QUINCY TROUPE1994 WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT POETRY CHAMPION

“words hang out apart from any apparent meaning, existing just for the experience of the sound of them”

“because one of the things we have to remember is that poetry at first was song – it was the troubadours, the griots, the singers”

African troubadours, men who sang and brought songs to the villages

Hip-hop Music: poetry of the streets

Black Panthers: started off in 1956 -Created a radical language- stemmed from African post-colonialism re: African struggles- was NOT about integration but about violence- urged the carrying of guns especially after the assassination of MLK in 1968

Washington March in 1963

led by MLK

March of the Black Panthers

Vaudeville’s influencesAL JOHNSON: musician

from Eastern Europe- Ran away from home at

14- become a performer at a

Vaudeville show and made his way to the top

of the records- Jazz singer

- performed with a “black” face

- fascinated with African American music and

culture

Harlem Renaissance Figures

Marcus Garvey : deliberately about African nationalism-Held public celebrations - about the flowering of culture- also a flowering of a new black economy - emergence of new kinds of artistic and musical literary style

Harlem: northern part of Manhattan- had the emergence of African American entrepreneurs, dance halls, night clubs, cafes, sporting clubs, etc. - for some whites who travel to Harlem: opportunity to escape and to go to jazz clubs to search to find something authentic and to find the faux hero

Jazz-First musical type of New Orleans- Duke Ellington: became popular both to whites and blacks since black cultural forms were starting to become fascinating to many- Jazz and Blues had become the popular American music the White youth culture of the 1950s was profoundly influenced and shaped by the rhythms and sounds of jazz.

Duke Ellington: a piano player; played in clubs

Elvis Presley-Born in Mississippi- Segregated- Perhaps the most Jim Crow of all the Southern states- heard the jazz style in the street- he had the southern interpretation of the blues - teens tuned in the Ed Sullivan show to hear this southern teenager- blended gospel with blues - channelling the black culture with his greased black hair- emergence of the white vocalist such as Frank Sinatra