Chase Brock
Mr. Bastin
English 2 Honors
8 March 2017
The Contribution of Bessie Smith’s Music to the Harlem Renaissance
Songs impact many people and can be used to capture a specific moment or feeling in time. The song “Billionaire” by Travie McCoy and Bruno Mars talks about having it all and how they want wealth so badly. This song captures what a lot of people today believe about being rich and why they want it so bad. Songs about wealth is not anything new. The song “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” by Bessie Smith, was almost an anthem for people of the time because it captured their life perfectly. It talks about having wealth and living care free but then losing it. When this song came out, the Harlem Renaissance was occurring.
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“Nobody Knows When You're Down and Out” talks about relationships in the song. She explains how most people only like you for what you have but when you lose that, then you lose your so called friends.
“Traditionally, most blacks lived” in the South, but in the twenties, lot of African Americans “moved to the cities in the North.”(Blacks Set Out). They were in search for a better life and more opportunity. A lot of them got good jobs as factory workers or even business men. In fact, “On the eve of World War II, Ford employed more than 10,000 black workers,” which was “a far larger number and a far greater representation than at any other firm in the automobile industry”, since many other companies jus gave them the “menial positions”. (Employment segregation ). Reports have proved that “African American small businessmen enjoyed a measure of success in the 1920s economy” (Consumerism). A lot of African Americans became very wealthy, including Bessie Smith. When this song had come out, it was just a few weeks before the Great Depression hit.The Great Depression hit after the the stock market fell dramatically on October 1929, “which sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out millions of investors” and caused unemployment to skyrocket because of “failing companies” firing workers that they could not afford to keep ( The Great Depression). Once that hit, it made the song even more relatable because everyone had
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The lyrics describe how careless everyone was. This song came out during the Prohibition era. Prohibition was the time when “the manufacture, transportation, import, export, and sale or alcoholic beverages were restricted or illegal” (Prohibition in the United States). This meant that alcohol was not too easy to come by and it was also expensive. Buying bootleg liquor was very expensive which “meant that nation’s working class and poor were far more restricted during Prohibition” than the wealthier people in the middle or upper class Americans (Prohibition). Smith sings the words “Buying bootleg liquor, champagne and wine”. This means two things: that the wealthy people were living very recklessly since that would have been illegal, and that they were not wise with their money. They just wanted a good time. The lyrics “ once I lived the life of a millionaire, spending my money, I didn't care,” directly contribute to the statement that they were careless (Bessie Smith). The people's carelessness made a contribution to why a lot of them began to lose their wealth. The words, “then I began to fall so low,” states that people were starting to lose what they
There were many notable events taking place in the years 1900-1940, some being Pablo Picasso painting one of the first cubist paintings is 1907 , the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 , the 18th Amendment being added to the Constitution (prohibiting the use of intoxicating liquors) and then being repealed in 1933 , the 19th Amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote in 1920 , Amelia Earhart becoming the first woman to fly across the Atlantic in 1928 , and the list continues. Undoubtedly one of the most influential of events during this time was the Harlem Renaissance. Even with its many leaders and innovators, it wouldn’t have been nearly as effective had it not been for Alain LeRoy Locke: black writer, philosopher, and teacher who influenced black artists to look to African sources for pride and inspiration. Without Locke’s contribution, the Renaissance would not have flourished as much as it did, and black pride would have taken longer to develop and accept.
Glenn Frey, the co-founder of the Eagles, was a middle class kid living in the midwest. He dreamed of acquiring tremendous wealth in Los Angeles, but later realized that there are more important things than money. In their song, Hotel California, originally titled Mexican Reggae, they (The Eagles) express this idea to their audience through lyrics that convey the idea that there are more important things than just possessions, and there are negatives to the “American Dream. The audience in this could be the average person, yet, the rhetorical devices in The Eagles’ “Hotel California” are intended to reveal to the audience that there are negatives to the American Dream, and you shouldn’t change who you are in order to make it rich.
He mentions the fight in the House of Representatives that broke out, in relation with the civil rights bill. He also about the equality between black and white people in the 1960’s. At this point this is being read the words “all is calm, all is bright” this completely contrast from the subject about racism but the song is representing a sense of tranquillity as if everything is okay when it is not.
The song says that his mother and father work fourteen hour days, and they don’t make very much money. And in this time in the 50’s and 60’s black people may have
The beginning of this song is an essentially a summary of what his life was like growing up in Texas. It almost seems like he tries to hit every stereotype possible such as “The old man was covered with tattoos and scars/ He got some in prisons and others in bars” suggesting that his father was a mean drunk and also ex-convict. The next stereotype is “They looked liked tombstones in our yard” suggesting the old, rusting cars in the their yard that Dad would fix up and the stereotype of white trash people leaving crap in there yard is in play here. In all of these stereotypes he does suggest that his Dad worked hard “to make ends meet.”
The blues emerged as a distinct African-American musical form in the early twentieth century. It typically employed a twelve-bar framework and three-lined stanzas; its roots are based in early African-American songs, such as field hollers and work songs, and generally have a melancholy mood. The blues can be divided into many sub-genres, including Classical, Country, and Urban. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the careers of two of Classical blues most influential and legendary singers: Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith.
Harlem Renaissance 2015, Wikipedia, accessed 23 August 2015, . Harlem Renaissance n.d., History, accessed 23 August 2015, . Harlem Renaissance n.d., Encyclopedia Britannica, accessed 23 August 2015, . Great Migration 2015, Wikipedia, accessed 23 August 2015, . Claude McKay 2015, Wikipedia, accessed 24 August 2015, .
The Harlem Renaissance, originally called the New Negro Movement, was a movement that shook the 1920’s in the United States of America. The Harlem Renaissance spanned between the years of 1918 all the way to the mid 1930’s. This movement was a movement of the arts. It has been said that this time period was a rebirth to the African American arts. The Harlem Renaissance is an extremely important piece of history for America.
It is said that Bessie Smith is the “Empress of the Blues.” She was a superior entertainer, with talent in singing and dancing. Bessie had such a beautiful, soulful voice and she collaborated with many great jazz performers. Bessie didn’t just stand for music, she stood for women. By the end of the 1920’s, she was the highest paid black woman of her day, earning the title “Empress of the Blues.”
The Harlem Renaissance was a time of happiness, music, and migration. Everyone was enjoying this time. This was a time when blacks from the south started migrating north for better opportunities. In the twentieth century, blacks started to move to the North as the train provided easy access to Chicago and other Northern Cities (Wormser). For African Americans in this time period there was not much to do in the south to make a reasonable living without being mistreated by whites and they felt that the North had much more to offer them. Jim Crow in the South was quite prevalent and African Americans knew that they weren’t wanted and those who could afford it decided to leave. In the city of Chicago there was a paper called the Chicago Defender that inspired blacks to come to Chicago. The North was and had always been a way out to African Americans since the time of slavery for a chance at freedom. Among those who migrated were the most creative people in the South. Jazz Musicians came from New Orleans to play in Chicago, Kansas City, and New York (Wormser).
Aberjhani once stated "The best of humanity’s recorded history is a creative balance between horrors endured and victories achieved, and so it was during the Harlem Renaissance. Although the Harlem Renaissance underlines the trouble of ethnic issue knowledgeable by African Americans all through the twentieth century. There were numerous critical impacts, for instance, artistic the growth. The Harlem Renaissance was an energetic affiliation amongst the 1920s where African Americans started composed and transported artistry and writing one of a caring to their race, motivating a countless many dark's kin to complete in a white overwhelming society.
The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural, social, and artistic movement that took place in Harlem, New York. This mainly took place starting from the end of the First World War until the mid-1930s. Harlem, at this time, was the center of the African-American culture, and Harlem appealed lot of black artists, writers, scholars, musicians, poets, and photographers. Lots of these artists had fled from the South because they needed to get away from their oppressive caste system so that they could express themselves freely, and display their talents. The Harlem Renaissance was considered to be the “rebirth of African-American arts”. This movement mainly started around 1918 and ended during the mid-1930s. Some of the major writers during this time of the Harlem Renaissance were Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois, Countee Cullen, Zoe Neale Hurston, and Marcus Gravey. Lots of these themes that these writers wrote about are themes that to this day artists try to make a point of emphasis, including the American Dream, effects of racism on the black population, black identity, and human rights (Wormser).
The Harlem Renaissance, was a big movement that happened in the northern part of New York city, were African American finally were able to share their art with the world, changing the culture of America. They expressed their art though painting, literature, dancing, and music, the music name specifically is Jazz. Harlem was once a white suburbia, that later down the road became greater in population of African Americans. During the First World War, the war opened a lot of good paying jobs opportunities to the citizen of the U.S. When the War broke out many African Americans finally had reason to move up north and get away from their poor environment in the south, hoping for a better place to race their families, a place to fulfil their dreams, and for a better life, this was called the second Great Migration. A lot of African American chose to move to mostly to Chicago, Detroit, and New York because these places were the top places other African American were already living, and lot of African American wanted to stay within their familiar culture.
I always found the 1920’s a very interesting decade as it went from a lively moment to a depressing and struggling one within a split second. Therefore, I believe that I learned all of the concepts pretty well. For instance, I learned about the Harlem Renaissance, the cause and effect of The Dust Bowl, and the lasting political argument of the New Deal in the United States. First of all, the Harlem Renaissance was a time period where African Americans began to embrace their roots and create art/works to reflect their experience living in US society. However, during the Great Depression many Americans were left unemployed. In addition to drastic unemployment rates, the environmental disaster, also known as the Dust Bowl, contributed to many
It was yet another sarcastic/ironic song, you can tell because they some of the members of Black Flag were straight edge (meaning no drugs, alcohol or other substances) and this song pokes fun at all the people who were all about drinking. This song was not a deep meaning song about living in center city or from an underprivileged area as some of the other music at this time was. Song’s like White Lines were similar in that they poked fun at the people who were doing negative things in their environment. The African American kids had people who were doing drugs to deal with their poor economic issues and the suburban white family’s had you’ll father figures who were drinking too much. Both environments had substances