Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance, a cultural, social, and artistic explosion that took place in Harlem, New York, spanned the 1920s. During the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement," named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke. The Movement also included the new African-American cultural expressions across the urban areas in the Northeast and Midwest United States affected by the Great Migration (African American), of which Harlem was the largest. The Harlem Renaissance was considered to be a rebirth of African American arts. Though it was centered in the Harlem neighborhood of the borough of Manhattan in New York City, many francophone black writers from African and Caribbean colonies who lived in Paris were also influenced by the Harlem Renaissance.

The Harlem Renaissance is generally considered to have spanned from about 1918 until the mid-1930s. Many of its ideas lived on much longer. The zenith of this "flowering of Negro literature", as James Weldon Johnson preferred to call the Harlem Renaissance, took place between 1924 (when Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life hosted a party for black writers where many white publishers were in attendance) and 1929 (the year of the stock market crash and the beginning of the Great Depression).

New York Renaissance

The New York Renaissance, also known as the Renaissance Big Five and as the Rens, was an all-black professional basketball team established February 13, 1923, by Robert "Bob" Douglas in agreement with the Renaissance Casino and Ballroom. The Casino and Ballroom at 138th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem was an entertainment complex including a ballroom that served as the Big Five's home court. Following each game, a dance took place. The success of the Rens shifted the focus of black basketball from amateur teams to professional teams. Initially, the Rens played mostly in Harlem, but by the end of the 1920s, as attendance began to dwindle, the team could be found more often playing on the road, barnstorming across the country out of necessity. The Renaissance are also the topic of the 2011 documentary On the Shoulders of Giants.

The Rens were one of the dominant basketball teams of the 1920s and 1930s. They were originally known as the Spartan Braves of Brooklyn. The team played its first game on November 3, 1923. That night the Rens played a team of white players; interracial games featured regularly on their schedule, drawing the largest crowds. In its first years, the team strove to beat the Original Celtics, the dominant white team of the time, and claim the title of world champions: in their fifth encounter, the Rens did so for the first time, on December 20, 1925. During the 1932-33 regular season, the Rens compiled a record of 120-8 (six of those losses came at the hands of the Celtics, who the Rens did beat eight times).During that season, the Rens won 88 consecutive games, a mark that has never been matched by a professional basketball team. In 1939, the Rens won the first professional basketball championship, when they beat the Oshkosh All-Stars, a white team, 34-25, in the World Professional Basketball Tournament in Chicago.

Harlem

Coordinates: 40°48′32.52″N 73°56′54.14″W / 40.8090333°N 73.9483722°W / 40.8090333; -73.9483722

Harlem is a large neighborhood in the northern section of the New York City borough of Manhattan. Since the 1920s, Harlem has been known as a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands. Harlem's history has been defined by a series of economic boom-and-bust cycles, with significant population shifts accompanying each cycle.

African-American residents began to arrive en masse in 1905, with numbers fed by the Great Migration. In the 1920s and 1930s, Central and West Harlem were the focus of the "Harlem Renaissance", an outpouring of artistic work without precedent in the American black community. However, with job losses in the time of the Great Depression and the deindustrialization of New York City after World War II, rates of crime and poverty increased significantly. Harlem's black population peaked in the 1950s. In 2008, the United States Census found that for the first time since the 1930s, less than half of residents were black, and black residents only counted for 40% of the population.

Harlem (Ellington)

Harlem is a symphonic jazz composition by the American composer Duke Ellington.

Originally commissioned by Arturo Toscanini in 1950 to be part of a larger New York-inspired orchestral suite, Toscanini never conducted it. Ellington himself first recorded it in 1951 (as "A Tone Parallel to Harlem (Harlem Suite)" in his Ellington Uptown album), and it was given its live premiere in 1955 at Carnegie Hall by Don Gillis and the Symphony of the Air.

The piece lasts for around fifteen minutes and exists in Ellington's large jazz orchestra version as well as a full symphonic version orchestrated by Luther Henderson. Both versions begin with a distinctive trumpet solo which intones the word 'Harlem'.

In his own memoirs Ellington wrote:

Ellington re-recorded it in Paris in 1963 (on The Symphonic Ellington album). It has since been recorded by several ensembles and conductors including Maurice Peress (in his own orchestration) with the American Composers Orchestra, Neeme Jarvi with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Simon Rattle with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and John Mauceri with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. Mauceri also produced a new edition of the full symphonic score. In 2012, it was recorded by JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra in the Peress orchestration.

Harlem (band)

Harlem is an American garage rock band comprising vocalist/guitarist/drummer Michael Coomers, vocalist/guitarist/drummer Curtis O'Mara and bassist Jose Boyer, formerly of Chapel Hill-based The Gondoliers and The Kashmir.

History

Harlem started in Tucson, AZ before relocating to Austin where they generated a mountain of attention, both with their live shows and their self-issued 2008 album Free Drugs ;-), mastered by Nathan Sabatino at Loveland Recording Studios.

Matador signed the Austin, Texas trio to a multi-record, worldwide deal. Harlem recorded their 2nd album in the summer of 2009.Hippies, was released on April 6, 2010. It was recorded by Mike McHugh at "The Distillery" in Costa Mesa, California. As of April 2012, the band is on an indefinite hiatus as all members are busy with other projects.

Discography

Albums

EPs

References

External links