DEVELOPING
A BACKGROUND
Activity One
1. Visit the following Web site with your class. Divide the class
into groups, and have each group be responsible for answering one
of the five sidebar questions. The questions can be answered by exploring
the information on this Web site. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/february98/harlem_2-20.html
2. Stage a mock "Harlem Renaissance News Broadcast" by creating a
script based on the answers to each question.
Activity Two
1. Read and discuss this timeline with your class: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/timeline.htm.
2. Visit the Web site of the Walk Through Harlem at http://nfo.net/.WWW/harlem.html.
3. Share these photographs with the class at http://www.harlem.org/
and http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/wghtml/.
4. Share with the class the following excerpt from http://www.jass.com/jazzo.html:
New York City contributed to the richness of jazz in many ways. The
first piano style to be incorporated into jazz was stride which developed
from ragtime and was popular in New York. The city was also the center
of the music publishing business. Also in New York, James Reese Europe
experimented with a style of jazz that involved large orchestras.
Many of his early recordings would be considered ragtime, though his
later recordings in 1919 clearly show jazz improvisation. In the 1920s,
New York City had two pioneering orchestras that would eventually
greatly affect jazz history. Fletcher Henderson put together a band
that first appeared at the Cotton Club in New York in 1923. Henderson's
unit featured future jazz stars Coleman Hawkins and Don Redman but
it wasn't until Henderson brought Louis Armstrong from Chicago to
play with his group that the band began to develop into a full-fledged
jazz group which would help to usher in the swing era.
5. Have the students listen to five samples of music at http://library.thinkquest.org/26656/english/frames.html.
Activity Three
1. Have the class conduct a poll in which they survey
ten people on their favorite piece of jazz.
2. Collect the information, and create a class chart based on the
results.
3. Use the following site to locate and listen to the top five choices
selected: http://www.apassion4jazz.net/juke.html.
STEPS
Activity One
1. Share the following information about the history of Harlem with
the class from the Web site at http://articles.citysearch.com/New_York/escape/harlem/
2. Divide the class into Internet research groups. Assign each group
to a Web site to research the Harlem Renaissance. Each group should
collect ten to fifteen facts about the Harlem Renaissance.
Group One: http://www.nku.edu/~diesmanj/harlem.html
Group Two: http://www.encarta.msn.com/schoolhouse/harlem/hrlinks.asp#harlem
Group Three: http://www.africana.com/specials/packages/renaissance.asp
Group Four: http://www.unc.edu/courses/eng81br1/harlem.html
Activity Two
Based on what the class has learned in the previous activity, read
and discuss the following quotes with the class:
• "In New York in the 1920's black entertainment for white audiences
flourished. But as Ted Goia, IN THE HISTORY OF JAZZ describes, "But
even when journeying into Harlem to witness them firsthand, these
spectators nonetheless demanded venues that protected their position
as ruling class elites. In this context, the grotesque spectacle of
the Harlem Club for all-white audiences was born, a musical menagerie
in which social proximity and distance could coexist." (p 125)
• "'Harlem, in our minds,' Ellington remembered, had 'the world's
most glamorous atmosphere. We had to go there.' New York was now home
to more African-Americans that any other northern city, and most lived
uptown, in Harlem.
'It is a mecca for the sightseer, the pleasure-seeker, the curious,
the adventurous, the enterprising, the ambitious, and the talented
of the entire Negro world,' wrote the poet James Weldon Johnson, 'for
the lure of it has reached down to every isle of the Carib Sea and
penetrated even into Africa.' The NAACP had its headquarters in Harlem;
so did the Urban League and Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement
Association. It was the home of a host of black poets and writers
and artists, too, all eagerly examining what it meant to be black
and American, part of what would come to called the Harlem Renaissance."
from Ken Burns' JAZZ A HISTORY OF AMERICAN MUSIC
2. Ask the class to respond in their writing journals to one of the
following questions:
• Do you think that the role of African-Americans in the arts
has changed from the days of the Harlem Renaissance compared to today?
In what ways?
•How do the arts reflect larger cultural and racial issues? Give
examples based on current day issues.
•How do the arts play a role in creating or destroying barriers
among those of different races and cultures?
Activity Three
1. Divide the class into three groups. Each will be assigned to research
a different jazz club. Some sites to begin research are suggested.
Group One will research the Cotton Club (
http://www.redhotjazz.com/dukecco.html).
Group Two will research the
history of Birdland (http://www.birdlandjazz.com/history.html).
Group
Three will research the Village Vanguard (http://www.villagevanguard.net/frames.htm).
2. Based on their research, each student will write an imaginary Club
Review for THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT based in
the early 1920s describing their reaction to each club. They must
either take on the perspective of a white or a black person in their
letter, and describe what it was like to be at the club, and how they
felt.
3. Invite students to share their letters with the larger group.
Activity Four
1. Have the students visit the Langston Hughes site at http://www.liben.com/Hugheslinks.html.
Each student should select one poem, write a response in a writing
journal, and share their response with other students.
2. Lead a discussion on Langston Hughes based on the students' responses
to his poetry.
Activity Five
1. Students will visit the following Web sites to learn
about the art of the Harlem Renaissance: http://www.nku.edu/~diesmanj/painters.html
http://library.thinkquest.org/26656/english/frames.html
http://www.iniva.org/harlem/
(Rhapsodies in Black)
2. Each student should choose one artist and create his or her own
rendition of one of their works.
3. Post students' work to share.
Activity
Six
1. Have the class create a class museum, or a play
focused on the Harlem Renaissance for elementary students based on
what they have learned in this lesson and through their research.
2. Videotape the production. Share this with community groups or post
it on the class Web site. |
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