Louis Armstrong and the "Invention" of Scatting
What would become known as scatting (also called scat singing) could only be heard in the brass bands of New Orleans. However when Louis Armstrong recorded Heebie Jeebies with Okeh Records in 1926, scatting was introduced to a much wider audience. During the 1920s recording time was so expensive that when Armstrong's music fell off his stand instead of stopping the session to pick it up he just began to scat. This would change singing forever as even today many singers use this technique across a variety of musical genres.
Bessie Smith Sings the St. Louis Blues
Known as the "Empress of the Blues," Bessie Smith is one of the greatest female blues singers in the world. She recorded "Down Hearted Blues" in 1923 on the Columbia Record label. Listen to her sing in the short film above and think about how the blues has influenced many musical genres including country music and R&B.
Academic Video Online
Music Research Databases
Use the library resources below to locate scholarly information on composers, performers, or musical genres related to the Harlem Renaissance.
- Black Sacred Music
Published from 1987 to 1995, Black Sacred Music sought to establish theomusicology—a theologically informed musicology—as a distinct discipline, incorporating methods from anthropology, sociology, psychology, and philosophy to examine the full range of black sacred music. Topics included black secular music, the early days of rap, soul, jazz, civil rights songs, the religious music of Africa and the African diaspora, spirituals, gospel music, and the music of the black church.
The journal consisted of scholarly articles, essays, hymns and folk songs, sermons, historical reprints, and reviews of books, hymn books, and recordings. It also published volumes of archival writings by R. Nathaniel Dett, William Grant Still, and Willis Laurence James. - JSTOR
Jstor Is a highly selective digital library of academic content in many formats and disciplines. The collections include top peer-reviewed scholarly journals as well as respected literary journals, academic monographs, research reports from trusted institutes, and primary sources. The library has the entire Arts & Sciences Collection, the Life Sciences Collection and Business Journal IV. We have both archival and current subscriptions.
Remembering Duke Ellington
RTÉ Concert Orchestra pays tribute to Duke Ellington and his legendary arrangements from this time period. Listen to this album in its entirety on Naxos Music Library.
Harlem Renaissance Music Books
Black music in the Harlem Renaissance: a collection of essays
| Location | Call No. |
|---|---|
| Shelf 3rd Flr - Main | ML3556.8.N5 B6 1990 |
"This book, from the series Contributions in Afro-American and African Studies, examines African-American musical activity during the Harlem Renaissance, a movement that began in the mid-1920s as an effort to secure economic, social, and cultural equality. The musicians whose compositions, performances, and lives are described worked primarily in the United States and England; the book includes a bibliography of works composed from 1919 to 1936."-Music Educators Journal
Deep River: Music and Memory in Harlem Renaissance Thought
| Location | Call No. |
|---|---|
| Shelf 3rd Flr - Main |
In Deep River Paul Allen Anderson focuses on the role of African American folk music in the Renaissance aesthetic and in political debates about racial performance, social memory, and national identity. This book elucidates how spirituals, African American concert music, the blues, and jazz became symbolic sites of social memory and anticipation during the Harlem Renaissance.
Harlem Renaissance Composers and Performers
Click on a NAME or IMAGE to find library resources about a composer or performer from this time period.
