Intro to Harlem Renaissance

From the article, Great Migration: The African-American Exodus North:


"[The Great Migration] had such an effect on almost every aspect of our lives — from the music that we listen to to the politics of our country to the ways the cities even look and feel, even today," says Isabel Wilkerson. "The suburbanization and the ghettos that were created as a result of the limits of where [African-Americans] could live in the North [still exist today.] And ... the South was forced to change, in part because they were losing such a large part of their workforce through the Great Migration."


The Harlem Renaissance is honestly something I am not too familiar with;  I never studied it that deeply or have read about it that closely.   Yet, the film we watched in class today and then these articles we have read have really caught my interest!
I LOVE the fact that The Great Migration had an effect on the "music we listen to and the the politics of our country..."  If you look at American culture today, we see that the music is different for different classes, races, gender, etc.   Music is something I can really identify with because I grew up singing, playing piano, and playing violin.  
I like to think that when music changes, it is always meaningful;  when music changes, it means something BIG is happening.  Think of a movie, for example -- when the musical score gets louder, perhaps a fight is happening.   Now translate this into the Harlem Renaissance -- the music was changing.  The traditions were changing.  Culture as a whole was changing.  America was changing.  If you pay attention to music in history, you can learn a lot about the events happening  at that time.
Some of the greatest hits of all time come out of the Harlem Renaissance -- Louis Armstrong, for example, was a big hit-music maker at that time.
I guess what I am trying to say is that music says a lot about a culture, a people, a race, a gender.  Music can tell a story; music tells the story of history.  And if we open our ears enough to listen, we will hear a story of change being sung or played.  The story of change in the Harlem Renaissance was that of African-Americans and other races finding their own identity in music and in America itself.