and authors that were 30 or 40 years prior to the movement.
For this project, I will have to do extensive research on the Harlem Renaissance itself with focus on Poets such as Hughes and Cullen for Example. I will also look into Jazz and Blues and the influence it had on the movements poetry in its meter and especially in its subject matter. This is exemplified perfectly in Hughes’ “The Weary Blues.” I will also research the political changes and focus on the lack of civil rights that so plagued the era that these poets were operating in.
To do this project well, I will use Tiki Toki to make a timeline of the history of the Harlem Renaissance, Jazz, Blues, Literature, and Civil Rights. I hope that this combination of subjects on the same timeline will help show visually connections that these individual movements had in common. I also may get together with a couple of musicians I play with and make a Jazz or Blues interpretation of a Harlem Renaissance poem. In other words, I’ll structure the lyrics of a particular poem or poems over a Jazz or Blues melody that I come up with. It will most likely be a melody a la Fats Walker, Duke Ellington, or Bessie Smith. I know a (jazz) Banjo player, tenor saxophonist, a drummer, and I play Bass. In other words, “I have the technology.” So, that should be pretty cool, I hope.
This sounds like an interesting topic for your project. I like the fact that you are incorporating other forms of arts such as Jazz and Blues which can benefit the understanding of the Harlem Renaissance and the poets that wrote during that time. It’s also cool that you actually have hands on experience and knowledge of playing music and knowing Jazz musicians which will make your ideas that much more precise for your project.
You describe two different project here: there’s the musical re-invention of certain jazz / blues themed poems, and then there’s the timeline in which you place certain artistic developments alongside historical developments. Both projects have potential. For Friday, choose a direction and begin some preliminary research as you start to refine the idea a bit.