Question

Does anyone know the political history of the Harlem Renaissance? I've been looking it up but there has yet to be a legitimate or straight answer. HELP!

Answer 1

This could help
Women have made incredible musical and innovative contributions to Jazz and Blues. I believe that musical genius ran through the veins of a number of female musicians, but for me, what separates some musicians from others, is the ability to make a statement. Female jazz singers, especially in the earlier part of the twentieth century, were lacking songs that did not revolve around love and loss. Yet there remains a few vocalists who chose to sing not about unrequited love, but about social and racist injustice. One of these women is Billie Holiday. (Vail, 1996).
"Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves, blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees
Pastoral scene of the gallant South
The bulging eyes and twisted mouth
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop
here is a strange and bitter crop."

"Strange Fruit" -Lewis Allen

Billie Holiday, also known as "Lady Day" is probably one of the best known female jazz vocalists. She reigned during the 1940's performing with such greats as Louis Armstrong. Holiday is best known for her love songs which she innovated into the jazz world. What a lot of people do not know about Billie Holiday, was that she used her music to speak out against social injustice and raise consciousness. Holiday was openly communist and when she was only twenty four years old, poet Lewis Allen reluctantly offered his song "Strange Fruit" for Holiday to record. The song provided vivid imagery about the horrors of the lynching of Southern Blacks at a time when racism was very prevalent. When Holiday first sang the song "she could not comprehend the metamorphical presentations of anything other than women in love or spurned by lovers", (Davis. p185). This quote may make Holiday sound ignorant, but at the time the idea of a woman, especially a Black woman, making an antiracist statement was almost unheard of. Holiday soon embraced the song. Lady Day had said that the lyrics reminded her of her own father's death (Clarence Holiday had inhaled poisonous gases after serving his country in World War I and was left to die in a hospital after being neglected by racist doctors). "Strange Fruit" ignited a spark that made Holiday want to speak out against the racism that killed her father (Davis, 1998).
Because feminism incorporates the fight against racism, I believe that Billie Holiday was a feminist before her time. "Strange Fruit" was sung by Holiday at the height of the Harlem Renaissance and not long after women had received the right to vote. The rights of African Americans and an awareness of their culture was just beginning to take shape. Women's rights were also still in the making. Holiday, who was mainly known for her love songs, boldly stepped out of a stereotyped mold and sang a song that stood defined the injustices performed against her people. She took a poem and transformed it into a protest song, which she never sang the same twice. Compared to Black female vocalists of today, like Erykah Badu and Tracy Chapman who have mostly social and political songs, one protest song may not seem like much, but "Strange Fruit" became Billie Holiday's signature song. She took the song and personally made it her own.

Answer 2

Oh my gosh thank you so much, that actually really helped!

Answer 3

anytime:)