Category: Bessie Smith
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The Happy Heaven of Harlem
Many artists moved to Harlem, where they were free to cultivate the inner life. Langston Hughes, the most famous poet of the Harlem Renaissance, reading his poem “I, Too”: The Harlem Renaissance was the artistic flowering of the Great Migration. As Duke Ellington wrote in “Drop Me Off in Harlem”: I don’t want your Dixie,You…
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Girls in Cars
Aside from the cheerful candy-colored queer eroticism of Janelle Monae’s video for “Pynk,” one of the things that strikes me is the way Monae flips the trope of women in a car into a narrative of black female pride and empowerment. Women in cars are, of course, a well-worn visual feature of many rap music…
From Spirituals to Hip Hop MUS 113 SUNY Broome 