The Arts at Home and AbroadBy Dovile KlisauskaiteAFAS 200 Topic Discussion Dr. Carter

Recorded Music & Radio• Mamie Smith sparked a

momentous trend in 1920

• Recorded Perry Bradford’s “Crazy Blues”

• First black women to release a blues record for a major company

• Companies judged women’s voices and diction unsuitable

• Sold 75,000 copies in Harlem alone

• Opened many doors

• Black Swan Records was created for the production of a broad range of black musical forms

• Harry Pace didn’t want it to be just a business, but also a vehicle for racial advancement

• Brought capital & middle-class respectability to the black community

• Controversy between popular or cultural pieces

• Sold records at multiple locations to ensure business with African American clientele

• Rival companies & radio put Black Swan out of business after two years in operation

The only “genuine” black business

Jazz Roots & Routes

• “Roaring Twenties” = “Jazz Age”• Middle-class blacks believed it to be a hindrance to racial

progress• Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton

• Composer, pianist, and raconteur• First jazz composer by World War I

• Jazz evolved from regional differences in black music shaped by:• Migration routes of

southern musicians and their blues tradition

• Rise of northern record industry that encouraged jazz bands & blacksingers

Black Theater• African American theater flourished in Harlem• Performed in a range of roles• The Lafayette Players (1915)

• First African American stock company• Included white playwrights• Emerged many respected dramatic actors

• Abbie Mitchell• Laura Bowman• Frank Wilson etc.

• Began to appear beginning in the war years especially with their employment in plays written by white authors

• Popular musical appeared on Broadway• Longest Running being Shuffle Along by Eubie Blake

Visual Arts• African art forms are sources of inspiration to “culturally

awaken” blacks• Emboldened to develop a variety of different styles

• James Van Der Zee (1886-1983)• Conveyed black middle-

class life and Harlem’s leaders and institutions realistically through photographs

• Shaped how the Harlem Renaissance is remembered

• The Great Depression ended his work

Painters• Archibald Motley was

known for his paintings of the city’s black nightlife and for portraits of his family and friends

• “Scientific” study of race• First African American

artists of 1920’s & 1930’s• First black artist to mount

a one-man show in a major New York gallery

• First to win a Guggenheim fellowship