Writers of the Black Chicago Renaissance

African American Music in Chicago during the Chicago Renaissance

african aMerican MUsic in chicago dUring the chicago renaissance robert h. cataliotti While the Black Chicago Renaissance is primarily recognized for the flourishing of African American literature, during this era the city played host to a flourishing of African American music. Chicago’s black musicians applied their creative talents and technical mastery to jazz, blues, gospel, an emerging form, rhythm and blues, and European classical music. One distinction, however , that existed between the literature and the music was that Chicago had already established itself as a crucial center for African American music during the New Negro Renaissance era of the 1920s, when the earlier white Chicago Renaissance was in full swing. Throughout the evolution of the African American literary tradition, black writers have often been drawn to African American music’s ability to function as a cultural conduit and attempted to infuse their texts with its spiritual essence. Certainly the writers of the Chicago Renaissance were working in an environment suffused with black musical creativity. One of the writers whose work served as a bridge between the New Negro Renaissance and the Chicago Renaissance was Frank Marshall Davis. He first moved to the city for a two-year stay as a journalist in 1927 and returned in 1934. Davis clearly found his cultural identity in the music: “But I feel the blues walked into my life when I first heard them and have never left me. That’s why I call my autobiography Livin’ the Blues.” He wrote about the new, black urban experience and considered the free verse he employed in his poetry as the literary equivalent of jazz improvisation: “So I put down my roots to live in Chicago, and I think I had some success in my attempt to mirror Aframerican Chicago in particular. . . . There is no law preventing the ancient muse from blowing a saxophone.”1 Margaret Walker, in the title poem to her 1942 volume For My People, begins the poem with an evocation of the variety and importance of African American music, and draws on music for a number of important poems in the collection. The writers who worked dur- african aMerican MUsic in chicago • 425 ing the Chicago Renaissance, Frank Marshall Davis, Margaret Walker, Richard Wright, Frank London Brown, and Gwendolyn Brooks among them, may be seen as aesthetically coexisting with and in many cases drawing upon the spirit and energy of the music in order to generate their own artistic productions. The foundation for Chicago’s African American music scene was laid during the turn of the nineteenth century when a career in music came to be regarded as a reputable pursuit for members of the city’s black upper class. In From Jazz to Swing, Thomas J. Hennessey states: “In 1890, Chicago’s black musicians were clearly tied to the respectable establishment’s institutions and emphasis on appearances and traditions. Those institutions—the black lodges, churches, and the Eighth Illinois National Guard regiment—provided most of the opportunities for musicians.”2 There was an emphasis on formal musical training, and in 1902 an African American union, Local 208 of the American Federation of Musicians, was formed. During the next two decades, professional opportunities multiplied for African American musicians in Chicago. Theaters opened, requiring pit bands to perform for silent movies and vaudeville artists. In addition , black musicians found work in clubs and for dances. The Great Migration that was leading African Americans out of the South toward northern urban centers, such as Chicago, included many musicians. Jazz, an amalgam of brass bands, ragtime, blues, spirituals, and European forms, found particularly fertile ground for its inception in New Orleans and was carried to Chicago during the early years of the 1920s. These New Orleans jazz men included pianist Jelly Roll Morton, clarinetist Johnny Dodds, cornetist Joe “King” Oliver, trombonist Edward “Kid” Ory, and cornetist Louis Armstrong (switching to trumpet in Chicago). This infusion of new talent combined with the opportunity to perform with established local musicians, such as bandleader and educator Erskine Tate, created an environment that would spur the evolution of jazz. In the 1920s, the Chicago’s jazz scene was making a major contribution to the New Negro Renaissance, even though its locus may have been Harlem. The recordings made by Armstrong with his Hot Five and Hot Seven bands and Morton’s Red Hot Peppers band cemented Chicago as the preeminent center of the jazz world. While Morton is recognized for his innovative compositions, Armstrong’s recorded work in...