Harlem Renaissance

John Michael Cooper

MARGARET BONDS, LANGSTON HUGHES, AND THE JOY OF “JOY”:

A Conspirare Premiere and a Gratuitous Youthful Photo Langston Hughes’s poem Joy was first published in the collection The Weary Blues...

John Michael Cooper

OF HOPE AND NEW BEGINNINGS

A Commencement Letter from Langston Hughes, Shared with Margaret Bonds We are in an age of marches, of collective protests against...

John Michael Cooper

THE FIRST LIVE RECORDING OF AN AFRO-MODERNIST “COTTON DANCE” (ca. 1940) BY FLORENCE B. PRICE

performed by Michael Lu On New Year’s Eve of the rough-and-tumble year 2021 I got a fabulous musical surprise – 365 days late. The...

John Michael Cooper

“THE THREE WISE MEN”:

A Seasonal Blessing in Word and Song from the Pen of W.E.B. Du Bois (1913) W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) was a male womanist as well as an...

John Michael Cooper

A MARGARET BONDS CHRISTMAS -- NORTH AND SOUTH, EAST AND WEST

[This post is about two compositions of Margaret Bonds that are gaining a new foothold on modern musical life. One is a short but...

John Michael Cooper

FLORENCE PRICE V. LANGSTON HUGHES AT THE “FEET O’ JESUS”

Langston Hughes’s relationship with the Christian church was . . . complicated. Except that it wasn’t. While he acknowledged that the...

John Michael Cooper

THE BEAUTY OF BLACKNESS

Florence B. Price’s “Night” (Text by Bessie Mayle) The poetry, music, and other artworks of the Harlem Renaissance and Chicago Black...

John Michael Cooper

“YES, IT’LL BE ME!”

Margaret Bonds, Langston Hughes, and the Note on Commercial Theater In the chapter titled “When the Negro Was in Vogue” of his 1940...

John Michael Cooper

THE ARTS LEAD

The arts are where our imagination grows the strange new fruit of new world-views that open the way to a brighter future.