The Black Arts Movement was a flowering of African Diaspora culture that developed alongside the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1960s-70s. Together, we changed the world.
Why is This Important?
Most Latin AND American popular culture comes from the African Diaspora!
The Spaniard brought the African. The African put everyone to dance. In the States, they took away the drum, and we got the blues.
Eddie Palmieri nailed it at the 92nd Street Y, New York
The blues, ragtime and gospel (also blends of African Diaspora and European culture), are the roots of American popular music and dance including: jazz, country, rhythm & blues, rock, disco, house, hip-hop/rap, and trap.
Few people understand how much Indigenous culture has been absorbed into African Diaspora culture. We escaped the colonizers together.
Everything that happens in the African Diaspora community soon echoes into the Latin community and then bounces back and forth. We influence each other.
And really, we’re not separate communities. That’s colonizer thinking. We are simply American.
Black Arts Movement: Examined
While we are all busy creating the future, Harlem Stage looks back at where we’ve been. You can’t compress a serious examination of Black culture into just one night. Even the introduction takes two nights.
Black Arts Movement: Examined is seven sections of 1960s-70s Black words, film, poetry, music, theatre, and dance, ending with a 3-day conference on the Black Arts Movement Now, at Harlem Stage in Manhattanville, West Harlem. From $15. harlemstage.org 🇺🇸
Introduction
Black Arts Movement Examined Part I: INTRODUCTION (Day 1) introduces the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s-70s at Harlem Stage on Friday, October 14, 2022 at 7:30pm. From $15. harlemstage.org 🇺🇸
Black Arts Movement Examined Part I: INTRODUCTION (Day 2) introduces the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s-70s at Harlem Stage on Saturday, October 15, 2022 at 7:30pm. From $15. harlemstage.org 🇺🇸
Harlem Stage Artistic Director & CEO, Pat Cruz, and Associate Artistic Director/Curator-in-Residence, Carl Hancock Rux set the stage for the entire program. Cruz is an artist of the 1960s-70s. Rux is active today, including with Black Lives Matter. They are also going to discuss how whatever we do now must be inclusive to be successful. @carlhancockrux
The FHP Collective dance company led by Francesca Harper, Ailey II Artistic Director, performs. @fhpcollective @harperfrancesca
Black Film
Black Arts Movement Examined Part II: FILM explores film in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s-70s at Harlem Stage on Friday, November 11, 2022 at 7:30pm. From $15. harlemstage.org 🇺🇸
Harlem Stage screens Amiri Baraka’s “Dutchman,” based on his 1964 OBIE Award-winning one-act play. It’s an intense expression of Black rage about how we are treated by society. Discussion with Carl Hancock Rux follows.
Black Poetry
Black Arts Movement Examined Part III: POETRY (Day 1) explores the written and spoken word in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s-70s at Harlem Stage on Friday, January 27, 2023 at 7:30pm. From $25. harlemstage.org 🇺🇸
Black Arts Movement Examined Part III: POETRY (Day 2) explores the written and spoken word in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s-70s at Harlem Stage on Saturday, January 28, 2023 at 7:30pm. From $25. harlemstage.org 🇺🇸
Writer Thulani Davis (The Village Voice) and Pulitzer Prize-nominated trumpeter and composer Wadada Leo Smith (AACM Collective) present an evening of poetry around Davis’ works “Nothing But the Music” and “The Emancipation Circuit,” and Smith’s Kikuyu Ensemble.
Black Music
Black Arts Movement Examined Part IV: MUSIC (Day 1) explores music in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s-70s at Harlem Stage on Friday, February 24, 2023 at 7:30pm. From $25. harlemstage.org 🇺🇸
Black Arts Movement Examined Part IV: MUSIC (Day 2) explores music in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s-70s at Harlem Stage on Saturday, February 25, 2023 at 7:30pm. From $25. harlemstage.org 🇺🇸
Tap dancer Michela Marino Lerman’s Love Movement reimagines Max Roach’s groundbreaking 1960 album “We Insist! Freedom Now Suite.” In 2022, the Library of Congress called the record, “culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant.” @michelataps @love.movement_
Black Theatre
Black Arts Movement Examined Part V: THEATER (Day 1) explores theatre in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s-70s at Harlem Stage on Friday, March 24, 2023 at 7:30pm. From $15. harlemstage.org 🇺🇸
Adrienne Kennedy reads from her classic play “Funnyhouse of a Negro,” about a young Black New York student trying to figure out her identity. It’s now a popular college play. Carl Hancock Rux discusses its impact and relationship to the Black Arts Movement.
Black Dance
Black Arts Movement Examined Part VI: DANCE, curated by Stefanie Batten Bland, features Jamal Abrams, Kayla Farrish, and Ogemdi Ude in conversation with the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s-70s; at Harlem Stage in Manhattanville, West Harlem:
- Thursday, April 13, 2023 at 7:30pm. From $25. harlemstage.org 🇺🇸
- Friday, April 14, 2023 at 7:30pm. From $25. harlemstage.org 🇺🇸
- Saturday, April 15, 2023 at 7:30pm. From $25. harlemstage.org 🇺🇸
Artists
- Stefanie Batten Bland companysbb.org @sbb_land
- Jamal Abrams @trulifetaray
- Kayla Farrish kaylafarrish.com @fulloutfarrish
- Ogemdi Ude ogemdiude.com @gemgemdi
Black Visual Arts
Black Arts Movement: Examined VISUAL ARTS, University of Pittsburgh Associate Professor of English Michael Sawyer and Harlem Stage Artistic Director and CEO Pat Cruz; discuss the impact of the Black Arts Movement on the Black Power and Black Lives Matter movements; on Zoom; on Thursday, April 20, 2023 at 7pm. Free with registration. harlemstage.org 🇺🇸
Black Arts Movement: Examined ~ Film Screening: Jason and Shirley
Black Arts Movement: Examined ~ Film Screening: Jason And Shirley screens Stephen Winter’s 2015 docudrama inspired by “Portrait of Jason,” the 1967 experimental documentary by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Shirley Clarke about Jason Holliday, a Black cabaret performer telling his life’s stories while getting drunk at New York’s legendary Chelsea Hotel. Followed by Q&A with the director at Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem; on Thursday, May 11, 2023 at 7:30pm. $15. harlemstage.org 🇺🇸
Black Arts Then and Now Conference
Black Arts Movement: THEN AND NOW CONFERENCE explores the Black Arts Movement of today with a bunch of heavy hitters at Harlem Stage; Thursday-Saturday, May 18-20, 2023. harlemstage.org 🇺🇸
This conference is full of heavy hitters discussing issues that we all need to talk about.
Thursday
A.B. Spellman gives the opening keynote address. Pat Cruz moderates a conversation with Quincy Troupe, David Henderson, and Margo Crawford in response. Followed by a reception.
Friday
Felipe Luciano, Stew, Brent Hayes Edwards, and Lois Elaine Griffith talk with Jonathan McCrory about Black Masculinity.
Angela Davis, Nona Hendryx, and Toshi Reagon talk about Music & Struggle.
Henry Threadgill, Craig Taborn and Dafnis Prieto close the day with a performance in the Gatehouse.
Saturday
Felipe Luciano and Lois Elaine Griffith talk about Latino issues.
There is a screening of Shirley Clarke’s film “Portrait of Jason.”
Harmony Holiday, Michael Sawyer and Dominic Taylor talk with Margo Crawford about the Crisis of the Negro Intellectual.
Carl Hancock Rux sums it all up.
The conference ends with a performance by Tavia Nyong’o and Vernon Reid with work by Carrie Mae Weems; at the Park Avenue Armory in the Upper East Side.
The Black Arts Movement of the 1960s-70s was a Harlem Renaissance 2.0 That Inspired Other Communities of Color
The Harlem Renaissance was the flowering of African Diaspora culture in the 1920s and 30s. It’s defining of the Jazz Age, and of American popular culture ever since.
Interestingly, Arturo Schomburg, the founder of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture was Puerto Rican. He was told by an ignorant teacher that he had no culture or history. Wow! During the Harlem Renaissance, Schomburg built the world’s most important collection of Black Arts. The New York Public Library bought it and made him the Schomburg Center’s first curator. We call Mr. Schomburg, “A Harlem Renaissance Man.” 🇵🇷
Dare we say that the flowering of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s-70s was Harlem Renaissance 2.0?
According to Jazz at Lincoln Center, Machito and His Afro-Cubans was the first major artist to advertise that they were Black. This was in 1940s New York when Machito’s band created Cubop Latin Jazz alongside Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie “Bird” Parker and others who were creating Bebop Modern Jazz at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem.
But the 1960s was the first time in American history that you could comfortably say you were Black and be outwardly proud of it. In New York City, the emergence of Black Pride triggered the Nuyorican Movement, a Brown Arts flowering of Caribbean Latin culture. In California, it triggered the Chicano Mexican American political movement.
The era produced Hip-Hop, Salsa, and Latin Rock. Today, it may seem like these cultural expressions were always around, but they only came together in the 1960s and 70s, and the Black Arts Movement was the seed.
By the way, the most important lesson of New York Latin Culture Magazine’s first 10 years, is how Black we are, both as Latins and as Americans; how much we contribute to the culture and prosperity of the United States, the Caribbean, Latin America and Western Europe; and how everything Black is suppressed.
Harlem is a literal example of how related we are. West Harlem is African American. East Harlem is Latin. To paraphrase the proverb, we are two branches from the same roots.
The Harlem Renaissance 3.0
It’s our opinion that we are now entering a Harlem Renaissance 3.0. George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement where catalysts. The entire world witnessed what was done, and understood that this was not an isolated event.
The unavoidable shock caused American cultural leaders to open their front doors to Black Arts. We’ve never had this many Black productions and artists on Broadway, in movies, in dance theaters, music halls, galleries and museums. Just as before, there is a ripple effect in Brown Arts and also Asian Arts.
We’ve been watching this happen and are part of it too. Dr. Marta Moreno Vega, founder of the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute put out the call for more Black Arts representation. To us, this was the call of the drum, and as Puerto Rican Bomba drummers, we always answer the sacred call. It led us here to Harlem Stage.
It’s Important to Know Your Past “Sankofa”
Harlem Stage is doing important work in its Black Arts Movement: Examined program. This is why.
“Sankofa” is a Ghanian Akan word that means “to retrieve.” An associated proverb says, “It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten.” This is African wisdom. If you do not know your past, you cannot create your best possible future. 🇬🇭
Colonizers stole everything, including our past, so it’s important to look back now. And now we can write our own stories.
We Got the Blues (And American Pop Culture)
We want to close this post with what Latin Jazz and Salsa legend Eddie Palmieri once said at the 92nd Street Y, just a few blocks south of “El Barrio” East Harlem.
It’s the most concise explanation of the African Diaspora’s contribution to American popular culture that we’ve ever heard. Palmieri is New York Puerto Rican from The Bronx.
The Spaniard brought the African. The African put everyone to dance. In the States, they took away the drum, and we got the Blues.
Eddie Palmieri
Blues, along with Ragtime and Gospel, is the root of American popular music including: Jazz, Country, Rock, Disco, House, Hip-Hop/Rap, and Trap.
Basically all the popular music and dances of the United States originated in the African Diaspora. You might think that American Country music is the exception that proves the rule, but there is no exception. The banjo, the blue note (diminished 7th), call-and-response, and melisma (warbling on one syllable), derive from West African and North African traditions. By the way Leyla McCalla, one of the most interesting artists in the Folk category is celebrating her “Breaking the Thermometer” album release at Harlem Stage.
Like in 1920s and 1960s, we have entered a period of great social change. Colonizers completely distorted our past. That’s why the Black Arts Movement: Examined program is so important. Knowing where we’ve been, helps us get on with where we are going ~ together.
Keith Widyolar, New York Latin Culture Magazine, Editor-in-Chief