Rhapsodies In Black: Music And Words From The Harlem Renaissance is three things.
On the surface, it's a 4-CD, 100 page collection of music, spoken word, fine art, photographs, and politics of the Harlem Renaissance period. The collection contains 75 seminal recordings by giants like Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington and Ethel Waters. There are also 20 newly recorded readings of classic poems and prose of the era by modern figures such as Angela Bassett, Quincy Jones, Branford Marsalis, Eartha Kitt, and Gregory Hines.
More importantly, Rhapsodies is my search for Harlem.
In 1998, I began work on an album of my own called Harlem. The songs on Harlem are a sort of story cycle about a black couple in the post World War I American south. Like many blacks during that period, this couple has heard about a place in the North where blacks have created a community of their own; a place where blacks are free to experiment and follow their muses. A place they can call their own.
The Harlem Renaissance of the early 20th century was one of the greatest experiments American culture has ever seen (with the '60s counter-culture movement running a close second) "Black" in 1920's Harlem was an attitude, not a color. Blacks (or Negroes, or African Americans, or Niggaz, or Homeboys, or whatever makes you feel politically correct and open-mined) in 1921 Harlem sang opera, wrote sonnets, jumped jive, painted oils, and blew the blues. Creativity was the credo in Harlem. The only prerequisite was to have truth, attitude and integrity. There was a word for it: Negritude. Harlem was a place with no boundaries and endless potential. And for a short while, it seemed like the whole country (if not a good part of the world) looked to Harlem.
In the middle of making the record, I stumbled across an art exhibit called Rhapsodies In Black. Co-curated by Richard Powell (who consulted on the box set), the exhibit of Rhapsodies landed me right in the middle of 1921 Harlem. For 3 weeks I returned to the museum to listen to Renaissance recordings (over 200 compiled by Paul Oliver, who contributes an essay to the box set), pore over Langston Hughes manuscripts, watch Oscar Micheaux films, and stare at Aaron Douglas paintings. The exhibit of Rhapsodies In Black felt like finding my long lost home. It also helped me finish my own record.
I want Harlem back. Thankfully, I found bits of it while recording the spoken word readings for this collection. I saw it in a hotel room recording August Wilson and in a Westside L.A. office recording Debbie Allen. I heard Harlem in Lou Rawls' baritone and Levar Burton's dignity. Duke Ellington is alive in Quincy Jones and Langston Hughes lives in August Wilson. It was the honor of a lifetime to meet the artists who read for this collection.
Lastly, I suppose Rhapsodies is a love-letter to Harlem. This box set contains all those things I love about that place, that time, that culture. It's my hope that the release of this box set at the start of a new century may remind some young 21st century artists what it means to be independent, brave and black. Hopefully, it will begin your journey to find (or maybe even start) your own Harlem.
To learn more about Shawn and his own album, Harlem, visit his own website www.ShawnAmos.com.
Subscribe to Feed
