Teaching About Jazz

[MilesVoodoo]

Greetings all -

I teach freshman composition at the University of New Mexico, and I'm putting together a class for the fall on the "Myths of America" and I'm doing a sequence on the Harlem Renaissance. I want to include some jazz in the class, since it is a kind of a form cultural rebellion and was such a huge influence on writers like Ralph Ellison and Langston Hughes - I can hear Bird and Dizzy every time I read "Montage for a Dream Deferred."

I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions as to which particular cuts by any artists of that era might best illustrate the way that jazz was recting to and being shaped by the volatile political and social situations in Harlem in the 1940's. I figure none of my students will really be experts on jazz (if they've ever listened to it at all), so I don't want to get too wild on them, but I want to bring the hot stuff - maybe give 'em some culture instead of all that darned hip-hop.

Thanks -

[Freek]

That's a difficult one...

The only jazz musician I know who got directly influenced in his playing by the volatile 40's is Bud Powell. I read somewhere that his somewhat crazy, unpredictable character (and musicianship) was caused by a severe beating the police gave him in a racial conflict in the 40's, which caused slight brain damage or something... Don't know if it happened in Harlem though.

I don't think this information is quite what you are looking for...
Oh well, whatever...

Good luck keeping the kids away from that darned hiphop!

Later,
Freek.

[Katzman]

Black and tan fantasy by Duke Ellington 1929. Available on DVD 'Duke Ellington in Holliwood' by Swing Era. Jazz sofistication as a means to elevate ones self from the depravity of Harlem yet one that conciously laments the poverty that afro-Americans suffered. Although a major figure in the Harlem Rennaisance, culminating in his band achiving residancy in the famous Cotton Club, Duke has come to represent an elegant side to jazz that although prefigures cultural aspects of the cival rights movement is not the architype modle of your 'avarage' Haralem jazz at that time. Yet if the Harlem Renaissance represents a growing sophistication on the part of afro-Americans Duke Ellington is seminal.

[Katzman]

sorry, a bit more. The Harlem Renaisance was in the 1920's not in the 1940's and is defined by artists and writers such as William H Johnson, Palmer Hyden, Langeston Hughes and musician Chick Web...Another great big band leader, who as a sickly and stunted (he had a curved spine) drummer defines the will to excell against odds. Along with Duke Ellington his band set the standard of excellance to which other bands aspiered, indicative of the cultural refinement that defines "the new negro movement" (as it was origionally known) and would later inspire the term 'Renaissance' to be used.

The english artist Edward Burra depicted Harlem night club scenes in the late twenties when he visited New York, and they remain some the best visual records of the era. The fact that such a cultural movement attracted a British artist is reflective of the element of cosmopolitan draw that this movement generated, a sign of the sophistication, bohemeian though it was, that the Harlem Renaissance stood for.

[MilesVoodoo]

Oops...1940's was a typo on my part. I think I had Ralph Ellison on the brain (he did most of his writings on jazz in the 1940's).

Thanks for the input. I'll certainly check those avenues out.

[Katzman]

Your welcome:)