Root and Branch: Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, and the Struggle to End Segregation

Author: Rawn James

The Supreme Court 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education is widely considered one of the milestones of the civil rights movement. James Rawn explores the two men,  Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall, and the institutions they built- Howard University School of Law and NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, as well as the legal strategies they developed, to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). This is a must and inspirational read. You will have a deeper appreciation for the dedication, commitment, and intellectual and legal brilliance of Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall.

Motown In Love: Lyrics From the Golden Era

Author: Herb Jordan

Detroit in the 1960s was an unlikely stage for a production that featured some of the most inspirational love songs ever written. It may seem equally unlikely, given today’s portrayal of black men that most of those songs were written by young black men. Default notions of romance are an awkward overlay to the reality of today’s popular music with its devaluation and degradation of women and love.

Herb Jordan catalogues the love songs of Motown which were the soundtrack of a generation and America’s Great Songbook. In this songbook, black men unashamedly declare their love for their women with a delicacy of surgeon.  Poet laureate, Smokey Robinson, wrote of love for a woman as “a rosebud blooming in the warmth of the summer sun.” Besides the delight of the Motown love lyrics, Jordan reminds of soft and sensitive side of black men who found meaning in love (not guns and gangs) and identity in their relationships with their women- their other half.

The Sea is Wide and My Boat is so Small: Charting the Course for the Next Generation

Author: Marian Wright Edelman

Written in the form of letters, Marian Wright Edelman reflects on the state of children in America and what must be done to provide a caring and nurturing context for their growth and well-being. This meditative manifesto is a discourse on building the “village” we often talk about in raising children. On a Prayer For Twenty-First-Century Children, Edelman juxtaposes what is required with what is desired and embraced: “God help us to raise a new generation of children/With highly developed computer skills but poorly developed consciences…With a gigantic commitment to the big “I” but little sense of responsibility to the bigger “we”. She leaves no stone unturned in the service of building a better and more caring society for children. This should be required reading for adults.

The Warmth of Other Suns

Author: Isabel Wilkerson

The Warmth of Other Suns is Wilkerson’s first book. (Its title is borrowed from the celebrated black writer Richard Wright, who fled Jim Crow Mississippi in the 1920s to feel the warmth of those other suns.) Based on more than a thousand interviews, written in broad imaginative strokes, this book, at 622 pages, is an epic narrative of one of the great migrations witnessed in America. The migration of black from the South to the North is often presented as a failed “social experiment.” These blacks are too frequently demeaned in literature as the wretched of the earth: thrown together in dead-end Northern slums, cast as poor illiterates who imported out-of-wedlock births, joblessness and welfare dependency wherever they went.

Yet, Wilkerson in The Warmth of Other Suns tells another story. Today, these black migrants are viewed as a modern version of the Europeans who flooded America’s shores in the late 1800s and early 1900s. What linked them together, Wilkerson writes, was their heroic determination to roll the dice for a better future. This is a delightful read and a departure from negative narrative of black life which is so often presented as the quintessential fact of black in America.

The Making of African America: The Four Great Migrations

Author: Ira Berlin

The Four Great Migrations frame the history of people of African descent in America, setting the paths by which Africans and then African Americans made and remade black and American life between the seventeenth and twenty-first centuries. These four massive upheavals form the foundation of Ira Berlin’s sweeping new interpretation of the African American experience.

This book is certainly a companion read to The Warmth of Other Suns, and one that will not disappoint. Tracing the transit from Africa to America, Virginia to Alabama, Biloxi to Chicago, and Lagos to the Bronx, Berlin challenges the traditional presentation of a linear, progressive development of black America. The Making of African America speaks of the old giving way to the new, innovation dancing with tradition, change challenging stasis- a two beat theme that has a profound effect on African American communities, families and individual lives, continually remaking all aspects of black culture from language to working patterns, from religion to art.

Michelle and I send warm wishes to all those celebrating Kwanzaa this holiday season. This is a joyous time of year when African Americans and all Americans come together to celebrate our blessings and the richness of our cultural traditions. This is also a time of reflection and renewal as we come to the end of one year and the beginning of another. The Kwanzaa message tells us that we should recall the lessons of the past even as we seize the promise of tomorrow.

-Statement on Kwanzaa by the President and First Lady

The Kwanzaa holiday was created in 1966 to introduce seven guiding principles which were seen as essential to improving the living conditions and life chances of African Americans. Unquestionably, since 1966, the lives of many professional and middle class African American have improved. In fact, some blacks rank among the highest paid professionals, and enjoy enormous social prestige. Yet, for the vast majority of African Americans, in particular those living in areas of concentrated poverty have witness their financial earning decline and their social conditions worsen.

Ironically, in the Age of Obama, the condition of African Americans has worsen: African Americans have experience a rise in poverty, continued high incarceration of young black men, many who are most likely victims of homicide; a decline in education performance, almost of African American students do not graduate; a steady increase of in HIV cases, in 2008 African Americans made up an estimated 50% of new diagnosed HIV cases, and they have experienced an unbelievable increase in children born out of wedlock-almost 70 percent of black children are born out of wedlock, and in 1963 when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech, more than 70 percent of all Black families were headed by married couples; that number is now 48 percent. To be fair, it should be noted that the deteriorating of blacks dates back to the 1980s with the policies of Reagan.

Answers in Progress: Kwanzaa

The seven principles of Kwanzaa – Unity, Self Determination, Collective Work and Responsibility, Cooperative Economics, Purpose, Creativity, and Faith – express the values that have inspired us as individuals and families; communities and country. These same principles have sustained us as a nation during our darkest hours and provided hope for better days to come. Michelle and I know the challenges facing many African American families and families in all communities at this time, but we also know the spirit of perseverance and hope that is ever present in the community. It is in this spirit that our family extends our prayers and best wishes during this season and for the New Year to come.

-Statement on Kwanzaa by the President and First Lady

It has become abundantly clear that the conditions which necessitated the creation of Kwanzaa are still present today and demand our attention. The steady deterioration of the black family, self-destructive and irresponsible behavior of too many young and older black men, supported culture values and a culture orientation which discourages family stability, marriage, and academic achievement. Given these conditions, how can Kwanzaa reverse this trend?

Family-Centered Holiday

Kwanzaa is a family-centered holiday, stressing a mode of communication and behavior which serves to strengthening the ties that bind family members together, and reinforces their identity as family. Family is important and essential to child and adolescent socialization. The values and social orientation of dating, marriage, education, and morality, respect for human life, and community-building are introduced and taught in the family. Children and youth learn how to be mothers and fathers and providers and keepers of the culture in the family. To be sure, the family is smallest example of the community-its strength and illnesses, possibilities and vulnerabilities. The Kwanzaa principle Unity instructs parents to work in harmony with each other to create the conditions which nurture caring relationships and mutuality that define the essence of family. Put another way, Kwanzaa places a priority and premium on daily activities which reinforce the value of family togetherness.

Male/Female Relationships

It is now common place to hear men debase and degrade women, especially in popular music: Jay-Z, “If you’re havin’ girl problems I feel bad for you son/ I got 99 problems but a bitch ain’t one.” VH1’s reality show, Flavor of Love, presents women, in particular black women, as sexual objects, waiting to be used. Little wonder then that only 48 percent of black families are headed by married couples, and 70 percent of black children are born out of wedlock. Kwanzaa is the antidote to destructive narrative of male female relationships portrayed in popular lyrics and on reality TV shows. The principle unity instructs men and women to seek harmony and stability as expressed in poem, “Answer: This Magic Moment.”

Now that you have young love

Insist upon the dawn’

Its mornings bright with sun and rain

That summon up continuity

Now that your love is bounded and

Culturally confirmed, do not forget:

First meetings, great and early laughter

Preparation for first dates, delicate touches and

Kisses that quicken heartbeats, love notes and

Phone calls into the midnights’ dawns

Do not forget promises; there area always pure promises of, “forever yours”

-Haki Madhubuti

Kwanzaa thus serves to reinforce relationships between men and women, instructing them to be respectful of each other’s humanity, and to seek to develop each other in love and togetherness. Each Kwanzaa, those who are in relationships assess their relationships and their commitments to their partner, striving to build stronger bonds of love.

Black Men: In Love and In Trouble

In recent years, terms such as crisis, at-risk, marginal and endangered, are used with increasing regularity to describe the plight and condition of young Black males. The reason such stark and ominous terms are used with reference to Black males is quite clear: a broad array of social and economic indicators point with alarming consistency to the undeniable fact that large numbers of individuals who fall within these two social categories, Black and male, are in deep trouble. Whether the indicators relate to employment or education, health or crime, Black males are consistently clustered toward the end of the spectrum generally regarded as least desirable, and most vulnerable. For example:

• 29.4% of African American males born in 1991 (the year my son was born) will spend some time in their lifetime incarcerated (Department of Justice).
• The number one cause of death for 15-24 year old black males is homicide (2004 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
• Black men in the United States have the shortest life expectancy (69.5 years) of all other racial and ethnic groups – averaging over six years less than white men who live 75.7 years (2005 National Center for Health Statistics)
• Unemployment among black males is higher than any other population at 14.1% (Bureau of Labor, January 2009).
• Over seventy percent of black children in America are raised by in parent households where no father is present (National Center for Health Statistics, 2007).

“More strikingly than patterns of military enlistment, marriage or college graduation, prison time differentiates the young adulthood of black men from the life course of white males. Imprisonment is now a common life event for an entire demographic group,” said Becky Pettit, one of the study’s authors and a University of Washington assistant professor of sociology.

Enough said. The situation with black males, in particular, young black men, is no longer a problem but self-perpetuating conditions that is heart of the disintegration of the black family. Kwanzaa offers a cultural framework for black male regeneration, beginning with the Seven Principles of Kwanzaa: Unity- between black men and black women; Self-determination, redefining young black male identity from “gangstas,” “pimps and players,” to fathers and brothers; Collective Work & Responsibility, being “my brother’s and sister’s keeper,; Cooperative Economics, the practice  of African Americans working together to develop self-reliant, locally-based and community controlled economy and profiting from them together; Purpose,  building safe and thriving communities through service and sacrifice; Creativity, an ethic and practice of continuous improvement; and Faith, believing in capacity of black people to make progress (beginning with oneself).

Building Healthy and Thriving Communities

It is self-evident that children live in families and families live in neighborhoods. Today, many African American neighborhoods are not aligned with the aspirations of the families in those neighborhoods. Gangs, drug trafficking, gun violence, school dropout, and teenage prostitution have come to characterize too many neighborhoods of color. Black neighborhood youth find identity with street gangs, and meaning in gang violence. Even youth who are not members of gangs adopt the gang lifestyle- “keeping it gansta,” or referring to friends as “homies” or “homeboy.”

Kwanzaa seeks to align African American neighborhoods with shared values (7 guiding principles of Kwanzaa) of the families which inhabit those neighborhoods. The share values of Kwanzaa provide youth and adults with a shared identity, common purpose and collective destiny. Rather than the individualist orientation “looking out for number one” or in its worse state-“all against all,” Kwanzaa provides for culture framework which advocates that every member of the family and community is constituted by a web of interpersonal relationships which sees itself as collectively responsible for the success and failure of the neighborhood- its children and youth, the quality of education they receive, and the safety and well-being its neighbors.

Culture Orientation

Culture is a people’s brain or intelligence, dictating how they see themselves and the world and how they respond to their social condition. The popular culture of African Americans, in particular black youth is now informed by the worse of its “street” element. Historian and cultural sociologist Orlando Patterson Popular culture has an intoxicating pull on youth people, especially those with weak family and culture ties. Orlando Patterson argues that sociologist need to pay more attention to what has been called the “cool pose” culture which for many young black men is “almost like a drug, hanging out on the street after school, shopping, and dressing sharply, sexual conquest, party drugs, hip-hop, music and culture.”

Whatever the nomenclature, “cool pose” or “keeping it real” or something else entirely, this peculiar aspect of the contemporary black experience Thomas Chatter, Washington Post editorial writers, argues – the inverted-pyramid hierarchy of values stemming from the glorification of lower-class reality in the hip-hop era- has quietly taken the place of white racism as the most formidable obstacle to success and equality in the black middle classes. Contrary to the “cool pose” culture, Kwanzaa grounds young people in cultural values and historical models- Martin Luther King’s “service ethic”, Anna Julia Cooper male/female model of Complementarity, the youth example of struggle by SNCC, and Motown’s songbook. In brief, the key crisis in black life remains the culture crisis-the crisis in view and values.

Enhancing Education

More people of color are taking the SAT, but test scores for black students remain lowest among racial and ethnic groups, according to data released this week by the College Board. Black students scored at least 72 points behind the overall average in critical reading, mathematics and writing. A major contributing factor to the decline in academic excellence by young blacks is the “cool pose” cultural orientation, which equates learning and academic achievement with “acting white, negating black historical intellectual accomplishment-W.E.B. DuBois, Anna Julia Cooper, George Washington Caver, Mary McLeod Bethune, Barack and Michelle Obama.

The African American holiday Kwanzaa with its emphasis on continuous learning (Creativity principle) and high achievement can be an effective intervention for families and schools. Kwanzaa provides incentives for children and youth to read and excel in school. Books are one of the seven Kwanzaa symbols, and are a mandatory part of Kwanzaa gift giving. No matter what is given during Kwanzaa, a book must be given. The book is to remind both parents and the child of the importance and priority of learning and education. In addition, the Kwanzaa symbols are instructive for reinforcing academic learning.  Take for example the symbol of the African American flag. The color black is symbolic of black people (black youth); the color red is symbolic of effort and work; and the color green is symbolic of the future and hope that comes from the effort and work. In the context of school, the lesson is that students who appreciate learning, respect each other and who, put forth an earnest effort at studying will excel academically and achieve in life.

Revisiting the Purpose of Kwanzaa

Given the scope of the crisis facing blacks in America, the spread and celebration of Kwanzaa, with emphasis on the practice of the seven guiding principles as a way of living for African Americans, is central and essential to eradicating the conditions which have given rise to the cultural malaise and social pathology which has arrested the development of African American. As is the practice of Kwanzaa, in 2010, families, neighborhoods and networks or black organizations must take assessment of what each has accomplished in relationship to the seven guiding principles of Kwanzaa. Beginning with the family and then expanding outward to the local and national African American community, the time has come for blacks to practice daily: Unity, Self Determination, Collective Work and Responsibility, Cooperative Economics, Purpose, Creativity, and Faith.

Now, thirty-nine years, after its release, we revisit this album and its social commentary on America and the world as a lens to measure what America’s and the world looks like now.  To be sure, Marvin Gaye was interested in radically improving the human condition. The environment is one of key factors to improving the human condition.

Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)

Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)” laments what is happening to the ecology, the deliberate destroying of the eco-system by humans. Anticipating environmentalist and global warming advocates Marvin ask: “Where did all the blue skies go? / Poison is the wind that blows from the north and south and east.” Whether the issue is strip mining, the cutting of trees in the forest of the storing or nuclear waste, the results are the same: “Radiation underground and in the sky/animals and birds who live near by are dying.”

Poignantly, Mercy Mercy Me highlights the dangers of oil drilling the ocean, a warning that has come to fruition with the Gulf Oil disaster: “Oil wasted on the ocean and upon/our seas fish full of mercury.”

Marvin Gaye ends this song with a haunting question that merits consideration today: “How much more abuse from man can she stand?”

You are my pride and joy
And I just love you, little darlin’
Like a baby boy loves his toy
You’ve got kisses sweeter than honey
And I work seven days a week to give you all my money
And that’s why you are my pride and joy
And I’m tellin’ the world
-Marvin Gaye

During the 1960s, it common place to hear black men say and sing to black women, “How sweet it is to be loved by you” or “You are my everything”. These statements echoed the emotional sentiments of the Motown song writers: Smokey Robinson, Marvin Tarplin, William Stevens, Brain, Edward Holland, Lamont Dozier, Bobby Rogers, Marvin Gaye, Norman Whitfield, Clarence Paul, Barrett Strong, Stevie Wonder, and Henry Cosby. All of these men and others contributed to the Great American Songbook known as the Motown Sound and Songbook. The Beatles and James Taylor, masters of songwriting themselves, recorded Motown songs. Bob Dylan spoke of Smokey Robinson as ‘the greatest living American poet.”

This songbook was much more than a collection of songs. It (songbook) speaks volumes about softer side of black men as well as their humanity. For these writers were not exceptions, but reflective of black men, in particular young black men, who lived in low-income neighborhoods. They refused to let the circumstances around them, public or low-income housing and other factors associated with low-income status, mute their imagination or lower their moral expectations, especially as it related to male/female relationships. Instead, they gave black men and women a new vocabulary which to speak to each other-“You’re A Wonderful One”, new concepts of love-“Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever” and “Distant Lover” and “Your Precious Love”, and a deeper understanding of the complexity of relationships- “All Is Fair In Love” and “The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game”.

Where today’s songwriters and producers see artists from inner-city projects as perfect instruments for rap street stories and gritty hip-hop soul, the men at Motown dreamed higher, imagining, for example, the Brewster Housing’s own Diana Ross as just the vehicle for a classic ballad. In the midst of a low-income neighborhood, they heard a symphony. At Motown, “95 percent of the songs were written by young, black men,” Jordan says. “They wrote for the male and female artists, and brought to it a sense of vulnerability any English professor would be proud of. Coming out of Detroit, one of harshest environments you could imagine, they elected to write love songs.”

The Motown writers drew their inspiration and song materials from ordinary life in the “neighborhood,” giving beauty and narrative to everyday life of black people. They weighed-in on the enduring power of love, “What Love Has Joined Together”, writing poetically. “It would be easier to take the cold from snow or the heat from fire
than for anyone to take my love from you ’cause you’re my heart’s desire, I really love you. What love has joined together can’t nobody take it apart”. To be sure they advised that love transcended space and time and that when men and women are joined together in their hearts, nothing is impossible: “Even if they separate us,” the songwriter says “a thousand miles apart, we will still be together in each other’s heart. It would be easier to change all the seasons…baby, of the year than for anyone to change the way I feel about you; I love you dear”.

Moreover, Motown writers knew that the bonds of love kept men and women tied together no matter the circumstance: From “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”:

Listen, baby/ Ain’t no mountain high/ Ain’t no valley low/ Ain’t no river wide enough, baby/ If you need me, call me/ No matter where you are/ No matter how far/ Just call my name/ I’ll be there in a hurry/ You don’t have to worryRemember the day/ I set you free/ I told you/ You could always count on me/ From that day on I made a vow/ I’ll be there when you want me/ Some way, some howMy love is alive/ Way down in my heart/ Although we are miles apart/ If you ever need a helping hand/ I’ll be there on the double/ As fast as I can

The Motown male songwriters captured the female perspective instructing men and women: “You Can’t Hurry Love”.They revered women, writing about ordinary black women as Goddesses and magicians, cherishing them, seeing them as central and essential to life. From “My Girl”:

I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day.  When it’s cold outside I’ve got the month of May. I guess you’d say what can make me feel this way? My girl/ I’ve got so much honey the bees envy me. I’ve got a sweeter song than the birds in the trees. I guess you’d say what can make me feel this way? My girl/ I don’t need no money, fortune, or fame. I’ve got all the riches baby one man can claim. I guess you’d say what can make me feel this way? My girl.

The Motown writers were unafraid to tell about the vulnerability of men, writing Please Return Your Love to Me: “I cry myself to sleep at night/For fear of another holding you tight for and baby I miss you with each passing day/Every night on my knees I pray.” And black men rush to apologize, even crying to display their remorse and hurt, if they were caught doing wrong: From “The Track of My Tears”:

People say I’m the life of the party/ Because I tell a joke or two
Although I might be laughing loud and hearty/ Deep inside I’m blue
So take a good look at my face/ You’ll see my smile looks out of place If you look closer, it’s easy to trace/ The tracks of my tears

Again, in contrast to the popular male image of today, black men were unafraid to show their emotions and share their pain. Sometime the hurt from the lost of a woman was so great the man was immobilized and wish for rain. From “I Wish It Would Rain”:

Sunshine, blue skies, please go away/ My girl has found another and gone away/ With her went my future, my life is filled with gloom/ So day after day, I stay locked up in my room I know to you it might sound strange/ But I wish it would rain
Cause so badly I wanna go outside. (Such a lovely day)/ But everyone knows that a man ain’t supposed to cry, listen
I gotta cry ‘cause cryin’ eases the pain, oh yeah/ People this hurt I feel inside, words could never explain/ I just wish it would rain

The Motown Songbook, which surely is America’s Great Songbook, is a narrative of black men in love. The lessons of love which they the men at Motown wrote about helped to inform and shape black male/female relationship. Equally important, their songs gave spiritual and moral guidance to black men, instructing them in the ways love, forever reminding them of divinity of black women because: “Heaven must have sent you {black men} from above.”

Motown is the brainchild of Berry Gordy Jr. From the beginning, Gordy envisioned a record company which would be distinguished by its sound and the quality of the music it produced. Indeed, as history shows, Gordy established not just a record company, but an institution of American musical know-how and a new paradigm for producing records. As Quincy Jones writes, “the music of Motown Records is a challenge and an inspiration to anyone making pop records. Because quite simply, the musical achievements of Berry Gordy’s company have been monumental. The talented people that flowed through Motown, both the performers on stage and the writers and producers behind the secences, broke down the barriers between black and white, between the R&B world and the “mainstream,” letting everyone see the beauty of black music.”

The Motown Model

To gain the control he needed, Gordy decided to start his own record company. Borrowing $800 from his family, he founded Hitsville USA in 1959. “This was something”, Gordy says “I’d been thinking hard about wanting to come up with the perfect name… I came up with…Hitsville, I proclaimed, that’s the only mane I think expresses what I want it [Motown] to be, a hip name for a factory where its are going to be built.”

Gordy’s conception of how Motown would function was informed by his experience working Lincoln-Mercury. Gordy says:

My own dream for a hit factory was quickly taking form, a concept that had been shaped by principles I had learned on the Lincoln-Mercury assembly line. At the plant the cars started our as just a frame, pull alone on conveyor belts until they emerged at the end of the line- brand spanking new cars rolling off the line. I wanted the same concept for my company, only artist and songs and records. I want a place where a kid off the street could walk in one door and unknown and come out another a recording artist-a star.

Gordy used the assembly line model from the car industry to develop the Motown Production System (MPS). Music critic Nelson George argues that Motown’s edge, the difference that made it work where so many others [record companies] failed was the talent Gordy acquired the way in which he organized the talent he acquired.

Motown Production System

Gordy organized and broke down MPS into three functions: Create, Make and Sell. The Create phase, as Gordy calls it involved writing, producing and recording; the Making phase, manufacturing, pressing of records; and the Sell phase- placing records with distributors, getting airplay, marketing, and advertising. Motown succeeded in all three areas, but excelled in the Creative phase.

Song Writing

Motown developed and produced a who’s who of the musical world: poet Smokey Robinson; “My Girl”,  “My Guy”’ “Tracks of My Tears”; legendary songwriting trio, Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Edward Holland Holland/Dozier/Holland; “You Can’t Hurry Love”,  “Reach Out I’ll Be There”, “Baby, I Need Your Loving”, “Heat Wave”, and “Stop! In the Name of Love”; Nick” Ashford and Valerie Simpson, “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”, “You’re All I Need To Get By”; Norman Whitfield; Ain’t Too Proud To Beg”, “Beauty Is Only Skin Deep” and “I Know I’m Losing You”, “I Heard It Through The Grapevine”; Lionel Richie, “Easy”, “Three Times a Lady”; and Stevie Wonder, “You Are the Sunshine of My Life”, “Higher Ground”; Marvin Gaye, “What’s Going On”, Let’s Get It On”. In a word, as Herb Jordon observes, the Motown song writers, ‘invisible architects of the Motown sound assembled the substance of everyday into songs that were at once sophisticated and earthy, personal and universal. In many ways it was the Great American Songbook of the second half of the [twentieth century].”

Producing the Motown Sound

Motown is forever known for its sound- the Sound of Young America. The classic Motown Sound, 1959-1968 was defined by a number of characteristics: the use of tambourines to accent the back beat, prominent and often melodic electric bass guitar lines, distinctive melodic and chord structures, and a call and response singing style that originated in gospel music. In addition, pop production techniques such as the use of orchestral string sections, charted horn sections, and carefully arranged background vocals were also used.

Studio Band

The foundation of the Motown Sound was its talented studio musicians, known as the Funk Brothers:

Keyboards - Johnny Griffith, Earl Van Dyke

Guitars – Robert White, Eddie Willis, Joe Messina

Bass – James Jamerson

Drums – Benny Benjamin, Richard “Pistol” Allen

Percussion – Eddie “Bongo” Brown

Vibes – Jack Ashford

The Funk Brothers were the brilliant but anonymous studio band responsible for the instrumental backing on countless Motown records from 1959 up to the company’s move to Los Angeles in 1972. They were central architects of the fabled “Motown sound.” Motown’s sophisticated, urbane brand of R&B certainly would have been difficult to achieve without the extensive jazz training that many of the Funk Brothers brought to the Hitsville.

Sound Effects

The Motown used innovative techniques. For example, most Motown records feature two drummers, playing together or overdubbing one another — Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” used three drummers. A number of songs utilized instrumentation and percussion unusual in soul music. The Temptations’ “It’s Growing” features Earl Van Dyke playing a toy piano for the song’s introduction, snow chains are used as percussion on Martha & the Vandellas’ “Nowhere to Run”, and a custom oscillator was built to create the synthesizer sounds used to accent Diana Ross & the Supremes’ “Reflections” A tire iron was used in the Martha & the Vandellas “Dancing in the Streets”. Gordy put it best saying: “Long before thee were electronic synthesizers, I was looking for new ways to crate different sound effects. We would try anything to get a unique percussion sound: twp blocks of wood slapped together, striking little mallets on glass ash trays, shaking jars of dried peas. I might see a producer dragging in big bike chains.”

Recording Artist

Motown developed and cultivated a rooster of the finest recording artists in the history of American music. A partial list of the Motown artists tells it all: Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, The Marvelettes, Marvin Gaye, Tammi Terrell, The Temptations, The Supremes, Gladys Knight & the Pips, The Isley Brothers, Stevie Wonder, Martha and the Vandellas, The Jackson 5, The Four Tops, Lionel Richie and The Commodores, and Rick James. These artists were the faces of Motown and gave voice to the Motown sound. The stylist Temptations established the bar for men’s fashion and three-part harmony, featuring five lead singers. Smokey Robinson & The Miracles put poetry in the music and provided material for love letters. Marvin Gaye excited female listeners with a voice smooth as silk. At their peak in the mid-1960s, The Supremes rivaled The Beatles in worldwide popularity. The Jackson Five astound the world with their musical maturity and hits Stevie Wonder created the songbook for the 1980s. The list and narrative achievements are exhaustive.

Record Mixing

The other ingredient which helped to create the Motown sound was the art of mixing. “Mixing,” Gordy says, “was so important to me that it seem I spent half my life at the mixing board. To get just the right sound, the right blend, I would mix and mix and them remix.” Not to be minimized, mixing Gordy maintains was the make or break of the record. He emphatically states: “Often the differences between the various mixes were subtle, but those subtleties, I felt could make or break a record.”

Quality Control

One of the truly unique features of the Motown Production System was its quality control component. Gordy again borrowed from the Detroit automatic industry to create his quality control unit. Gordy credits the quality control meetings with contributing to the overall growth of Motown.   “In order to ensue top product”, Gordy asserts, “I set up quality control, a system I had heard around at Lincoln-Mercury. The producers would submit their final mixes into our quality control where Billie Jean (quality control expert) would listen to them.”  This was the first step in getting a Motown record released. If the records met Jean’s standard, Gordy says Jean would “bring them into our Friday morning meeting. The Friday morning product evaluation meeting was my meeting. That’s where we picked the records we would release.”

Motown Forever

Berry Gordy conceptualized and created a musical paradigm that changed the way music was made in the 1960s and in the process established a special place for Motown in the musical history of America. American Idol, for example, coordinated its Motown show to coincide with the 50th Anniversary of Motown.

Gordy created the American songbook of the second half of the twentieth century. Through his artist, producers and musicians, he gave a fresher meaning to love and now possibilities to male/female relationships- “The Hunter Get Captured by the Game”, and “Baby Love” which appealed appropriately to “young” America. To be sure, he took talent people and organized them in a fashion to produce the greatest hit-making process in American history.

Cited as the best-selling jazz record of all time, Kind of Blue had a profound impact on American music and was the most influential, enduring work of its genre. It’s no longer necessary to remind music lovers that Kind of Blue is essential listening, and that everybody who wants to make sense of the music of our time ought to have at least some idea of what’s good about it.

Milestones: Prelude to Kind of Blue

To some, Milestones is the ultimate jazz album. Record in 1959 with some of jazz’s most accomplished musicians-Miles Davis, Julian “Cannonball Adderley (alto sax), John Coltrane (tenor sax), Red Garland (piano), Paul Chambers (bass), and Philly Joe Jones (drums)- it was considered the perfect Be-bop recording of all time, with complex textures, dense voicing, elaborate melodic lines, and intricate arrangements with multiple parts, all played at breathtaking tempos.

Rooted firmly in the small group tradition of Be-bop, Milestones contained new elements. Four of the six songs on the album were written with a blues structure. The title track, “Milestones” was a pure modal tune, a sign of things to come

Scales, rather than chords, as a basis for improvisation, is a signature characteristic of Modal Jazz. Modal jazz broke away from the tendency in jazz to move rapidly through a series of cord changes, each of which would be the basis for sol improvisation. There was an abrupt shift away from Be-bops’ rapid chord changing, which went along with its frenetic tempos and technical acrobatics. Davis’s uses of scales, signaling jazz’s new direction which can be heard on the title track, “Milestones”, written with only two chords.

The Making of Kind of Blue

Kind of Blue grew out of the confluence of two African cultural expressions. First was the influence of musical and dance expression of Les Ballets Africans (of Guinea) and the African American faith-based tradition. A performance of the Ballet Africaine from Guinea in 1958 had originally sparked Miles’ interest in modal music. Miles had very big ears and was always listening for new musical currents, both inside himself, from his past, and to new sources fellow musicians brought him. This African music, which featured the finger piano or kalimba, was the kind of music which stayed for long periods of time on a single chord, weaving in and out of consonance and dissonance.

Writing in his autobiography Miles notes:  I got into the modal thing by watching a performance by the Ballet Africaine Guinea…when I first heard them play the finger piano that night and sing this song with this their guy dancing man that was some powerful stuff. It was beautiful. And their rhythm, the rhythm of the dancers was something. I was counting off while I was watching them. They wee so acrobatic. They had one drummer watching them dance, doing their flips…in this bad rhythm. He would hit it whey they would fall. And man, he was catching everybody that did anything. The other drummer got them, too. So they would do rhythm like 5/4 and 6/8, and 4/4 and the rhythm would be changing and popping.”

The second factor which influenced the making of Kind of Blue was the African American faith-based community. The songs sung in the black church made and indelible impression on Miles. Again, from his autobiography Miles writes: Kind Of Blue came out of the modal thing I started with Milestones. This time I added some other kind of sound I remembered from being back in Arkansas, when we were walking home from church and playing these bad gospels. So that kind of feeling came back to me and I started remembering what the music sounded like and felt like….. That feeling had got in my creative blood, my imagination, and I had forgotten it was there. I wrote this blues that tried to get back to that feeling………..So I wrote about five bars of that and I recorded it and added a kind of running sound into the mix, because that was the only way I could get the sound of the finger piano.”

Recording Kind of Blue

Miles says, “I didn’t write out the music for Kind Of Blue, but brought in sketches for what everybody was supposed to play because I wanted a lot of spontaneity in the playing, just like I thought was in the interplay between those dancers and those drummers and that finger piano player with the Ballet Africaine”.

Session One: March 2, 1959

The first song record was what would be later known as “Freddy Freeloader”, a slightly altered blues tune. Kelly played piano and performed at the level which many consider his best. The band then moved to the second track which would become the main track on the album the best known jazz piece- “So What”. It structure was simple: 16 measures of D minor, eight of E-flat minor, then D minor again for eight bars.

“So What” features perhaps the finest solos in jazz history. Without question Miles solo is the most famous in jazz, memorized by generations of musicians. Davis plays in the middle register and as was his trademark, he moved behind and ahead of the beat, then syncing up with it again. The second player to solo is Coltrane flowed by Adderley. The sax player each take two choruses, after which the horns come in with the “amen” or so what riff. Evans improvises accompaniment against this riff for one chorus and thereafter Paul Chambers comes in on bass and plays the melody again.

The last song of the first session, “Blue in Green” is the shortest song on the album; the song has a subtle elegance and power which comes from its simplicity.

Second Session: April 22, 1959

“Flamenco Sketches” was the first track recorded the second session. This track is the most purely modal piece on the album. Coltrane’s solo on this track is considered one of his very best. Herbie Hancock describes Flamenco Sketches this way: ”It was as though they were walking into unknown territory and being very careful where they stepped. Nobody played much-there was a minimalist approach to the material.”

“All Blues”, the other classic track began with a simple instruction from Miles about now to leverage the repeating pattern of the music into what would seem like an introduction for each solo; simple as it was, this was a brilliant stroke. The song was based on “vamping,” continuous repetition of a two chord pattern, yielding a hypnotic sound effect. Each solo, like those of “So What” beginning with Miles, is a masterpiece, encapsulating the definition of the sound of American music at it best.

Impact of Kind of Blue

Kind of Blue was the ultimate fulfillment of the modal approach, with Miles providing his collaborators little more than outlines for melodies and simple scales for improvisation. By emphasizing the blues and the improvisor’s melodic gifts, Kind of Blue precipitated a major stylistic development–modal jazz. Moreover, Kind of Blue set the scene for a wholesale opening up of what is possible in jazz. In the coming years John Coltrane would take the modal experiment much further (listen for example to his modal deconstruction of “My Favourite Things”) and there were fine modally based compositions from Lee Morgan, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Cedar Walton, amongst many others. But on its own terms, and simply as an album to listen to for its own sake, Kind of Blue remains a superb experience.

To be sure, Kind of Blue had an influence on musicians outside of jazz. Alfred ‘Pee Wee” Ellis who was James Brown musical director, saxophonist, says: I was very much influenced by Mile Davis. I’d been listening to “So What” six or seven years earlier and that crept into the making of “Cold Sweat”. You could call it subliminal, but the horn line is based on “So What”. Richard Williams, author of The Blue Moment observes, “the structure of ‘So What’, in which the theme, played by the double bass, is answered by ‘amen’ chords from the three horns, is echoed in ‘Cold Sweat’ by the interplay in the opening four bars between Odum’s bass guitar and the peremptory trombone and four saxophones (alto, two tenors and baritone).

Thus, Kind of Blue, transformed the musical landscape, and still today has the same appeal as it did in 1959, that intriguing moment when Miles Davis and Company change the should of music.

Proclamation 8389 – African-American Music Appreciation Month, 2009
June 2, 2009 By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation

The legacy of African-American composers, singers, songwriters, and musicians is an indelible piece of our Nation’s culture. Generations of African Americans have carried forward the musical traditions of their forebears, blending old styles with innovative rhythms and sounds. They have enriched American music and captured the diversity of our Nation. During African-American Music Appreciation Month, we honor this rich heritage.

This legacy tells a story of ingenuity and faith. Amidst the injustice of slavery, African Americans lifted their voices to the heavens through spirituals. This religious music united African Americans and helped sustain them through one of the darkest periods in our Nation’s history. Years later, spirituals contributed to the advent of a new form of music: gospel. Both styles incorporated elements of African music and were rooted in faith.

The African-American music tradition also reflects creativity and individualism. Blues, jazz, soul, and rock and roll synthesize various musical traditions to create altogether new sounds. Their novel chord progressions, improvisation, and mood showcase individual musicians while also creating a cohesive musical unit. In addition, African-American composers have thrived in traditional genres such as musical theater, opera, classical symphony, and choral music, providing their unique imprint and creatively growing these forms of music. All of these contributions are treasured across America and the world.

During African-American Music Appreciation Month, we recall the known and unknown musicians who helped create this musical history. Their contributions help illuminate the human experience and spirit, and they help us reflect on our Nation’s ongoing narrative.

Now, Therefore, I, Barack Obama, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2009 as African-American Music Appreciation Month. I call upon public officials, educators, and all the people of the United States to observe this month with appropriate activities and programs that raise awareness and foster appreciation of music which is composed, arranged, and performed by African Americans.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this second day of June, in the year of our Lord two thousand nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-third.
BARACK OBAMA

Historical Overview

The spirituals are a part of African American vernacular. As described in the Norton Anthology African American Literature, the black vernacular “refers to the church songs, blues, ballads, sermons, stories, and, in our own era rap songs that are part of the oral, not primarily literate (or written down) tradition of black expression. What distinguishes this body of work is its in-group and, at times, secretive defensive, and aggressive character.”

The spirituals, religious songs sung by African Americans since the earliest days of slavery. However, many have noted that the division between secular and sacred was not as definite as the designation spirituals would suggest. For enslaved African Americans music about God and the Bible was sung during work time, play time, and rest time as well as on Sundays at praise meetings. As historian Lawrence Levine observes, during the period of enslavement, African Americans the “concept of the sacred signified a strong will to incorporate within this world all the elements of the divine.”

That the songs were not just sung in ritual worship but throughout the day meant that they served as powerful shields against the values of the white slaveholders and their killing definitions of black humanity. In addition to reinforcing their self-worth and humanity as children of God, the spirituals offered African Americans much-needed psychic escape from the workaday world of slavery’s restrictions and cruelties. To be sure, “this world is not my home” was a steady theme in the spirituals, one that offered its “singer/hearers visions of a peaceful, loving realm beyond the one in which they labored.” In such a vision of justice and peace resided both a healthful impulse to escape the sorrowful world and an implied criticism of life’s earthly overwork, injustice, and violence.

Most of the spiritual were not about easeful King Jesus at all, however, but about the Old Testament God and His heroes and prophets. Moses, Job, Daniel, Samson, and Ezekiel are celebrated in scores of spirituals along with the Chosen People protected by their furiously watchful God. According to the poet and critic Sterling A. Brown, “Fairly easy allegories identified Egypt-land with the South, Pharaoh with the masters, and the Israelites with themselves and Moses with their leader.”  Not surprisingly, some of the songs offered not just psychic escapes and veiled criticisms but a call for this-worldly attentiveness and direct action, i.e., Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel/ Any why not every man?

Civil Rights Movement

The extensive use of spirituals in the struggle for freedom during slavery left a deep imprint in the cultural memory of African Americans and their allies. It is therefore not surprising that during the 1960s many of the freedom songs sung by the multi-racial cadre of Civil Rights workers were essentially new versions of the black spirituals with updated lyrics that expressed the specific needs of the Civil Rights Movement. The historian/activist/singer Bernice Johnson Reagon recalls the way in which singing evolved as an important tool during the Civil Rights Movement:

Most of the singing of the civil rights movement was congregational; it was sung unrehearsed in the tradition of the Afro-American folk church . . . The core song repertoire was formed from the reservoir of Afro-American traditional song performed in the older style of singing. This music base was expanded to include most of the popular Afro-American music forms and singing techniques of the period. From this reservoir, activist song leaders made a new music for a changed time. Lyrics were transformed, traditional melodies were adapted and procedures associated with old forms were blended with new forms to create freedom songs capable of expressing the force and intent of the movement.

The singing of freedom songs were prompted by the situation and circumstance in which the freedom fights found themselves. As indicated below, they freedom fighters would Sometimes, when jailed they would sing to let the jailer know that jail would not break their spirit so they would sing, Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me roun’. Or when marching they would break into a spiritual, modifying a word to speak to the situation at hand: “Over my head, I see Jesus in the air was changed to, Over my head, I see freedom in the air.”

From Black Spiritual to Civil Rights Movement Freedom Song: Illustrative Examples

Classical Freedom Songs of the Civil Rights Movement

Out of the many spirituals and freedom songs, the five songs listed below were the most frequently sung by civil rights freedom fighters. These songs articulate the vision movement and unyielding spirit of a people who as Constance Rourke refers to as “emblems for a pioneer people who require resilience as a prime trait.”

We Shall Overcome

We Shall Overcome was originally called “I Shall Overcome,” but when Pete Seeger learned it from Zilphia Horton and started spreading it around, the “I” became “We.” This song has since been sung during virtually every struggle where people have stood up for their rights, but it was particularly inspirational during the civil rights movement. We Shall Overcome was the most iconic songs of the Civil Rights Movement. This song inspired black men and women to stand firm against a barrage of police dogs and fire hoses. Music Critic Dave Marsh wrote the liner notes to Bruce Springsteen’s We Shall Overcome: the Seeger Sessions that it is “the most important political protest song of all-time, sung around the world wherever people fight for justice and equality.”

Oh Freedom

Oh Freedom has very deep roots with the African-American community, as it was sung by African American envisioning a time when there would be an end to slavery. Oh Freedom became one of the popular songs of the movement. When Odetta performed Oh Freedom at the 1963 March on Washington, it became a call to all to rise up. “Before I’d be a slave/ I’d be buried in my grave” was a sentiment echoed throughout America.

I Shall Not Be Moved

I Shall Not Be Moved was adapted to anthemic status during the antebellum liberation movement, and again during the civil rights movement in the 1950s and ’60s. Like many of the period’s great freedom songs, it sings of the refusal to bow to the powers that be, and the importance of standing up for what you believe in.

This Little Light of Mine

This Little Light of Mine talks about the importance of unity in the face of adversity. Its refrain sings of the light in each individual and how, whether standing up alone or joining together, each little bit of light can break the darkness. The song has since been applied to many struggles, but was one of the anthems of the civil rights movement at the time.

Keep Your Eyes on the Prize

Keep Your Eyes on the Prize was another song strongly associated with the Civil Rights Movement. Originally it was a variation of the song Gospel Plow. This song talks about enduring any struggle for the sake of the ultimate objective: freedom. Moreover, Keep Your Eyes on the Prize carried special meaning to many of those in the Civil Rights Movement. Despite being beaten, jailed, and ridiculed, they stood strong and unwavering, keeping their eyes on the prize of freedom.

Historical Overview

The spirituals are a part of African American vernacular. As described in the Norton Anthology African American Literature, the black vernacular “refers to the church songs, blues, ballads, sermons, stories, and, in our own era rap songs that are part of the oral, not primarily literate (or written down) tradition of black expression. What distinguishes this body of work is its in-group and, at times, secretive defensive, and aggressive character.”

The spirituals, religious songs sung by African Americans since the earliest days of slavery. However, many have noted that the division between secular and sacred was not as definite as the designation spirituals would suggest. For enslaved African Americans music about God and the Bible was sung during work time, play time, and rest time as well as on Sundays at praise meetings. As historian Lawrence Levine observes, during the period of enslavement, African Americans the “concept of the sacred signified a strong will to incorporate within this world all the elements of the divine.”

That the songs were not just sung in ritual worship but throughout the day meant that they served as powerful shields against the values of the white slaveholders and their killing definitions of black humanity. In addition to reinforcing their self-worth and humanity as children of God, the spirituals offered African Americans much-needed psychic escape from the workaday world of slavery’s restrictions and cruelties. To be sure, “this world is not my home” was a steady theme in the spirituals, one that offered its “singer/hearers visions of a peaceful, loving realm beyond the one in which they labored.” In such a vision of justice and peace resided both a healthful impulse to escape the sorrowful world and an implied criticism of life’s earthly overwork, injustice, and violence.

Most of the spiritual were not about easeful King Jesus at all, however, but about the Old Testament God and His heroes and prophets. Moses, Job, Daniel, Samson, and Ezekiel are celebrated in scores of spirituals along with the Chosen People protected by their furiously watchful God. According to the poet and critic Sterling A. Brown, “Fairly easy allegories identified Egypt-land with the South, Pharaoh with the masters, and the Israelites with themselves and Moses with their leader.”  Not surprisingly, some of the songs offered not just psychic escapes and veiled criticisms but a call for this-worldly attentiveness and direct action, i.e., Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel/ Any why not every man?

Civil Rights Movement

The extensive use of spirituals in the struggle for freedom during slavery left a deep imprint in the cultural memory of African Americans and their allies. It is therefore not surprising that during the 1960s many of the freedom songs sung by the multi-racial cadre of Civil Rights workers were essentially new versions of the black spirituals with updated lyrics that expressed the specific needs of the Civil Rights Movement. The historian/activist/singer Bernice Johnson Reagon recalls the way in which singing evolved as an important tool during the Civil Rights Movement:

Most of the singing of the civil rights movement was congregational; it was sung unrehearsed in the tradition of the Afro-American folk church . . . The core song repertoire was formed from the reservoir of Afro-American traditional song performed in the older style of singing. This music base was expanded to include most of the popular Afro-American music forms and singing techniques of the period. From this reservoir, activist song leaders made a new music for a changed time. Lyrics were transformed, traditional melodies were adapted and procedures associated with old forms were blended with new forms to create freedom songs capable of expressing the force and intent of the movement.

The singing of freedom songs were prompted by the situation and circumstance in which the freedom fights found themselves. As indicated below, they freedom fighters would Sometimes, when jailed they would sing to let the jailer know that jail would not break their spirit so they would sing, Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me roun’. Or when marching they would break into a spiritual, modifying a word to speak to the situation at hand: “Over my head, I see Jesus in the air was changed to, Over my head, I see freedom in the air.”

From Black Spiritual to Civil Rights Movement Freedom Song: Illustrative Examples

Classical Freedom Songs of the Civil Rights Movement

Out of the many spirituals and freedom songs, the five songs listed below were the most frequently sung by civil rights freedom fighters. These songs articulate the vision movement and unyielding spirit of a people who as Constance Rourke refers to as “emblems for a pioneer people who require resilience as a prime trait.”

We Shall Overcome

We Shall Overcome was originally called “I Shall Overcome,” but when Pete Seeger learned it from Zilphia Horton and started spreading it around, the “I” became “We.” This song has since been sung during virtually every struggle where people have stood up for their rights, but it was particularly inspirational during the civil rights movement. We Shall Overcome was the most iconic songs of the Civil Rights Movement. This song inspired black men and women to stand firm against a barrage of police dogs and fire hoses. Music Critic Dave Marsh wrote the liner notes to Bruce Springsteen’s We Shall Overcome: the Seeger Sessions that it is “the most important political protest song of all-time, sung around the world wherever people fight for justice and equality.”

Oh Freedom

Oh Freedom has very deep roots with the African-American community, as it was sung by African American envisioning a time when there would be an end to slavery. Oh Freedom became one of the popular songs of the movement. When Odetta performed Oh Freedom at the 1963 March on Washington, it became a call to all to rise up. “Before I’d be a slave/ I’d be buried in my grave” was a sentiment echoed throughout America.

I Shall Not Be Moved

I Shall Not Be Moved was adapted to anthemic status during the antebellum liberation movement, and again during the civil rights movement in the 1950s and ’60s. Like many of the period’s great freedom songs, it sings of the refusal to bow to the powers that be, and the importance of standing up for what you believe in.

This Little Light of Mine

This Little Light of Mine talks about the importance of unity in the face of adversity. Its refrain sings of the light in each individual and how, whether standing up alone or joining together, each little bit of light can break the darkness. The song has since been applied to many struggles, but was one of the anthems of the civil rights movement at the time.

Keep Your Eyes on the Prize

Keep Your Eyes on the Prize was another song strongly associated with the Civil Rights Movement. Originally it was a variation of the song Gospel Plow. This song talks about enduring any struggle for the sake of the ultimate objective: freedom. Moreover, Keep Your Eyes on the Prize carried special meaning to many of those in the Civil Rights Movement. Despite being beaten, jailed, and ridiculed, they stood strong and unwavering, keeping their eyes on the prize of freedom.

 As Tony Martin points out in his work, Literary Garveyism, Garvey’s interest in art was frame through a political lens. His view of art in the context of the struggle of blacks during the 1920s is best illustrated in his own words. Garvey postulated: “We must encourage our own black authors who have character, who are loyal to their race, who feel proud to be black, and in every way let them feel that we appreciate their efforts to advance our race through healthy and decent literature.” Garvey’s   aesthetic, defined in racial and cultural terms, rivaled the integrationist view of art and the “art for the sake of art” perspective. At the core of Garvey’s  Black aesthetic was his concern that black people, not those of other races, namely whites,  should decide who its worthy artist were and what standards would African Americans use to judge their art music and literature. “We must”, Garvey wrote, “inspire a literature and promulgate a doctrine of our own, without any apologies to the powers that be.”

Thus, Garvey’s aesthetic was reflected of his political philosophy and opinions of: 1) race first, 2) self-reliance, and 3) nationhood. This philosophy was grounded in the believe and practice that African Americans should aggressively pursue their racial self-interest, should do for themselves rather than becoming dependent on charity, and should strive to govern themselves, with a special focus on Africa.  Literature and art then in turn should seek to promote this political agenda. For black people, who were struggling for their freedom, dignity and humanity, art for the sake or art was a luxury that they could not afford. These ideas and views sum-up the Garvey aesthetic and informed and influence the writing of the Harlem Renaissance.

Two of the most notable literary works which reflected the Garvey aesthetic were Langston Hughes’s essay, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” and Claude McKay’s poems, “If We Must Die” and “White House.” In Hughes’s essay, he castigates a young poet for saying he wanted to be a poet, not a Negro poet. Hughes interpreted the poet’s statement to mean that he wanted to write like a white person. At a deeper level Hughes deconstructed this to mean the young poet actually wanted to be white. Hughes went on to write:

No great poet has ever been afraid of being himself. And I doubted then that, with his desire to run away spiritually from his race, this boy would ever be a great poet. But this is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America- This urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American has possible.

Marcus Garvey’s wife, Amy Jacques Garvey responding to Hughes’s essay wrote that she was “delighted with his frank statement” and wondered if he was a “registered member of the Universal Negro Improvement Association.” She went on to say that his essay showed him to be a “keen student of Garveyism.”

“If We Must Die” and “White House,” by Claude McKay are responses to the terrorism directed at blacks during the 1919 race riots and the murder and mass lynching of African Americans by whites across America. This period, coined by James Weldon Johnson, as the “Red Summer,” describes the bloody race riots that occurred during the summer and early autumn of 1919. In most instances, whites attacked African Americans in more than two dozen American cities.  In both poems, McKay attempts to convey the nobility and dignity of blacks.  In “If We Must Die”, he conveys the message that blacks can not be destroyed by violence and that they have a right and responsibility to fight back. In fact fighting back would underscore their humanity and manhood.  The strength of African Americans, therefore, is in their nobility, which in the end, according to the McKay, stands stronger than the surface strength of the oppressor. This is a strength built upon character and history, rather than upon decorations and weapons that money can buy. It is this strength upon which the oppressed poet and his “kinsmen” focus their hope.

In “The White House” the strength of the oppressor in lies in subtle political and social strategies. The oppressor lives in a good, neat neighborhood, and is obviously affluent. In combination with this, derogatory terms such as “savage” are leveled against the oppressed to keep their spirit submissive. The law and politics are then also used for the same purpose. These however are all surface strengths, whereas the strength of the oppressed comes from inner nobility.

 Both of these poems fit neatly into the Garvey aesthetic. As defined in the by his political philosophy reflected below:

If others laugh at you, return the laughter to them; if they mimic you, return the compliment with equal force. They have not more right to dishonor, disrespect and disregard your feeling and manhood than you have in dealing with them. Honor them when they honor you; disrespect and disregard them when they vilely treat you

.

In brief, at the dawn of the second of the twentieth century Marcus Garvey set forth an aesthetic that would inform the art music and literature of the Harlem Renaissance. From the start then, Garvey said to blacks, “We must inspire and promulgate a doctrine of our own without any apologies to the powers that be.