Chapter 17 - The Pulse of Harlem: African American Music and the New Negro Revival

Summary

This chapter examines the literary portrayal of music in Alain Locke’s The New Negro, Claude McKay’s poem “Negro Dancers,” Hurston’s “Characteristic of Negro Expression,” and Richard Bruce Nugent’s “Smoke, Lilies, and Jade.” It considers the role of spirituals in the work of Du Bois and Locke before detailing how writers of the 1920s represented the innovations of new jazz sounds. The chapter notes the significance of the spirituals for both W. E. B. Du Bois and Locke, suggesting that, while Du Bois viewed them almost as an archeological deposit, Locke saw these songs as an important artistic tool to help progress African Americans forward: Locke ‘uses’ the spirituals as an inspiring precedent for the new ‘task’ facing the descendants of slaves on the verge of democratic transformation. Close readings of McKay’s poem, Hurston’s essay, and Nugent’s short story illuminate the term “orinphrasis,” or the description of sound or music in narrative or poems.