Musical Tradition In The Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance was a period of flowering throughout literature and culture for African Americans in America. These growths can be traced back to the musical traditions, black folklore, and folk cultural ways of the African Americans prior to the Harlem Renaissance. Each of these aspects empowered the African Americans to reach the freedom that they deserved. It was a continuous fight but their cohesiveness strengthened their fight.

Musical Traditions were a strong precursor to the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance. The musical traditions developed during slavery and segregation, laid the foundations for literature and arts developed during the Harlem Renaissance, especially music such as blues and jazz. Thomas Jefferson noted “that

The poem Ballad of the Landlord tells a story while bringing up a social injustice that existed in America. The poem begins by the tenant listing off broken aspects of the house that he had asked the landlord to fix. The landlord ignores these problems and insists that the tenant pay his ten dollar rent. The tenant says he will not pay until the problems are fixed. The landlord then threatens eviction and the tenant threatens to hit the landlord to quiet him. The poem ends with the reading of a headline “MAN THREATENS LANDLORD/ TENANT HELD NO BAIL/ JUDGE GIVES NEGRO 90 DAYS IN COUNTY JAIL” (Volume 1, page 1316, lines 31-33). This poem brings up the social injustices. The landlord, police and judges are all white and the tenant is black, this leads to an unfair and racist ruling of the case. The idea of storytelling or folklore in poems was a way to bring up injustices in the American society. This technique in early African Americans poems was a precursor for the later poetry of the Harlem

Folk culture is a unifying component of everyday life that is enacted by a group. This is referring to the unifying components experienced by African Americans that influenced the poetry of the Renaissance. A strong unifying component for the African Americans was slavery. The hardships, discrimination, and violence the slaves experienced were shared by that in-group. It is impossible for an outgroup member to understand exactly what these slaves experienced. Also, once emancipated the former slaves continued to face inequality. This is expressed in Sojourner Truth’s, Aint I a Woman speech. Truth was an important speaker of both the feminist movement and the abolitionist movement. In her speech she says “Dat man ober dar say dat women needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted ober ditches, and to have de best place every whar. Nobody eber help me into carriages, or ober mud puddles, or gives me any best place, and ar’n’t I a woman?” (Volume 1, page 180). Truth is saying that these luxuries applied to white women only. She is pointing out that even though African Americans are free from slavery, they are not free from oppression from whites. This continued unequal treatment of African Americans is a component that brings them together to fight for equality. Equal treatment continued to be fought for during the Renaissance. Another unifying aspect is the cultural components. These