Depression to Expression

To Express Yourself

I honestly don't think the African Americans had an "influence" on Early Modern era, they had an impact. Their music, their art, their artistic and creative expressions were strong ripples from what was changing in the Early Modern arts.

Traditional art was being changed. The rules and requirements for expressing yourself in music was greatly influenced by the people wanting something different, something new. Jazz was the new thing for them. Not just because it was influenced by the music in africa or that African Americans were frequent in it, but that it was a strong influencial change.

This is why I admire Louis Armstrong so greatly. His story is almost like an 'rags to riches' cliche, but more of someone really just wanting to express himself in a way that he made work for him, and had fun to make the music style his!

I love old music that were made classics, such as Louis Armstrong's "What A Wonderful World". It was recorded raw and beauitiful, way before the time of vocal auto tuning and all the other digital cheats of this current age. His voice is gravelly, his atittude when performing all his own which both become his signatures in what made him so popular. It wasn't what he brought to the stage, it was how he performed it that people loved.

The Harlem Renaissance, was like many revolutions before it, crying out for the world to notice the message it is trying to show. For Halem, it was equality and group expression in a way that shook the Great Depression.

This meant written works by African Americans hit the stands like wildfire from a wave of inspiration and a hunger to be read, to express their feelings of having to deal with the afteraffects of a war and the hard life of the Great Depression. Such is the reason why I think abstract was used best by Harlem artists. The picture above is only a refecence to many of the works that were made during this explosion of art, period. 

People weren't sad so much as trying to find a reason to be happy and stay happy. I think out of trying to be proven equal, they were looking for motivation to keep forward, their heads above the water. I admire and respect people in general who take what they have and make the best out of it. But to reach for more and be creative with it to make the world stop and look makes me want to applaude. It isn't just one race that has done this, humanity has done this over and over again in the form of "revolutions".

The word revolution should just be associated with war or violence, but a change in the social sctucure of society. A blossom of a new culture that will make or break the people involved. Some social revolutions are more noteworthy than others just because they were not associated with too much violence or loss of life.

I am content the African Americans were able to have a renaissance all their own because it isn't the only one they will get, not the last. This one was fun to read about and I finally get most of the references made in the Disney movie "The Princess and the Frog" besides just good ol' Louis. Ha ha!