This Is My Voice From Harlem to Hip Hop

1. This Is My VoiceFrom Harlem to Hip Hop

2. What Is It? • The Harlem Renaissance was a flowering of African American social thought which was expressed through: • Literature • Visual Art • Music • Dance • Theater

3. The Harlem Renaissance also known as The New Negro Movement began around 1918 and lasted to about 1933, although short lived it changed the face of black America forever. It was part of a nationwide urban revolution sparked by World War I (1914-18) and precipitated by the Great Migration, when huge numbers of African Americans migrated to the industrial North from the economically depressed and agrarian South bringing the debate over racial identity and the future of black America to the forefront of the national consciousness.

4. It was a time when African Americans were encouraged to celebrate their heritage and to become “The New Negro," a term coined in 1925 by sociologist and critic Alain LeRoy Locke in his influential book of the same name. The term “New Negro” captures the quest for self-identity and self-visualization that characterizes the period. The Harlem Renaissance featured some of the biggest names in writing, literature, music, visual and performing arts fields.

5. Writers such as W.E.B. DuBois, Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen, James Weldon Johnson and Langston Hughes established themselves as exceptional writers of this period. Artists including Jacob Lawrence, Aaron Douglas, Lois Mailou Jones, James Van Der Zee, Augusta Savage, Laura Wheeler Waring, Edward Harleston and Romare Bearden: and musicians and composers, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington Cab Calloway, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, James Flecther Henderson, Charles Parker, Lester Young, and Bessie Smith became widely known as members of the Harlem Renaissance. Philosopher and critic Alain Locke, and leaders such as A. Phillip Randolph and Jamaican born Marcus Moziah Garvey were all major contributors to this movement.

6. The Harlem Renaissance—like many cultural enterprises—began to wane after a devastating stock market crash in late October 1929, as did hopes for black equality. The decade-long economic depression that followed—the so-called Great Depression —hit black Americans especially hard. Jim Crow segregation and tolerated racial violence against blacks also continued well into the 1950s. It was not until the modern civil rights era of the late 1950s and early 1960s that African Americans finally secured legal equality and began to make significant social and economic gains. As mainstream sponsors and audiences found their disposable income drastically reduced following the stock market crash, interest in and support for African American artists disappeared. Harlem Renaissance writers continued to produce works into the mid-1930s, however, and Hughes and Hurston were still prolific in the 1940s. Nevertheless, the Harlem Renaissance effectively ended with the Great Depression.

7. Where was the Harlem Renaissance? Centered in the Harlem district which is the part of Manhattan Island north of Central Park and generally east of Eighth Avenue or St. Nicholas Avenue in New York City.

8. Jazz and the Harlem Renaissance The musicians of the Harlem Renaissance were very talented and competitive and were considered to have laid the foundation for future musicians of their genre. The incorporation of influences from the Harlem Renaissance into American music created a new perception both of what is black and what is American. Jazz was an important art form during the Harlem Renaissance, and was prominent in popular dances from the twenties like the Lindy Hop and musicals like Shuffle Along. Some of the greatest names in jazz found that living in a large northern city such as New York had numerous advantages.

9. How did it impact history? Historians and literary figures disagree on the extent of the Harlem Renaissance's impact on race relations in America. While mainstream society became exposed to roughly two dozen nationally recognized artists who produced hundreds of published works, and nearly everything associated with jazz became a cultural craze, many came to consider those successes as merely part of a superficial Negro Vogue that did little to mend the racial divide. However, the Harlem Renaissance helped to redefine how Americans and the world understood African American culture. It integrated black and white cultures, and marked the beginning of a black urban society. The Harlem Renaissance did set the stage for the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s.

10. Hip Hop Culture and the Harlem Renaissance The Harlem Renaissance is the source of the black culture that we see today and like the Harlem Renaissance, hip hop culture, was a youth culture movement. Like the Harlem Renaissance, Hip Hop was a form of musical expression and artistic culture that originated in African American Communities in the late 1970s in New York in the Inner cities. The spiritual energies of the Harlem Renaissance must be recognized as the inspirational force driving the cultural production. Hip hop culture shares the same spiritual sources derived from black church tradition. The strong tradition of creative black preaching and quality music are sources for rap music. The rapper integrates the two elements of the black church in rap music: preaching and music. The rapper preaches by creatively rhyming over music with deep bass tones. There is spirituality at work in hip hop culture through rapper as preacher.

11. Jazz and Hip Hop Both jazz and hip-hop are music genres that were started and made popular by African Americans. Jazz music centers on the use of improvisation. On the other hand, hip-hop focuses more on poetry, and the use of rhyme in their lyrics. Although jazz music appeared earlier in history, with records noting its first appearance in the nineteenth century, it is hip-hop that has transcended into more than just a popular music genre enjoyed all over the world. Today it is considered to be a cultural movement that centers on MCing, DJing, break dancing, graffiti writing, fashion, language and knowledge. Both hip-hop and jazz use improvisation, but in the case of jazz, improvisation is considered to be the primary core of the entire music piece. Hip-hop, will often only use improvisation in freestyle hip-hop. Hip-hop music artists tend to focus more on poetry and rhyme. The division in history of jazz into different sub-styles can be compared to how hip hop’s different forms are divided according to periods but also geographically.

12. Rap and Hip Hop There is little consensus when trying to define or compare rap and hip hop. It is generally agreed upon that rap describes a type of music while hip-hop refers to a cultural phenomenon that includes graffiti, breakdancing, and fashion in addition to music -- or as rapper social theorist. First developed in New York City in the 1970s, the hip hop subculture grew first among the African American and Latino American community. There are three main differences between rap and hip-hop: musical features, culture and community message. These features are critical to separating these two very similar types of music from other popular music. The impact of rap and hip hop on modern culture has exceeded all expectations and continues to influence everything from commercials to politics.

13. Rap Rap is a combination of rhyming and poetry to a musical beat. The subject of the rap can range from local events to relationships. In the early 1970s and 1980s, rappers provided social commentary on issues that were not receiving regular media attention. In later years, popular rap became more focused on consumer commercialism and relationship issues. The rap music is focused on poetry and quality of lyrics. Rap music has a strong background in improvisational poetry. The artists or rappers are expected to create poetry that discusses the main issues of the community, politics, or media events. The artists are predominately men. Rap groups are also fairly rare, with most rappers being solo artists. Rap is a tool used to express current events and to tell the stories of people within the local community.

14. Hip Hop Hip hop music includes rhythm and blues and beat boxing. Rhythm and blues or R&B music is a combination of soul and pop music. Singers combine their lyrics to fast-paced music that is often used as the background to complex dance routines. This type of music lead the cross over into popular music with soulful singing and lyrics focused on common relationship issues. Hip Hop artists are a mixture of men and women and they do perform as groups. Hip hop music is used to express hope for the future and to remember the successes of the past. Hip hop has had a strong influence on 21st-century pop music, with many pop songs including elements of hip hop.

15. Langston Hughes • Hughes is known for his insightful, colorful, realistic portrayals of black life in America. • He wrote poetry, short stories, novels, and plays, and is known for his involvement with the world of jazz and the influence it had on his writing. • His life and work were enormously important in shaping the artistic contributions of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. • He wanted to tell the stories of his people in ways that reflected their actual culture, including both their suffering and their love of music, laughter, and language itself.

16. Tupac Shakur • He was an actor, musician and poet. • He became a hip hop and rap legend. • He became one of the best-selling music artists in the world by selling over 75 million albums worldwide as of 2007. • Most of his songs send out a social message. He was greatly concerned with the social problems faced by the Afro-American community such as violence and hardship in inner cities, racism, conflicts with other rappers, social injustice, and poverty and police brutality. • He was ranked sixth on the list of ’100 immortal artists of all time’.

17. “A Dream Deferred” by Langston Hughes 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? "A Rose that Grew from Concrete" by Tupac Shakur Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete? Proving nature's law is wrong it learned to walk with out having feet. Funny it seems, but by keeping it's dreams, it learned to breathe fresh air. Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else ever cared.

18. Romare Bearden • Considered a "descendent" of the Harlem Renaissance, since the majority of his works were created a couple of decades after the movement had ended. • His works are a synthesis of his past and include themes of literature and jazz. • His use of bright color and broken patterns, fragmentation, and reorganization evoke the beat and syncopation of jazz and the speed and rhythm of the city. • He made collage a medium for celebrating his African-American heritage and culture. • He combined images of Harlem life with images of the American South.

19. Jean-Michel Basquiat • He was self-taught artist, who began drawing at an early age. • He first attracted attention for his graffiti in NYC in the late 1970s • In the 1980s his work and style received critical acclaim for the fusion of words, symbols, stick figures, and animals. • He collaborated with Andy Warhol. • When he died, at 27, of a heroin overdose, he left a legacy of over 1000 paintings and 3000 drawings. • He saw the nobility and tradition of black life and culture as absent and venerated it in his art. • His major theme is an unending questioning of America’s racial politics and social hypocrisies.

20. Romare Bearden, Poseidon, The Sea God-Enemy of Odysseus Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (Julius Caesar on Gold

21. Arts Integration Arts integration aims to make meaningful arts connections that add depth to learning. Developing standards-based learning goals in each discipline helps ensure that each subject is taught with equal integrity. Focusing on a particular topic or theme can result in meaningful connections between subject areas. Effective arts integration instruction often begins with a topic that lends itself to study from several points of view. Teachers guide students as they explore the topic and its related themes, helping students to establish relationships among different ideas. Collaboration is often a key element in arts integration. The collaborative approach to planning and the endless opportunities for making connections among disciplines lead to a variety of instructional choices for arts integration implementation.

22. Key Elements For Developing A Successful Arts Integration Lesson/Unit • Establish clear instructional goals • Record your observations and reflections after teaching daily lessons and at the end of the unit • Support and enhance sequential learning • Assess outcomes for all integrated instructional areas • Communicate plans to students - Students will benefit most from arts integration when they understand the goals and strategies of the unit • Be flexible • Choose an organizing theme or question - Identify a topic that lends itself to study from several points of view and choose one or more themes or essential questions • Emphasize process over product • Align instruction with standards and benchmarks • Engage educators school-wide in arts integration goals