Most Influential Jazz Singer, Billie Holiday

     Harlem Renaissance, an African American cultural movement of the 1920s and early 1930s that was centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. According to Wintz:

In the 1920’s many African American were searching for a refuge to escape from racism,discrimination, and violence. Many went to place called Harlem, a neighborhood in New York, where they commenced a new style of art, writing, and music. This was known as the Harlem Renaissance, where African Americans had their chance to be known for their skill. Langston Hughes, Louis Armstrong, were some of the important people who help express the African culture through writing and and music. They became an important figure in the birth of the Harlem renaissance. Even today they are remembered for their African American cultural success.

     The Harlem Renaissance was a time of racism, injustice, and importance. Somewhere in between the 1920s and 1930s an African American movement occurred in Harlem, New York City. The Harlem Renaissance exalted the unique culture of African-Americans and redefined African-American expression. It was the result of Blacks migrating in the North, mostly Chicago and New York. There were many significant figures, both male and female, that had taken part in the Harlem Renaissance. Ida B. Wells and Langston Hughes exemplify the like and work of this movement.

The Harlem Renaissance was regarded as a blossoming of African -American culture particularly in the genre of creative art and one of the most influential movement in African- American literary history. While the Harlem Renaissance embraced musical, theatrical, literary and visual arts, the participants within the movementsought to re-conceptualize

The Harlem Renaissance was an event that started during World War One and lasted until the 1930’s. The Harlem Renaissance reshaped art, music, literature and theatre in the African American community. One debated during the Harlem Renaissance was whether folk art or high art best represented racial pride. Folk art best represents racial pride because it does not imitate other people’s art it shows the lives of everyday people, and people could relate to it.

Who was involved? Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, Wallace Thurman, Zora Neale Hurston, Jessie Redman Fauset, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, and Walter White are just a few of the literary contributors of the Harlem Renaissance (Richard Wormser, pbs.org). These people, through their writings, offered a better understanding of what it meant to be African American during this time in history. Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Paul Robeson, Florence Mills, Cab Calloway, and Billy Pierce are just a few of the musical contributors (bio.com).

The Harlem Renaissance was a time of great change for the African American community in America that brought many good things. It occurred in a neighborhood in New York after a large population of African Americans immigrated there. The Harlem Renaissance was a literary, artistic, and intellectual movement that created a new black cultural identity in America. During the Harlem Renaissance there were 2 conflicting ideas; the idea of High art and Folk art. High art was the idea that blacks should show their equal to whites to prove that they are intellectual equals and folk art which was the idea that showed more traditional art. During Harlem african cultural rebirth many still questioned which best expresses racial pride, highly educated and trained high art or raw traditional folk art. High Art during the Harlem Renaissance best expressed racial pride by using old educated techniques, showing positive celebration and advanced vocabulary.

The Harlem Renaissance was a crucial time for African American’s to break the barriers that have always held them back or brushed them under the carpet. Many African American’s were incredibly talented in writing, painting, and singing but until the Harlem Renaissance they went unrecognized. Raised Catholic, Billie Holiday was one of the most influential African American singers during the Harlem Renaissance. Holiday was an amazing jazz and blues singer, known for her amazing talent despite her tough upbringing, her outstanding achievements, and her tragic life that came crashing to an end. Nicknamed Lady Day by her musical partner and boyfriend, Lester Young, she was known for her unique singing style, which included putting a flower behind

Billie’s Blues was recorded by American Jazz musician singer and songwriter Eleanora Fagan Gough professionally acknowledged as Billie Holiday in 1936 and released 1999. As a teen, Holiday started singing in clubs in Harlem. Holiday's creativeness of tunes to fit the desire was new. Somewhere in the middle of the twentieth century, Brazilian and Cuban musical influences could be heard in Jazz. It's what I think of as essential singing, something nature herself had brought together and made it well-organized to make the greatest human of cries. She had a worthy intellect of poetic content at her undeveloped age. Listening to her music Holiday had an inspiring impact on jazz music and modern singing when it comes to the Expression, Performing forces and Rhythm of her piece.

The Harlem Renaissance was an era full of life, excitement, and activity. The world in all aspects was in gradual recovery from the depression. The world of music was

To understand the controversy that Billie presented one must first go to the root or source of such controversy and examine Billie's childhood. Billie was born Eleanora Harris to her father Clarence Holiday and mother Sadie Fagan who were just fifteen and thirteen years old, respectively, at the time (A 91). Born between 1912 and 1915 in Baltimore, the date unsure, Billie grew up without her father, who moved away early on in her life.

What was the Harlem Renaissance? The Harlem Renaissance was a period of time in American history that emphasized African American culture in the form of music, art, and poetry. The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s was plagued by poverty and racial inequality. African Americans held the dream of upward mobility and racial equality, through mediums such as poetry and jazz: a new form of music originating from the African American community of Harlem. The community of Harlem was initially designated as a place where ambitious middle class workers could live. However, the community and housing of Harlem outgrew the transportation system. This caused the white real estate owners to sell their property to a lower income group of people which were mainly African Americans. By the time that the public transportation systems were extended to Harlem, many African American intellectuals, artists, and poets had already “set up shop” there. One of the places in which they did so was Harlem’s Cotton Club. This cabaret was famous for launching the careers of jazz musicians such as Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong. However, the club was owned by whites, and its primary audience was whites. Still, the importance of the club is untestable. It was "the" way for upper class White Americans to experience what the African American culture was like at the time. A select group of prestigious African Americans would go to the cotton

Billie was born to the name, Eleanora Fagan on April 7, 1915. She was born in Philadelphia but grew up in the Fell's Point section of Baltimore. Her mother, was just 13 at the time of her birth; her father, was 15. Holidays' teenage parents, Sadie Harris (aka Fagan) and probable father, Clarence Holiday, never married, and they did not live together for a long time. Clarence, a banjo and guitar player worked with Fletcher Henderson's band in the early 30s. He remains a shady figure who left his family. Clarence would often be away from home, and during the stay with Henderson, which lasted until 1932, the guitarist severed connections with the Fagans. Billie was an angry chile who lived a hard life. She was raped at the age of 10 soon

Billie Holiday, whose real name is Eleanora Gough, was born in Philadelphia Pennsylvania in 1915. She grew up mostly in Baltimore and always loved jazz. Billie was born to very young parents. Her mother was thirteen when she was born and her father just fifteen. (www.numberonestars.com, 2010)

The Harlem Renaissance was a time era that began in the 1920s and it marked a period where a cultural, social, and artistic explosion took place in Harlem. This happened between the end of World War 1 and during the middle of the 1930s. Harlem was a place where most African Americans wanted to be, many of them actually migrated there which was known as The Great Migration. With all the fascinating things that we benefited from the Harlem Renaissance represented a rebirth of culture. The Jazz and Blues evolved in this era and were very popular, some of the most famous Jazz and Blues musicians were Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Henry Webb, and Louis Armstrong, along with many other African American singers and composers who became extremely famous during this time. A very well known club was the, “Cotton Club” this was where Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong drew huge crowds of both white Americans and African Americans, this club was where they all caught what was known as Jazz fever. Our nation was blessed with this amazing music of Jazz and Blues, which has been around since and many still love this music today. Many African Americans made huge impacts throughout the time but there was a woman Novelist, Anthropologist, and short story writer whose work stood out distinguishing herself from all the other writers. She is known as Zora Neale Hurston, she was born on January 7, 1891, in Nostalgia, Alabama but moved to Eatonville, Florida as a toddler. Her family moved to Florida where her father was elected Mayor of the town during 1897-1902. Her father was the Mayor as well as a baptist preacher and her mother was a school teacher. In 1904 her family suffered the tragedy of her mother's death, years later her father remarried and Hurston along with her siblings, had a step mom. In order to support herself and finance her efforts to get an education she had to work a variety of jobs, one of which includes being a maid for an actress while she was on tour. She earned an associate degree at Howard University and later moved herself to the city of Harlem in New York City where she joined the uprising art scenery. Nonetheless, Hurston quickly began studying in order to have novels and short stories to publish, one of