The Influence Of Music During The Harlem Renaissance

Music from the Modern Era brought a new freedom and a wide experimentation that challenged certain rules of earlier periods. Music became more important during this time and it would conflict with other genres of music. Architecture from the Modern Era changed the way we think about buildings today. The availability of new building materials drove the creativity of new building styles.

The Harlem Renaissance was a time in history which showed that African Americans are feeling human beings, just like whites. The Harlem Renaissance was a time of cultural celebration because African Americans had endured centuries of slavery. It was believed to have begun in the 1920s just before the Great Depression and the time immediately following the Civil War. There was a huge focus on the realistic portrayal of black life and it influenced generations of black writers. Langston Hughes, an African American poet and creative writer of the Harlem Renaissance, was one of the earliest innovators of the literary art form called jazz.

The Harlem Renaissance shaped the world with jazz music and its rhythms and instrumental solos. There was a huge fascination by the publishing industry with regard to the exotic world of Harlem and it was at a dinner party on March 21, 1924, hosted by Charles

S. Johnson of the National Urban League, that young writers from Harlem were introduced to the white literary foundation. Mr. Johnson was convinced that it was the perfect time for black Americans and he even wrote an essay called the ‘New Negro Movement.’
My choice of a creative product made between 2000 and today is the Freedom Tower which stands on the site of the former World Trade Center. The building of this tower began in 2006 and was completed at 1,776 feet tall in 2013. Way too many people died on September 11th as a result of terrorist attacks which sent America, and the world, into war. This building serves as a beacon of freedom confirming the courage of the United States of America. I chose this piece of architecture because it is personal to me. My husband was serving in the US Army during 9/11. We were stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas and that day changed our lives forever. We lost several friends when the Pentagon was attacked and my husband deployed multiple times in support of the fight on terrorism.
The Freedom Tower in New York City was designed by Daniel Libeskind.

I believe it meets the definition of the Modernist movement because it helped create and improve the environment that was devastated on 9/11. The Tower shows rapid technological advancement and the modernization of society. Daniel Libeskind was the master planner of the site and he designed the Tower to not just be about the building, but what people see when they are walking on the streets. The Tower is less a traditional structure and more a modern form of architecture. With its slender, tapering triangle form, it has eight elongated isosceles triangles which as the sun moves, the building looks like a

kaleidoscope.

The Modern Era was a period of significant development in the fields of music and architecture, to name a few. It was an age of discovery and growth. African art and music during the Harlem Renaissance was how the African Americans expressed their heritage. It permitted freedom from past injustices, like slavery. Architecture during the Modern Era has been a process of refinement and of learning to work with new materials and techniques. Modern architecture is still alive today and is a stronghold of popular culture.