Outline for Music in Racial Terms

How It Feels to be Colored Me, Zora Neal Hurston

• Does not solely focus on music, but highlights the racial divide between
blacks and whites
• In a jazz club with white friend, commentates that even when she’s the
majority, the small minority (her white friend) makes her feel like she stands
out, brings out her color
• She notices the emotion and soul in the music, he does not
o He only says, “Good music here.”
Jazz at Home, by J. A. Rogers
• Writes that “Jazz is one part American and three parts Negro”
• Says that jazz is a paradox, because it’s too fundamentally human, at least as
modern humanity goes, to be typically racial
• “True spirit of jazz is a joyous revolt from convention, custom, authority,
boredom, even sorrow-from everything that would confine the soul of man
and hinder its riding free on the air.”, Jazz is in response to blues, it’s the
Negro’s attempt to cast off the blues and be happy
• Says that jazz has always existed, in the Highland fling, the Irish jig, the
Cossack Dance, the Spanish Fandango, etc, it is a release of all the suppressed
emotions at once, a blowing off of the lid, musical fireworks
• Ragtime and jazz: Barbaric rhythm and exuberance there is something of the
bamboula, a wild and abandoned dance of the west African and Haytian
Negro
• Something elusive about jazz that white artists can’t capture: negro rhythm.
The average negro puts rhythm into whatever he does
The Harlem Renaissance Reader
• Talks about the Cotton club
• Discusses the fascination with Harlem in the 20s, how the African American,
in light of declining religion and a psychological and intellectual need for the
moment, was almost deified as a noble savage: the natural man exuding
animal vitality. Represented pagan spirituality, and the 1920s loosening of
behavior. Most importantly for my topic, was a symbol of the jazz age. The
African American was now more of a concept than a human, an exotic icon if
you will. However, did little to raise financial fortunes or dissuade Jim crow
laws.
Song, Gwendolyn Bennet
• Relies heavily on African American origins of jazz and blues
• This poem features in particular the roots of jazz music, referencing hymns,
banjos, bugles, work songs, and even goes as far as to directly mention jazz.
This poem features many of the same literary techniques seen in The Weary
Blues, such as alliteration and imagery, but also makes use of dialect in part
of the poem.
Watson, Steven. The Harlem Renaissance: Hub of African-American Culture, 1920-
1930. New York: Pantheon, 1995. Print.
Locke, Alain. The New Negro. New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, 1997. Print.