Brother To Brother Essay

Daniel Chater

Period 5

Brother to Brother

Thurman and Hurston's magazine series' fate in publicity rests in the hands of a publishing company but it wants to alter their writing style that is critical to their magazine being what it is. Being that their magazine is based off reality, when a big time publisher comes along and says that he wants to make vital changes to their creation just to make it more appealing to the general public they become irritated and angry. Originally it was intended to disturb and be obscene to the general public by focusing on what the average people at the time where scared of "queers and hors" , so the notion that people are intrigued by the substance abuse, homosexuality, offensive language,sluts , and political difference to the world at the time annoyed them. This causes Arguments between there group that ended up causing massive separation between the people involved in the cause. "We, of the younger generation are like all other human beings in a period of transition, we are eternally discovering things about ourselves and our environments which our elders have been at pains to hide. They have been so busy justifying their presence in a hostile, racist environment that they've seized to be human beings. With the new magazine we will seize to look for respectability in the white persons eyes, we will express the beauty and ugliness of our individual selves, for ourselves. If anything is deemed disturbing, or pornographic then so much the better " as they set out to create an obscene magazine series, the idea of the public being repulsed by the articles as one of the positive aspects of their articles, as they figure out the public wants more focus on the nightclub aspect of the articles it there's a debate over wether or not to start doing fictional articles, which defeats the entire purpose of the project. When the publisher says "I believe that a negro writer has access' into this world that a white writer can never get to." Thurman feels confident that the minor adjustments the publisher is suggesting are not in oppose to the "truthfulness of the character", but playing up the nightclub scene and making it more "dark and menacing" is giving a fictional persona to the character that Thurman writes about.

    This is a piece done by Joseph Holston and later put in the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, that gives an erie depressing feeling. During the Harlem Renaissance there was a lot of employment but the conditions where unfair, not as in the places where they stayed but as in the advertisement of the situation. Whites didn't go to the shows primarily because they like the music, but they considered it slightly demeaning to the performers.


This piece shows the way blacks where able to get jobs and live without poverty but it came with the disadvantage of possible embarrassment. 

 

The Cotton Club was an exclusively white club that African Americans that where musically talented where able to demonstrate their musical ability at but weren't aloud to attend, ironically. I was Opened at 142nd Street and Lenox Ave and was a very popular club for the time it remained and over time it grew. At one point the illegally sold alcoholic beverages during the time of prohibition. Many famous Harlem Renaissance artists played there, although in the shows there would be several racist implications because that is what appealed to white people in that era.

The music played was primarily swingy jazz, but there would performances as well, such as acting and talent show like demonstrations. Since the public enjoyed the concept of blacks being inferior , a lot of the shows where based around the jungle and how "uncivilized" Blacks where. At the time people where looking for excitement because of the prohibition, and that is one of the reasons clubs such as this where so popular.

Since so many African Americans at the time had migrated to the north from the south, these clubs flourished because it was one of the best paying jobs, and they had a lot of culture to demonstrate that whites hadn't witnessed and found amusing. Over time the hype died down and blacks found different jobs or ever became more famous in many peoples cases, but despite the racism they where very impressive performances.

Harlem Poetry

This is a video of a lady giving a very simplistic summery of what the Harlem Renaissance was, and what happened, I think it is a very good introduction into the unit but the detail is very basic.

Harlem Painting

This piece is an example of a abstract harlem renaissance painting, it's symbolic of the hardships for African americans that got them to the point of which the where respected as musicians and able to find jobs which weren't hard labor. Some of the generation that later joined the Harlem Renaissance had actually experienced slavery, and some of the generation before that had actually experienced Africa. Paintings like this are just trying to keep records of their history with a creative, artistic perception of it.

The Upbeat colors, the desert looking background, and the plates of food suggest a small village in Africa thriving on resources. Assuming this is a abstract portrait of africa it would be logical to think that this piece was done by someone who was of African Decent and had an emotional attachment to their homeland.

Harlem Renaissance paintings usually have a degree of abstraction to them, but if not the have at least a little bit of exaggeration within them. In this particular piece the skin tone of the people exaggeratedly dark. 

Immortal Technique has a very negative perception of the Harlem Renaissance, despite the awesomeness of the song I think that some of the lyrics are slightly bias although I understand why it would be that way.

In the first verse Immortal Technique says "Until after the invasion of gentrification, Eminent domain of intimidation", meaning that until the area of harlem was renovated and made into a cultured, nice place to live, Harlem was well known as a scary place to be. In the next verse he says "That's not negotiation, and it's frustrating to look at", giving the song a negative implication. He is saying that because the performances where racist and that is how Harlem obtained all its money and became an alright place to live, it's shameful, and "frustrating to look at."

 Later, during the chorus the song goes "Harlem Renaissance, a revolution of trade, Modern day slaves, thinkin that the ghetto is saved,So they start deporting people off the property,Ethnically cleansing the hood, economically." which is saying that the Harlem performances where as close as they could get to slavery without it ACTUALLY being slavery which isn't very accurate considering that they where paid, it was their choice, and they could usually afford property with the money they made.