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Episode Date: May 5, 2026

“We younger black artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased, we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful and ugly too. The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. If black people are pleased, we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.”
— Langston Hughes, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," 1926

The Harlem Renaissance was not merely a moment. It was a movement, a meditation, a declaration that Black life, Black art, Black thought, and Black being would no longer be bound by the narrow scripts of a nation unsure of its own democracy. In this episode, Dr. Reiland Rabaka explores the Harlem Renaissance as early 20th century Afro-modernism, a transformative period when Black people dared to ask: Who are we beyond the shadow of slavery? Who are we beyond imposed scripts? Who are we when we name ourselves?

The New Negro Movement emerged as both a political and philosophical reorientation. It was not merely about rights, though it demanded them. It was about redefinition, replacing the old Negro (a figure fabricated by white supremacist imagination) with a self-determined subject who would speak, create, think, and act on their own terms. The Harlem Renaissance was the aesthetic and cultural expression of this deeper movement, the New Negro's heartbeat made audible.

Dr. Rabaka examines literary Afro-modernism through the work of Zora Neale Hurston, who wrote with the rhythms of the South and captured Black folk life with dignity and depth, Claude McKay, who gave us defiance in verse, and Langston Hughes, who sang the blues on the page and made poetry move like jazz. These writers refused respectability politics and embraced Blackness in all its complexity.

The episode explores musical Afro-modernism through blues, ragtime, and jazz. Bessie Smith gave voice to Black womanhood in all its complexities. Louis Armstrong turned Harlem into a global stage. Duke Ellington elevated jazz to new heights. Music did what politics alone could not: it made people feel the humanity that racism tried to deny.

Dr. Rabaka highlights the profound contributions of Black women and Black queer artists who shaped the Harlem Renaissance. Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larson, and Jessie Fauset form the great trinity of women artists of the Harlem Renaissance. Gladys Bentley's performances challenged norms of gender and sexuality, and figures like Countee Cullen and Claude McKay contributed queer voices that insisted on sexual freedom alongside political, social, and cultural freedom.

The episode reveals how Afro-modernism is not simply Black participation in modernity but a transformation of modernity itself. It is what happens when a people long positioned as the raw material of history seize the tools of representation and refashion the world. Where European modernism expressed alienation and fragmentation, Afro-modernism took those same conditions and refused to let them end in despair, reassembling fragmentation into new patterns and answering alienation with community.

Dr. Rabaka demonstrates how the Harlem Renaissance prefigures contemporary movements. The Afro-modernism of the early 20th century anticipates what we now call Afro-futurism. The Harlem Renaissance lives in hip hop, spoken word, contemporary Black visual art, Black cinema, and movements for racial, gender, economic, and environmental justice. It lives wherever Black people create against the grain of injustice. The episode features an original poem, "We Are Building Something," which honors the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance and its continuing influence. A specially curated Harlem Renaissance playlist accompanies this episode, featuring the classics and hit records from the era including Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and more.

The Harlem Renaissance teaches us that art is not a luxury but a necessity, that culture is not peripheral but political, that creativity is not escapism but engagement. As Dr. Rabaka asks: Will we, in our own time, become what the Harlem Renaissance once dared to be? A people unafraid to name ourselves, to know ourselves, to transform the world?

Learn More and Explore

• Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History & Culture
• , Library of Congress
• , Wikipedia
• , The History Channel

News and Articles

• , Apr. 6, 2026, National Geographic
• , Oct. 9, 2024 The New York Times
• , May 26, 2025, BlackPast

The Playlist

The Soundtracks of the Harlem Renaissance: Spirituals, Gospel, Blues, Ragtime, Jazz (1915–1939)

Note by Dr. Reiland Rabaka

This playlist is an audible archive of Afro-Modernism in motion—a sonic map of African american life between 1915 and 1939, when the Harlem Renaissance gave rise not only to new literature and visual art, but to new ways of hearing and being heard. These songs do more than entertain; they testify. They carry memory forward, bending time so that the spirituals of enslavement, the gospel of deliverance, the blues of sorrow, and the jazz of improvisation converge into a single, resounding declaration: Black life is modern, complex, and irreducibly creative.

Music, in this moment, becomes both refuge and rebellion. It is where grief is given shape and joy is given flight. It is where democracy is rehearsed—not as a static ideal, but as a living practice of call and response, of solo and ensemble, of voice and listening. From the sacred hush of spirituals to the syncopated swing of jazz, these sounds reveal a people transforming constraint into creativity, exclusion into expression, and struggle into style.

The Harlem Renaissance did not invent African American music, but it amplified its meanings. It made the blues speak to the city. It made jazz a global language. It carried the sacred into the secular and the secular into the sacred. And its echoes remain with us, alive in contemporary music that continues to wrestle with identity, freedom, and justice.

To listen to this playlist is to listen to a people becoming. To hear the sound of a world remade from within.

Playlist

• “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” – Fisk Jubilee Singers (recorded early 20th c.)
  A foundational spiritual that carries the memory of enslavement and the hope of transcendence, grounding the Harlem Renaissance in a longer history of sacred resistance.
• “Move On Up a Little Higher” – Mahalia Jackson
  Although recorded slightly later, this gospel anthem echoes the spiritual striving that shaped the Harlem Renaissance’s spiritual and cultural life—uplift as both theology and politics.
• “St. Louis Blues” – Bessie Smith (1925)
  Smith’s voice transforms personal sorrow into collective expression, embodying the blues as Afro-Modern testimony.
• “Black Bottom Stomp” – Jelly Roll Morton Red Hot Peppers (1926)
  A rhythmic declaration of early jazz innovation, blending ragtime roots with improvisational flair.
• “West End Blues” – Louis Armstrong (1928)
  Armstrong’s opening trumpet cadenza announces a new artistic freedom—individual expression within collective form.
• “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo” – Duke Ellington (1927)
  Ellington crafts a sonic portrait of urban Black life, turning Harlem into a global soundstage.
• “Empty Bed Blues” – Bessie Smith (1928)
  A bold exploration of intimacy and autonomy, revealing how Black women’s voices shaped Afro-Modern expression.
• “Ain’t Misbehavin’” – Fats Waller (1929)
  Playful yet sophisticated, this track reflects Harlem nightlife as a site of joy, style, and subtle resistance.
• “(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue” – Louis Armstrong (1929)
  A haunting meditation on race and recognition, giving musical form to the psychic tensions of modern African American identity.
• “Minnie the Moocher” – Cab Calloway (1931)
  Call-and-response becomes participatory democracy, inviting audiences into the performance of culture itself.
• “Night Life” – Mary Lou Williams (1930)
  Williams’ compositions highlight African American women’s crucial but often overlooked role in shaping jazz modernity.
• “Strange Fruit” – Billie Holiday (1939)
  A searing protest against racial terror, transforming music into moral witness and political indictment.
• “Take the ‘A’ Train” – Duke Ellington (1941)
  A musical journey into Harlem itself, symbolizing migration, movement, and modern African American urban life.
• “Wrappin’ It Up (The Lindy Glide)” – Chick Webb (1937)
  Swing music as social energy—dance floors as spaces of collective joy and cultural innovation.
• “All Blues” – Miles Davis (1959)
  A later echo of the blues tradition, demonstrating the enduring influence of Harlem Renaissance soundscapes.
• “Alright” – Kendrick Lamar (2015)
  A contemporary anthem of resilience and resistance, carrying forward the Harlem Renaissance’s spirit of survival and self-definition.
• “Tightrope” – Janelle Monáe (2010)
  A modern Afro-Modern/Afrofuturist bridge, blending funk, soul, and social commentary in the lineage of the Harlem Renaissance’s innovation.

Closing Reflection

What did we miss? Email us thecaaas@gmail.com

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