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Book Cover for: Louis Armstrong, Blues Music, and the Artistic, Political, and Philosophical Debate During the Harlem Renaissance, Michael Decuir

Louis Armstrong, Blues Music, and the Artistic, Political, and Philosophical Debate During the Harlem Renaissance

Michael Decuir

Hardcover
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In Louis Armstrong, Blues Music, and the Artistic, Political, and Philosophical Debate During the Harlem Renaissance, Dr. Michael Decuir explores the interrelationship of the literary, visual, and performing arts; politics; and opposing philosophies during the Harlem Renaissance. His research documents the West African roots of blues and jazz music to New Orleans and Louis Armstrong. Drawing on his own experiences growing up in New Orleans, Decuir details the related cultural behaviors and their manifestations during the Harlem Renaissance. Specifically, blues music's importation to New Orleans and the incorporation of the West African stratified rhythmic and improvisational approach to its performance.

Decuir connects historical events such as James Reese Europe's creativity during World War I and its relevance to the events of the summer of 1919 and subsequent rebirth of the New Negro ideology. The research examines how the New Negro spirit helped infuse an examination and debate about the quality and validity of the period's arts. Decuir expounds on the impact of the discussion in some of the period's salient authors and essayists' writings. They include Alain Locke, W. E. B. Du Bois, George Schuyler, and Langston Hughes, among others. Decuir discusses the correlation between the debate and the increasing popularity of blues music and Armstrong's role as one of the arts' principal aquifers. Specifically, Armstrong's salient recordings, "Texas Moaner Blues," "St. Louis Blues" (accompanying Bessie Smith), "Black and Blue," "West End Blues," and "Blue Yodel No. 9" (with Jimmie Rodgers).

Decuir also explores blues music as an existential idiom indicative of the African American use of music for more than entertainment or aesthetic fulfillment. Specifically, the enslaved use of song texts to relay messages of escape and danger, the use of field songs to ease the burden of labor, and blues music's role as a vehicle to identify and solve the ills of life in an oppressive existence.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Ewings Publishing LLC
  • Publish Date: Oct 31st, 2023
  • Pages: 226
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 9.00in - 6.00in - 0.63in - 1.11lb
  • EAN: 9798890313973
  • Categories: • General

About the Author

Decuir, Michael: - Dr. Michael Decuir was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. He began playing clarinet at the age of eleven and matriculated to Southern University at New Orleans where he earned a BA in Instrumental Music Education. He earned a MA in Music History and literature from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Doctor of Arts in Humanities from Clark Atlanta University where he currently serves as an Associate Professor of Music.

Praise for this book

"Though Armstrong is recognized as a quintessential jazz man, Michael Decuir's Louis Armstrong, Blues Music, and the Artistic, Political and Philosophical Debate during the Harlem Renaissance establishes him additionally as a blues musician extraordinaire, who horned his skills as he came of age in the multicultural landscape of Congo Square in New Orleans. In this well-researched and documented book, Decuir, also a native of New Orleans and an extremely talented musician himself, explores the vestiges of African and European cultures that informed Armstrong's musical development, his artistry and his performing acumen; and focusing primarily on Armstrong's blues music, Decuir recounts the musician's role in popularizing the blues in America and abroad, contributing to the development of the literary, visual and performing arts of the Harlem Renaissance and lending his blues music as a model in the divisive cultural debate of the 1920s. In addition to his deft delineation of Armstrong's blues legacy and his place in the Harlem Renaissance, another major strength of Decuir's study is his analysis of some of the vicissitudes of African American double consciousness in the embracement of living in the United States."

- James L. Hill, Former Dean of Arts and Sciences, Albany State University