The Harlem Renaissance was “the flowering of African American literature, art, and drama during the 1920s and 1930s. Though centered in Harlem, New York City, USA, the movement impacted urban centers throughout the United States.”
I’d like to discuss the problems of reading approaches to the art of the Harlem Renaissance. If we view the art of the Harlem Renaissance within the larger framework of “mainstream America”, the Harlem Renaissance would reinforce rather than challenge racial stereotypes and appear to be the depiction of a culture in disarray. “Me & My Chauffeur Blues” throws up the stereotype of the sexually avaricious male “Yes he drives so easy, I can’t turn him down” and also hints at a violent streak “I’m gonna steal a pistol, shoot my chauffeur down”. “Morning After” alludes to alcoholism and bad bootleg alcohol. In this we see that rather than lifting the community, it could simply naturalize the community to certain traits and create a culture of resignation rather than a push for change.
If we adopt an alternate reading approach, reading the work of the Harlem Renaissance by closing an eye to “mainstream America”, we can see “Black literature” by legitimizing a language of difference, opens up a space where artists are free to reconstruct Black identity free from the interventions of political and economic structures. In “Me & My Chauffeur Blues”, we see hints of autonomy, initiative. “Well I must buy him”, “I don’t want him” – which points to a kind of triumph in spirit. But a reading approach that ignores that Black identity in the 1920s-30s was constructed by political and economic structures is a naïve reading. By claiming that the work of the Harlem Renaissance exist as separate categories on its own is to cause it to become an excluded and pigeonholed category of its own. This would reinforce binaries of “black” versus “white”, “us” versus “others”.
Wikipedia’s characterization of the Harlem Renaissance brings out the contradictory impulses of African Americans in the 1920-30s:
Characterizing the Harlem Renaissance was an overt racial pride that came to be represented in the idea of the New Negro who through intellect, the production of literature, art, and music could challenge the pervading racism and stereotypes of that era to promote progressive or socialist politics, and racial and social integration.
On one hand, there is an “overt racial pride” and the desire to assert one as a “New Negro” – this awareness and recognition of one’s own diversity is a reflection of the resistance to dominant discourses dictating what defines an American. Yet on another hand, there is the desire for “integration” and assimilation – a word that implies the desire for erasure of differences. The tension within the word “Harlem Renaissance” reflects the dilemma of the African American.
The diversity of African American culture and the art of the Harlem Renaissance makes a single unifying term “Harlem Renaissance” misleading:
There would be no set style or uniting form singularly characterizing art coming out of the Harlem Renaissance. Rather, there would be a mix of celebrating a wide variety of cultural elements, including a Pan-Africanist perspective, "high-culture" and the "low-culture or low-life," from the traditional form of music to the blues and jazz, traditional and new experimental forms in literature like modernism, and in poetry, for example, the new form of jazz poetry. This duality would eventually result in a number of African American artists of the Harlem Renaissance coming into conflict with conservatives in the black intelligentsia who would take issue with certain depictions of black life in whatever medium of the arts.
Even within styles, there are variants. Steven C. Tracy says that it is important to note that blues is a diverse form and varies based on location, thus “one must consider the type of blues Hughes encountered in the various environments in which he lived, keeping in mind that none of the blues environments had absolutely and exclusively one style”. According to Norton, Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, and raised in Missouri, Kansas, Illinois and Ohio. He attended Columbia University then traveled extensively in South America and Europe before moving to Washington. The blues styles in his pieces vary.
The “intellectual” quality of much of the art of the Harlem Renaissance is not about intellect in the conservative form of the word, i.e., erudition or analytical rigor. Rather, the intellect is an emotional intellect that is closely intertwined with the realm of desire, the body, memory and the visceral. Because this intellect is an “emotional intellect”, it has a greater outreach to the majority within the community and does not exclude non-intellectuals. In this way we see how art, by making itself accessible, ensures its ability to reconstruct identity.
In “Morning After”, we see a blues form that is more characteristic of the “classic” blues style – highly arranged, stage-influenced, and almost vaudeville-like. The blues form is accessible. The repetitiveness and easy sound of the words reflect Hughes desire to reach out to the lowest common denominator. According to literary critic, Steven C. Tracy, his use of the blues form was also a means of celebrating what he considered one of “the two great Negro gifts to American music”, the other which was spirituals, an earlier precedent of the blues.
“Ironic humor mixed with tears” is how Hughes characterizes the blues. “Morning After” provokes laughter without overshadowing the bleakness of the piece. Yet to laugh at the ugliness in life – in this case, as symbolized by the grotesque open mouth of the sleeper – is cathartic. It also indicates a kind of strength in the ability to look beyond immediate circumstance. The admonition not to “snore so loud” is seems a response to the strain of self-victimization and melodrama that is sometimes present in minority representations in literature.
Sources: Wikipedia, "To the Tune of Those Weary Blues: The Influence of the Blues Tradition in Langston Hughes's Blues Poems", Tracy, Steven C., MELUS, Vol. 8, No. 3, Ethnic Literature and Cultural Consciousness. (Autumn, 1981), pp. 73-98.
No comments:
Post a Comment