The Harlem Renaissance
Videos ​by Jack Jones
​
Top left​: Louis Armstrong and Velma MIddleton performing the blues classic "St. Louis Blues" in Belgium in 1959.
​
Top right: A recording of Jelly Roll Morton playing the rag time "King Porter Stomp."
Bottom left: A recording of Duke Ellington & His Orchestra playing "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" from 1932.​​​
Bottom right: A recording of Billie Holiday singing "What a Little Moonlight Can Do" in 1935.​
​
​
One of the most significant developments of the Harlem Renaissance was in music. Jazz, perhaps the first distinctively American genre of music, was pioneered by artists such as Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Fats Waller. Jazz branched out into many different genres, all based in the foundations set by these artists, who in turn founded their music on African spiritual music and ragtime. The great jazz artists of the 1950s, including Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Thelonious Monk, all drew influence from the artists of the Harlem Renaissance.
