GRMUS H695 — African-American Music Since the Harlem Renaissance

This course traces the evolution of African American music from the era of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1930s to the present. Considering interwoven Black folk, classical, and popular musical traditions and African and African American approaches to music-making, the focus of this course is the Harlem Renaissance—a period marked by rich literary, artistic, and intellectual production and innovation—as a site of convergence of classical, folk, and popular African American musics. Students will investigate how the artistic debates of that era informed the further development and critique of African American musics and complete projects that directly engage Juilliard’s longstanding affiliations with African American music and the manifold ways African American music shapes American music more broadly.