Dewey "Pigmeat" Markham at the Love Making Bureau

Do i really have to explain why this is great?
Dewey "Pigmeat" Markham was primarily in music and dance during the 1920's and 30's, but during the 1940's, he moved into film. Despite the fact that this came after the period known as the Harlem Renaissance- spanning the 20's and 30's, I saw this video and knew i had to analyze it.
First of all, "Love Making Bureau" was recorded in 1949. The very premise of a love making bureau would have been considered profane and inappropriate. Second, the woman in the skit, who looks white at first, is actually Vivian Harris, a mixed race actress. This was over a decade before the civil rights movement; her parents probably put themselves in serious danger by courting. Also, despite her actual racial identity, she looks and sounds like a really, really white woman, going to two black guys for advice on how to have sex correctly. Towards the end, she even starts stripping. This was the kind of thing that people were brutally murdered over in the south.
Although this skit is from 1949, it continues the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance by wildly overstepping social norms through art. Also, it's funny.
I chose this piece because of it's humor, its obvious significance, and primarily, the fact that it's theater, as opposed to music, dance, or visual art. I wasn't aware that there was popular theater included in the Harlem Renaissance.

Pretty much all of Sargent Johnson's Art is dope.

The work of Sargent Claude Johnson, a nationally renowned black artist, is very inspiring to me because of the fact that he worked exclusively in tangible mediums like sculpture and carving. Tangible art appeals to me a lot more than two dimensional art because it feels realer, and Johnson's art captures that feeling very well. His pieces focused on the natural beauty of black people, and he conveyed that feeling through a very ancient sort of style that gives off a very African vibe. He simultaneously reconnected with his roots and expressed the beauty of his people.
Look at the first piece up there. Its so full of texture you want to reach out and touch it, the features of the face and the hair are clearly black, and it almost looks like something we would wear in Mama's Afro-Haitian class. During his career (1926-65), inherently black art like Johnson's was not well respected, and even a lot of the artistic pioneers of the Harlem Renaissance just worked African-American themes into preexisting American art styles. I respect Johnson and his work because he took it one step further and reinvented an old, more ancient, tribal art style to send his messages. Sargent Claude Johnson's work is representative of the HR theme of revival.

'Aspirations', by Aaron Douglas

Aaron Douglas was an awesome artist. He painted scenes filled with Black Americans, and in every one made them look powerful and statuesque. 

"At a time when it was unpopular to dignify the black image in white America, Douglas refused to compromise and see blacks as anything less than a proud and majestic people." -David C. Driskell, Hidden Heritage: the Roots of Black American Painting
Douglas' style is very distinct and stand out to me as directly representing the spirit of the Harlem Renaissance and the concept of the "New Negro": that Black Americans will not bow and scrape to anyone, that they have every reason to be proud and no reason to make anyone approve. Take a good look at how he frames the figures above. His choice to silhoutte them and not actually show their features, a universal stylistic choice in his art, along with their placing and posing, makes them look like gods. He represents Black Americans as proud and strong.
This specific piece, Aspirations, shows African Americans rising up out of slavery and into modern, industrialized society. The chained hands at the bottom are the roots of Africans in this country, and I think that Douglas intentionally place them at the base of the scene to symbolize the fact that America was built on the backs of slaves, raised up by their chained hands. The figures on the platform above the slaves are, in Driskell's words, majestic. Their poses are subtly dramatic. Also, they are wearing suits, symbolizing the new negro as contributing member of society, moving up in the world. The male figure in the middle looks off into the background and points, with calm determination, at the form of an industrial city perched on a mountaintop, as if to say " That's where we're going." The placement of the city on the mountaintop is of key importance, as it frames the city as a high goal to be reached.

78rpm pressing: Jubilee Stomp - The Washingtonians (Duke), 1928 - Romeo 612

"Jubilee Stomp" was one of the early hits of a band, formed in Harlem, called the Washingtonians- a band that included Duke Ellington. While Ellington's career took off during the Harlem Renaissance at clubs like the Hollywood Club and the Kentucky Club, he continued making extremely important contributions to jazz and swing into the late 70's. That's why I chose this song: it represents the historical importance of the Harlem Renaissance, as a revival and beginning, out of which many great American cultural traditions were formed. The musical and artistic styles created and reinvented during the period produced lasting legacies that echoed down through the entire century. Jazz is still a widely practiced musical style today, and more recent forms of music like rap and rock owe their conception to movements like the jazz and swing clubs of the Harlem Renaissance, movements that planted the seeds that modern music grew out of.

 Personally, I enjoy listening to this song because it is very upbeat, but at the same time very mellow and relaxing. In addition to it's overall chillness, it sounds like the soundtrack to a night out in 1920's Harlem, or something that might be playing at a packed party, with people dressed extremely drinking fruity cocktails and stuff. I also really like the last few bars, and the way the piece wraps up.

Langston Hughes' "Dream Deferred"

DREAM DEFERRED


What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
Like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

Langston Hughes




Meaning 
Langston Hughes' poem Dream Deferred is a question to African Americans whose dreams and ambitions have pushed away as they have been socially marginalized. Hughes asks the reader if they will allow their dreams to fade away "dry up like a raisin in the sun", or "crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet?" by which he means be hidden and replaced with subservience and faked contentment. The line "sags like a heavy load" speaks of depression and stagnation, of the denied dreams weighing heavy on the mind and dragging the dreamer down.
The poem is very dark until the final line. Hughes has hidden a suggestion in the form of a question. By asking "Or does it explode" he performs inception, urging the marginalized minority to not let their dreams be destroyed by their disadvantages, and instead do something about it.
The message of Dream Deferred is contained in the intense imagery Hughes chose to include. Everything he says in the poem is kind of nasty. It makes it impossible to visualize the fate of the deferred dream as anything but negative and undesirable.
I chose Hughes' poem because to me it is iconic of the Harlem Renaissance period and the literary tone of it. Langston Hughes was one of the most famous of the writers of the time, and when I think of Harlem I think of his works. I personally dislike this specific poem because the imagery is gross to me, and it took me forever to figure out the message of it. I just felt i had to include it for the iconic value.