The Harlem Reniassance

Part 1


1. The Harlem Renaissance is the name for a movement in African America culture in the 1920s and 1930s.
2. The renaissance had a big influence on African-American literature, philosophy and music.
3. It has some other names besides the renaissance like the "Black Literary Renaissance", '"The New Negro Movement" and "The flowering of Negro literature".
4. The Harlem Renaissance began in Harlem, New York after World War I.
5. The movement began to affect the thinking of many African-American writers and artists.
6. They challenged the thinking of many white Americans towards black Americans.
7. They refused to be treated as if they were not equal.
8. They refused to just copy the sorts of writing, art and music that white Americans did. 
9. They wanted to celebrate the fact that their African culture had survived through the terrible years of slavery, and was being "reborn".
10. That is how we get the word renaissance from them wanting to be reborn. 


Part 2




Duke Ellington :


1. Duke Ellington was a composer and a pianist during the Harlem Renaissance.  
2. He is considered to be one of the most important musicians in the history of recorded music, and is called one of the greatest figures in jazz music.
3. He became even more popular after he died and was given a special award citation from the Pulitzer Prize Board in 1999.
4. Duke and his band played for both white and black people, which was unusual during the renaissance.
5. One of Dukes most popular songs is Take the A train.  


Fats Waller:


1. Fats Waller, born Thomas Wright Waller, was a jazz pianist, organist, composer, singer, and comedic entertainer.
2. He was the youngest of four children.
3.Thomas Wright Waller started playing the piano when he was six and graduated to the organ of his father's church four years later.
4. At the age of fourteen he was playing the organ at Harlem's Lincoln Theater and within twelve months he had composed his first rag.
5. Waller's first piano solos (Muscle Shoals Blues and Birmingham Blues) were recorded in October 1922 when he was only 18 years old.
6. One of his most popular songs is "Ain't Misbehavin'" which was composed by him in 1929.


Jelly Roll Morton


1. Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe,  who was known known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an American ragtime and early jazz pianist, bandleader and composer.
2. He was born in 1885 and died in 1941 living the majority of his life during the renaissance.  
3. Morton is perhaps most notable as jazz's first arranger, proving that a genre rooted in improvisation could retain its essential spirit and characteristics when notated.
4. His composition "Jelly Roll Blues" was the first published jazz composition, in 1915.
5. Morton is also notable for naming and popularizing the "Spanish tinge" of exotic rhythms


Citations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlem_Renaissance
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Ellington
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_the_%22A%22_Train
http://myhero.com/go/hero.asp?hero=Marsalis_Ellington_bk06 (picture)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fats_Waller
http://www.morethings.com/music/stormy_weather/fats_waller/index.htm (picture)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jelly_Roll_Morton
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/musician.php?id=9632 (picture)