Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday

Want to explore even more history Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world from the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland There is plenty to discover With your subscription, you'll unlock hundredundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week exxploring everything from the ancient world to World War II Just visit historyhit d. com slash subscribe bring the past alive. We're in New York City at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. It is midnight and the dance floor twirls in shimmies It's laughter, sweat, perfume and cigarettes All to the hot swing of Chickwb's Orchestra Prohibition may still be the law in America But in here, it's not hard to get a drink because this party pushes towards dawn. This is the Harlem Renaissance in full bloom A young Billy holiday is rising in the clubs Duke Ellington and Fatz Waller are inventing new sounds, while tappers carve out rhythms all their own Writers, artists, and intellectuals debate race and politics, laying a new foundation for Black American culture. But down here at the Savoy It's just movement and joy Das flloor is even integrated rare in Jim Crow's America Tonight, here in Harlem, it feels as if the music will never stop But within a month, a short matter of weeks The stock market will crash and the American economy, along with it One day, decades later poet Langston Hughes would look back and write his most famous line of verse about being black in America What happens to a dreamed bird? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun Or fest you like a sore and then run. Does it stink like rotten meat Casting sugar over like a syrupy sweet Welcome to American History Hit. I'm Don Wobban, thans for joining us Our guest today is Dr. Mark Anthony Neil Pfessor of Black Popular culture in the Department of Black American Studies at Duke University He is an author of numerous works, including most recently, Black Ephemera, the Crisis and Challenge of the Musical Archive. He is the host of the Left of Black podcast and has joined me previously on episode two hundred eighty nine discussing the history of juneteenth. But today we discuss the Harlem Renaissance doctor Neil, thank you for join us again. I'm happy to be back We call it the Harlem Renaissance. It is legend, a golden age Why the word Renaissance exactly? What was being reborn at this time in Harlem It was a flowering of culture. It was a flowering of identity For many Black Americans who were in Harlem at the time, it was a restart or reboot After having migrated from the deep south, the North represented opportunities. new living arrangements, new spaces, new racial politics to some extent And with all this influx of energies coming from different places. I mean, just the demographic diversity Black folks who made it in Harlem and folks who were already in Harlem at that period of time It created this flowering, this explosion, if you will black culture. It has become such a popular cultural, you know icon. Some people take it for granted at this point. When you dip back into it as we are going to do today, it is amazing how the explosion and multifaceted nature of this era from every angle this community was experimenting and pushing out and expanding and leaving a legacy that we are still living with today. As you mentioned just now, connected to the great migration of Black Americans from the Jim Crow South to Northern urban areas, which we've also done an episode about an extraordinary migration, onene of the biggest in human history, really, at least in American history, certainly. That led to huge immigrant populations and in Harlem, especially of southern African Americans, but also immigrants from the Caribbean How much were people utilizing that new neighborhood in this way or I want to get to the very basics of how this sort of came to pass. I mean, there are a few things. There was a labor shortage. in the U. S. and American cities. World W one created a context where many European immigrants returned to their home countries to fight in World War I, which created a labor shortage. So there was a need for labor and black folks from the south serve that need you know, whether they were coming to New York or Detroit, Chicago, Midwest in all these kinds of places You know, there's also a secondary migration that's happening in New York City. You know, at the time, most Black Americans are living below Central Park would become Central Park. in areas like the Tendnder Line and the lower East side And there was a housing boon in Harlem, but the subway train did not travel all the way to Harlem yet you know, you would have to get off the train at like a hundred in tenh Street and walk. So you had all this housing that wasn't being that was being underutilized. And so you also have this migration of black folks leaving the low east side, the lower parts of Manhattan to move into Harlem Obviously our attentions because we're not just talking about southern migrants. we are talking about Caribbean immigrants also. So there was, you know, a kind of feeling out period that I think ultimately creates the context for what we now understand as African American culture is really this combination of all these different forces and energies, you know to take place in this time Yeah, and it was happening across the country because these migrations were happening in other cities as well. L.A, Chicago, Cleveland, all these places, DC But why Harlem specifically, why is it most famously Harlem? You know, because it was the place up north which really had so many black migrants come in It is, you know, the cultural capital of the U. S You know, some people would even argue at this point in time, it's still the political capital of the U. S. It just was an ideal place to foment. for lack of a better way to describe it a cultural movement. You know, when you think about just the number of daily newspapers that were in New York City in that period of time. right It's pretty astounding, right? You know, dozens and dozens of these newspapers It created opportunities for bllack Americans to be politically active often commentary on what was happening in the world and also to build their own smaller cultural movements. Yeah. And we should specify, and I didn't at the top of this conversation. We're talking about the nineteen twenties up to nineteen thirties. It's that ten year period of nineteen twenties, which is going side side by side with the jazz age and and roaring twenties in New York, tremendous profits are being made by corporations. I mean there's a tie that floats all boats in some ways in New York, just business wise But this is unique. this is completely unique to this cultural moment. one hundred seventy five thousand Black Americans in Harlem in about three square miles. Obviously no such concentration ever existed in America before like this, North or south. nineteen thirty census. seventy percent of Harlem residents are black What informs this time so much of it is the jazz scene, The Harlem Clubs. That spirit of jazz, which again, we take for granted these days, was so new and exciting and dynamic for every good reason that it infused everything, didn't it? Oh, absolutely. I mean, the things you consider about the Harlemor Renaissance, you know, beyond the sheer numbers of black folks Who were there are who the black folks are. So you're talking about Duke Ellington trafficking back and forth from Washington, D.C to New York City early stages of his career. You're talking about the great band leader and arranger, Fletcher Henderson that's there. You talk about James We see your Right of who of course fights in World War O and comes back and creates this kind of musical moment that's coming out of the James Rees your band you know, the great work that Jason Moran has done to sonically capture. that moment was. And so you also had this experimental culture. You know, Armstrong for the most part, you know, leaves New Orleans and goes to Chicago But to obviously other forces that are taking folks in New York the opportunity to be able to have these free spaces in Harlem where they could perform for black audiences. I think what's so critical about the development of jazz in this period of time is that these are black musicians playing largely for black audiences And it's an exchange back and forth in terms of the energies that they're getting from the audience. that helps to you know, inspire You know, cultural innovation, musical innovation, right? It's never lost to me when you think about someone like like Duke Allallenton, and O T Allallenton was essentially on the road performing three hundred days out of the year, right? You know, it was so important to him to always be in contact with the people that he didn't want to have to deal with the laws around segregation. So of course, he had his own Coleman car you know, there was a attached on the back of a train so that, you know, they could travel in the way that they should, you know, as an independent and, you know, black band that didn't have to deal with some of the dynamics of racial segregation. Yeah, exactly. My biggest takeaway today perhaps will be that what you said about the train. The fact that it did not reach up there allowed that neighborhood to develop in a kind of in its own organic fashion, didnn't it? I didn't I never thought about that. Absolutely. I mean, trades are actually such a critical part of thinking about this period of time, not just because of the subway system in New York City and the limits of where it went, you know, it's still not even going up to the Bronx But the way that the train was so important for the migration process. And it's not just a matter of black folks who are going to traveling by train up north. But it's also the role of the pullman porters. You know, this group of men who are working the trains largely working, you know, for whites and serving them. The great A. Philip Randolff who, of course, was the head of the Brotherhood is sleeping supporters. reallyally important critical figure there But the Pullman importers were important because they were traveling from all these different cities. They would bring black newspapers from New York to Chicago, Chicago newspapers to Detroit. It created, you know what we understand now in terms of a viral movement in terms of digital culture and social media, but the way that the Pullman Porters used information and shared information because they were traveling all around the country became an important component of making sure that there was a feed of information. comoming out of New York, going into New York and etcetera You know, there was this saying that if you were a black man in the nineteen twenties, If you couldn't be a doctor, if you couldn't be a lawyer, the next best thing would have been to be a pullman porter The traveling allowed you some level of freedom. My wife grandfather was just that and other family members as well Very important. So Harlem becomes this cultural crucible of Black America. and it's fair to think about it in those terms just as sort of studying it, but seating it in this nice middle class world that was growing and operating quite normally is an important aspect of this. desescribe what a street scene in Harlem would have been in this time, nineteen twenty two, say Well, you just start with the cacapophony of the streetcars and the traffic and the horns and you know, for many of these new migrants You know, part of the initial challenge for them when they come to New York is just dealing with the noise and the traffic. You know, when we think about the sleepy south, right, partarticularly folks who weren't in big cities in the south, You know, just the sound of it created a different culture that they had to figure out a way to accommodate these really different circumstances You know, there are a few black police officers in this period of time But there is this class division. That's very, very real. There were established black middle class folks who were in Harlem who are in New York City who belong to mainline churches. And you know, as many of the writers have captured at the time They did what they thought was important work in terms of preparing Southern migrants for these transitions So what kind of clothes they wear you know, making sure the hair was cold. I mean they they had to present the best face of the negro when they're out in public. And so very often they police these migrants in this way you know, in terms of how you should come out the house, how you should carry yourself And it did create some tensions in that regard. How much was the wider nation and even New York City aware of what was happening in this regard as something unique and special to that time? You know, scale is always a question when we think about these movements It is historically significant and we have done so much research on the period of time. it seems much more impactful than it actually was. I think Tony Morrison makes a point in her great novel Jazz that The majority of everyday black folks in Harlem had no idea there was a Harlem Renaissance going on You know, they were not necessarily reading new essays from Du Bois or Lane Lke or were not you know, necessarily queued into the debates that were going back and forth between the boys and Marcus Garvey. They were just living their lives and trying to survive. And so to the extent that the average Back American knew what was happening in Harlem let alone white America on the rest of the country, I'm not sure there was a keen sense of what was happening. Interesting And how much was segregation a part of this as well and even in New York? You know, there's still segregated spaces even in Harlem. Some of the clubs in Harlem Cotton Club being a good example were segregated you know, where blacks and whites didn't necessarily sit together in some instances And for many Back Americans, it is still a challenge to leave Harlem to go to other parts of New York Because it's segregated. rightight? So you know, New York has its own version of segregation. It's not the deep south, right? It's a very different kind of experience, but that doesn't mean there weren't clear color lines you know, for where people could go and how they could act and what time it should be in certain neighborhoods. All that stuff was still in effect to the most extent even in some place like New York. Let's take a break. When Mark and I come back, we'll talk about the ideas and politics associated with the Harlem Renaissance. It happens on all facets, as I explained, and we'll move through it piece by piece Welcome back. I'm speaking with Dr. Mark Anthony Neil of Duke University about the Harlem Renaissance We've discussed the era as a flourishing of the arts, jazz, especially, of course, but it's also flourishing in ideas and political thinking and confronting the challenges of segregated America How so how did political ideas weave into this cultural and artistic reality? error of the boys. We have to you know, talk about how important a figure he was as an intellectual You know, beginning with his study of the Philadelphia Negro in the late eighteen nineties, he, of course, publishes The Souls of Black folks which began as a collection of essays that appeared in the Atlantic this idea that with the new century post Plessy versus Ferguson that black folks would begin to not only use their physical and artistic tools, but the intellectual tools to think about a way out of the conditions that they were in So Du Bois' the creation of the Naraga movement, which it then creates the creation of the NLACP You also have the creation of the urban leeagues. you have these civic and political organizations that are committed to change And then you also have this flowering of intellectual thought. I mentioned the boys and so the bllack folks One of the figures who I think is really so critical to this period that we don't spend enough time talking about is James Weldon Johnson. who's most well known, you know, these days as the co auth, the co lyricist. of Lift Every Voice and Sing, which he wrote with his brother the black quote unquote Black National anthem, but you know, he publishes his first novel They are autabarically the ex colored man in nineteen twelve And it really is, I think the text that really stimulates this cross pollination between what was happening artistically and what was happening in intellectual circles You know, his book, Black Manhattan, which is published in nineteen thirty It's really one of the best, you know, books that captures what was happening across Harlem in this dynamic in this period of time You know, so everyone has to come to, you know, the crisis, which is the magazine that comes out of NAACP opportunity, which is coming out of The Urban League, they all have offices in New York. You have all these great talents who are coming through You know, famous in Links and Hues, of course is in Harlem in this period of time There's so many different interesting figures and forces. Jesse Fauccet, The novelist is there you know, Zordil Hurston You know, it's taking classes in Columbia. I mean, it's it gets you really's amazing to think about it. Right It's about letters It's about music, but it's also about visual arts So when you think about Aaron Douglas, right who illustrates so many of the early books from artists who were coming out this period of time You know, I personally as someone who looks back at the history of this period of time I can't imagine another moment where I think there are other moments where you've had these cultural forces. No. Not like But because it was but because it was so new It was impactful, right? It creates the possibility for these other moments. Well it's so traceable too. I mean, you're starting with Du Bois and I want to explain to folks who may not be familiar with. that book is printed in nineteen oh three. So that's twenty good years before before the time we're talking about Exactly. R. And that's what's interesting is that there's already been this intellectual. Thankks to Du Bois This intellectual groundwork framework put down in the Northeast. He's a Harvard guy and it comes down to New York There's of course Booker Washingon has been doing this as well in his own way. and there's this schism of thinking about how you know, this new time is going to happen for Black America. There's a whole kind of Already, this conversation is happening is my point And added to Bys that was so interesting as I was reading about this I just wrote down a quote, double consciousness bllacks would need to sharpen. Yes. So this double consciousness that WB D Boys talks about is a really fascinating thing Can you explain that term? am I talking about something you're familiar with? You know, what he later describes in the same book of second sight Yeah that's what Disability to think about who you are in the world. But at the same time, you have to consider how the world views you. On many levels, I would describe as as cultural schizophrenia But it is something that is so hardwired into the experience, which is why Du Borys wrote about it And the reason why it continues to resonate so powerfully. In the same book, he talks about this idea of a talented ten percent, you know, which in many ways he borrows from Anna Julia Cooper you know, who a decade before the souls of Black folks makes the argument of lifting as we climb. As you talked about the experien of the bllack women in the South But it was this idea that we now have created this educated and financial class, a you economic class They had an absolute responsibility Right to serve or teach depending on how you read you interpret what DuVoise is talking about this connection to the other folks The debate between Du Bois and Booker T was fascinating on many levels because you, Booker T is building a empire, right at Tuskegee with this idea that you just keep your head down do work. You generate economic income from serving white folks in the skills that you have And you don't need to deal with the political realities because you're building these separate institutions I don't think it was ever even or I think most black folks, you know, to the extent that they look at boys in Booketee, they borrow from both of their ideas. Bookete, of course dies in nineteen fifteen, so he doesn't even see a Harlem Renaissance But his contribution that a period of time was the invitation that he made to Marcus Garvey I come from Jamaica to New York, you know, to the U.S. to Harlem And what's important about Garby is that he really is the figure who creates a mas grassroots, working class, working poor movement in Harlem that in some ways is a counter to D boys. and what Du Bois has talked about with the intellectual elites, right? And I think to some extent that chasms still exists Definitely the nineteen sixties when you see intellectuals and then you're seeing folks who were coming up from the streets like a Malcolm X, right? You see it again in the nineteen eighties, nineties when you start to have this generation of black intellectuals who are coming through all of these schools, bllack public intellectuals And hip hop serves as a of counterpoint as another intellectual tradition to that So it's an ongoing process, right that begins really defirm it the way that it does, you know, in the Harleam Ment of House period It's such an exciting idea. of how this whole Really, the twentieth century of Black America was built very deliberately brilliantly. And most people today do not recognize this, many of my own peers, because we're so used to things that have happened as a result of all of this. But at the time, such careful things were being done. But it's that seed that Du Bois especially plants that I want to account for because it talks about the autonomy of black people within the reality of segregation. and within that autonomy you can be yourself, you know, or you can create. and that's really the story of the Renaissance and that particular moment in Harlem. Beyond that, I want to just circle back to a few things you've already mentioned, but Again, people might not be aware of this. NWACP is founded in nineteen oh nine. National Urban League founded in nineteen eleven led to boycotts of businesses that wouldn't hire black workers, theginning beginnings of really organized resistance. Buchan versus Warley nineteen seventeen, that legal case is settled no longer legal to restrict where African Americans could live. There's there's the whole thing is budging forward a little bit. A lot of this involves World War one and that time period just before and a lot of you know the Harlem hellfighters go off. It's there's big stories about this going on the news for people And I'm just sort of running through a few of these things to sort of refresh people's memories about what was going on at the time just before as we're moving into this Newspaper pamphlets like The Messenger founded in nineteen seventeen, examples of black news and networks that publish works of bllack writers and thinkers reporting on news outside mainstream media, Black newspapers is a huge deal or the crisis, which actually starts in nineteen ten. All of this is happening at the same time as the stuff we're going to talk about in a moment, but it's an extraordinary explosion of media. I mean, honestly, the same sorts of things were happening downtown in New York with the bursting off of radio and all the rest of it, but it's an extraordinary time all over the place. This is the backdrop for this whole situation I'm going to take another break, Mark and we'll come back and talk about a few of these individuals we've already mentioned in a little more detail. Okay, we're back we're talking about the Harlem Renaissance and specific individuals, particularly one we've already mentioned, James Weldon Johnson. This man, if you don't know about him, eighteen seventy one to nineteen thirty eight, an absolute genius Can you tell me about how this man made the impact he did? He was someone who understood build relationships He saw himself as a writer and not just of fiction in the case or nonfiction with Black Manhattan. You know, I mentioned before, you know, that lift every voice and sing the Negro National anthem He's a member one of the early members of an organization called Five A Sigma one of the divine nine organizations which aren't nine yet. You know, when he joins it The best way to describe James Weld and Johnson. I think this actually fits even more than the boys is that he was a race man Right. He was someone who was committed to doing anything that was going to better the race He took on positions within the end ofACP that allowed him to do that He wrote books that allowed him to do that He and you know, he wasn't someone who was out front That I think that's one of the reasons why, you know, we don't pay as much attention to them you know, the boys For the great intellectual he was, he was also a fascinating self promoter. Marcus Garvey was a fascinating self promoter. I don't think that's necessarily was something that was part of James Wellld than Johnson's personality at the time. Yeah Social activist, writer, poet Executive seecretary of NASAP. Tin Pan Alley songwriter.. A Rnaaissance man. neverever mind the Harlem Rennaissance. He's his own Rnaaissance W wrote the book The Autobiography of an X colored man published in nineteen twelve. Of course, the song we've talked about Lift Every Voice and sing, nineteen hundred, which becomes a mainstay for the NWCP and remains the black National anthem. Every super bowl you hear it sung about five minutes before the national anthem. It's amazing. And I have to say about you know, the RbR X cololored man, which I still teach fairly regularly You know, it's about someone who's able to cross the color line, who's someone who's able to pass but also has these great cultural gifts that are connected to Black America. And he's caught between this idea whether or not to pass into culture or to continue to connect to the greatness of this flowering of black art he makes his choice to live within white America because of the violence that's associated with being bllack. but there's this a great line at the very end of the book where you know, I feel as though I've given up my heritage for a mess of pottage And you know, Potage at the time was, you know, this idea of canned meat which made you an elite you know, that period of time and that's always resonated with me and I think it is such a great metaphor for how black folks think about black art You know, what is the price of crossing over and fame you know, if you actually have to give up this cultural heritage that was so important to the art that you create in the first place. It's it really gets me excited. you know, it it's the autonomy. It's the creation of this It's turning away from assimilation towards autonomy and creating this within itself. And that becomes actually the story of America in his bigger sense. And that's what's really exciting about it. to the general population is we've all benefited from all of this Langston Hughes, anecdotally, I will just say, you know, typical white kid in America from a white town I go to school I land at Cheney State University on on an average afternoon doing some research down the road from the school I was going to And I run into this book by a guy nam Langston Hughes. I had never heard of him because why would I? I mean, I wasn't exposed to it in my town to him And I am so moved by these poems And it suddenly speaks to me of all people, like why? Why am I moved by this? Has nothing to do with me. But that's the beauty of this man. Langston Hughes, let's talk about him for a bit. I too think of America. I mean, you know, Hughes is such a large cultural figure largely because of his poetry, you know, which if you were fortunate enough depending on where you went to school You got to introduce to it in school I was introduced to Lyinkon Hughes' poetry. Growing up in New York City, it seemed as though New York, you know, Linkxson Hghes was all over the place. And I still remember picking up my copy of The Black Poets, which was a book that was edited by Dudley Randall And when I bought that book, I was about fifteen years old, the first thing I went to was to look for the Lkston Hughes poem But it was so he was so much more than that, you know, the group of artists that he works with, you know, because this is a younger generation And they look at the boys and they look at some of these other figures and they want to culturally push the envelope a little bit in ways the mainstream of bllack life wasn't necessarily comfortable with Lexy Hues, of course is a queer man, you know, noobbody really knows that, you know, that's not attached to his legacy at the time And he's working with other queer artists, you know, they create this incredible magazine called Fire. which just says a one print run before the place burns down ironically But it was really them pushing the envelope and he would continue to push that envelope, you know, throughout his career. He dies in nineteen sixty seven. right when' in this mist of the Black power movement. and he was one of the artists that many of the Black arts moveving people, when you think about Barack and those kind of folks They still had a great respect for Lkes and Hughes in the nineteen sixties. in ways that they didn't necessarily respect some of the other artists Right Because he was always about pushing the culture forward. Politically as he push it forward artistically. Yeah pooet, writer, cultural critic wrote extensively in every regard Poetry in general in those days was a much bigger thing than it is, you know commonly today, coming out of Walt Whitman very popularly among white people. Langston Hghes takes that takes up that mantle and some compare him to him in some ways because of the the use of language in a very particular way. He was sometimes criticized by intellectuals that he was showing bllack Americans in an unflattering light to white readers makes no sense to me.. I mean, because you know, many of the leading intellectuals, I mean, they were conflicted about Jack's music Yeah You know, they they they really wanted to see a flowering of black art in a kind of Western music tradition, which existed. You know, they saw jazz as profane, right? It was a place where sex of drugs happened. I mean kind of the same thing we would hear about roock and Rll you know, fifty years later. And Lon Hughes wrote jazz poetry, right? He embraced that culturure of movement And he pushed against this kind of conservative notions Right When we talk about black respectability, right, you know, which which is an important framing of how we think about Tent to tenth and this perier of time You know, Lexy Hughes had no interest in black respectability, right? He wanted to tell the stories of the every manan. his character, Jesse B. Simple was a character that would be serialized in the black press, you know, just be simple. This basic working class guy who provided these incredible insights to what was happening in the world, even though quote unquote, he wasn't a learned and intellectual Mhm He wasn't interested in portraying the ordeal. that's kind of the thing. He had an essay called The Negro Artist and The Racial Mountain And Hughes writes in that if white people are pleased, we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful and ugly too In so many ways, this will pass down as James Brown, right? Black is beautiful. It kind of gets passed in that regard And what's important about this moment, we do tend to celebrate this moment because it was this great flowering You know, but racial violence was still real And there was still the need for economic support It's not surprising that the Harlem Renaissance essentially dies on the vine The financial crash of nineteen twenty nine. You know, one of the reasons why the Harlem Renaissance happens at least artistically is because there's also this influx of white money that's coming into Harlem to support the arts to support this course pollination in terms of black folks and white folks. listening to the same music, you know, the beginning of the race music music industry occurs in the nineteen twenties because they are record companies that are willing to spend money to record black artists, right? You know all of this is happening in this moment. and there is a certain amount of retrenchment that occurs with the financial collapse, right? And if not for the WPA the wherewith all that create this mechanism that allowed arts to be supported on some level, right? We don't necessarily get that transition period between the Harlem Renaissance to the Black Ats movement, you know, without important institutions like the WPA. Right. And that is the dream deferred when it happens that that ends and And we end up in the twentieth century tough fears come come to follow I like this phrase that I read somewhere prepping this conversation. Du Boys lays the foundation. James Weldon Johnson builds the house. Langston Hughes fills it with music. I think that's fair? I think that is it's important though You know, because we tend to gender these intellectual and artistic movements, right. We tend to only talk about of men We haven't talked about Zoraer H Hurston. You know, but one of the most important novels that's written in that period of time is Nella Larson's passing u, you know Jesse Falet who works with the Boys at the Crisis financial benefactor to DuVoise, right? There's so many ways in which there are so many important women who are critical to this moment often get obscured in our celebratory remembrance of Duubois and Wel Johnson and and Lakes and Hughes and others. And we're going to finish up just to reassure you with a story of woman Everybody knows. But before that, I just want these last two subjects, I want to talk about Duke Ellington. As you mentioned before how much he's he takes this outside of Harlem. I mean, the man's a brilliant businessman besides musician And again, he lasts on. I watched him when Ed Sullivan and Johnny Carson as a kid. you know, he came from DC to New York where he started playing piano with different bands and orchestras, eventually becoming a main stay at the cotton Club He becs famous for his jazz compositions. for breaking these racial barriers and performing in white spaces But he was a synthesizer, wasn't he? He was the guy that took a lot of ideas and brought them together. There's no question about that. You think about all the stuff that he's hearing that he incorporates in his music. When you hear things like the Black and Tan fantasy as one example of this You know, he creates a kind of lushness around the idea of Harlem but it is still accessible to everyday black folks. You know, which is why when he records the album he does with Coltranin. But sixty three. I mean, it's so important because Cult trrade is representing this whole kind of cutting edge thing that seems to be moving away from the people No But Duke Ellington was so invested in the people that he knew that it was important to be in conversation with someone like Haltry But again, the great songs that he writes in the forties and the fifties were Billy Strahorn. like takeTA train, you know, lush life and things of that nature You know, he was a collaborator in the best sense of the world He had this huge band. He gave folks opportunities to shine their light within their bands He was someone who I think who understood that The success of black arts as he says in bllack music was not Duke Ellenton' success. It was the success of everybody, right? So his band reflected that sensibility, even as he is a leader, even as he's the face of it, right When you think about the Johnny Hodges and all these kinds of folks, he gave them all a platform to be able to express what they were within this idea of the group Yeah. Billy Straayan gets so little credit. I mean, he gets so little attention, I should say. And he was an openly gay man back then, which took a lot. Which speaks also a great deal to Duke Ellenton's politics at the time. Exactly, yeah. Lastly, I want to talk about Billy Holiday. and I want to do that because I want to end with talking about her most famous song Billy Holiday, I was introduced her through Diana Ross. That was my picture of her, you know playing the character in the big movie, then you begin to understand how complex her story really is as you understand it better. She's originally from Philadelphia, comes to Harlem, part of this whole migration world going along. began singing in the Harlem Nightclubs as a teenager eventually signs a record deal becoming a household name She worked interestingly with John Hammond on recording sessions. I mean, Hamond works with everybody. That's a whole episode unto itself. Inluding Aretha thirty years later. I mean I know right. And Dylan and Springsteeen along the way. Anyway Billy Hollliday is a genius for her voice and improvisational skills. She's picked up by Benny Goodman, Arie Shaw She shares aill bill with Louis Armstrong. She tours and tours and works in records for decades. But it was strange fruit that defines her to this day, tragically in some ways. It was recorded and sung by Billy Holiday in nineteen thirty nine. so we're after the fact, but but it was really it's still sort of considered part of this whole. story T to me about Strange frruit and why it was her song? How did she land with that song? Well, you start with the composition. E though it tells the story of violence in the South, It's a New York song The lyrics written by a Jewish New York City school teacher who wanted to give language to the violence that he was seeing. And you know first, you know, part of it is the timing of the song for Billy Holiday U there's something there's a certain quality to her voice Billy Hooliday was not someone that you would think about as a singer was technically skilled You know, she wasn't a great singer in that way She was an amazing instrumentalist And she used her voice like an instrument, right? So if you were looking for You know, I think about someone like Eleph Fitz Joe, right? If you're looking for this kind of pristine clear singing voice That was never Billy Holiday, right? She used her voice as an instrument. and that instrument brought in all of these conflicting emotions about what she was saying about, whether it was love loss, or the voyts of the south So I think there's something unique about her voice that makes the song its song, right? Why even you know, her ability to sing different versions of it before her death. but when folks think about this s all, they think about her It's also a song that's occurring in a moment that's released in a moment where there are So many things happening globally. This is a moment of Nazi Germany World War I has begun, though the U.S. is not necessarily drawn into it yet I think there was a real concern about the escalation of violence And I think with Strange fruit, she took that escalation of global violence and made it personal madeed something that was so much more intimate. and we really had not seen, you know, we canception to say someone like Ia B Wells We had never artistically seen that kind of pushback to what? anti black violence look like in the United States And of course, she's put penalized for it Right, You know, she's pp not penalized. She's punished for it, right? You know, the loss of her cabaret card, you know, and a lot of that of course had to deal with her addictions But also the fact that she essentially was surveilled by the FBI for her many twenty years of her life. I always remind my youngest students, you know, that when you hear Mississippi godamn in the mid sixties, when you hear public enemy saying fight to power In nineteen eighty nine, they could do so with a level of freedom that in many ways, Billie Holiday wasn't allowed when she's saying Stange fr I mentioned nineteen thirty nine when this came out. and then of course, Lanks and Hughes, that poem wasn't necessarily written about the end of the Parliament Renaissance, but how much melancholy was was there as far as a look backack so soon after, you think? wereere people aware of it ending just as wereere they aware of it ever being in many cases, I suppose You know, my colleague guy Augustus Durorm would argue that melancholy is hardwired into into the black experience, right? I think they were always Achingly looking back at lost possibilities in the art. because the idea had been We can fix this if we just think it through and operate together and express This can be fixed. This whole Jim Crow reality is going to go away And then it didn't for decades. And, you know, Du Bois is a great, you know, measure of this, right boys becomes increasingly radicalized in terms of socialist thinking and what is happening globally because he's recognizing what's happening here in the U.S is not moving the needle When we talk about Ahilip Brando, we talked about in the context of the Pullman poorters earlier, right? But when he organizes what was going to be the first march on Washington in nineteen forty one It was in response to the fact that, you know, America was not delivering on this idea of democracy. att least as it represented racial politics and to a certain extent, economic freedoms for many folks that they were going to march on Washington until FDR stepped in to kind of close that down until of course it re emerges in nineteen sixty three with March in Washington that we know about. You know, the fact that Du Bois is brought up in front of the House on American Committee Right in the early nineteen fifties because he's willing to say that this is not working and was willing to be in conversations. A againain, Paul Robeson, who' someone who we don't talk about necessarily in terms of the Harle of Renaissance, but he is a figure that's there, right? He begins his career there his through line in terms of his relationship with the Communist Party and all those kinds of things. to a general disaffection that many Black Americans had with the pace of quotequote, liberation and freedom as it related to race politics in the U. S.. Right. You can basically draw a line from the fading of the Renaissance straight through to the civil rights movement, of course and all that, which happens in the sixties. And then it still goes on, really? I mean, we're talking about it specific periods, but it really is still a part of an organic passage that we're still within. Our guest today has been Dr. Mark Anthony Neil professor of Black Popular culture in the Department of Black American Studies at Duke University. He is the author of numerous works, including most recently Black Ephemera, The Crisis and Challenge of the Musical Archive. What's that book about? I haven't read that Yeah, it's a book that looks at the ways that, you know, the difficulty of archiving black music and how it's both a challenge, right? you know, in terms of recognizing all these kinds of moments where black culture and black music kind of moved us forward and how we're losing access to that archive you know, so it's a bit of a crisis, but it's also a challenge to do the kind of work that allows us to recapture, you know, all the things that have kind of gone out into the world Sounds like a gift for my wife. Thank you so much, Mark. Nice to see you. I hope you do again. Thanks for listening to American History hit.