High/Low Culture in Harlem Renaissance Literature
High/Low Culture in Harlem Renaissance Literature
The Harlem Renaissance practically invented the whole idea of mixing high culture with low culture. Or at least, the Harlem Renaissance made it very cool to do so.
What about Andy Warhol, you say? Psh. Warhol wasn't even a glimmer of thought in anyone's head when the original high/low artists of the HR started strutting their stuff in the popular forms and sounds of their time.
The writers of the Harlem Renaissance were drawing on the blues, jazz, gospels—all of which contain rhythms, sounds, or lyrics that harken back to the folk traditions of Africans and African Americans.
And what "highbrow" things were these authors into? Well, like many well-educated people, the writers of the HR liked to show off their book smarts. Trust us: they were just as equipped to be literary snobs as your Virginia Woolfs and T.S. Eliots. They just didn't want to favor one kind of culture over another, because doing so would be to ignore the unique position of many black writers of that era—they had humble beginnings, but high aspirations for the future.
So these writers became the original mix-masters of their time, inventing a hybrid culture that honored both their roots and their accomplishments. Kind of like Shmoop, we hope. (Sorry, we had to toot our own horn just a little.)
Chew on This:
Want to see high and the low culture really work it together? Look no further than the form of Countee Cullen's poem, "Yet Do I Marvel."
Langston Hughes is the go-to guy for poetry that draws on "lowbrow" material. He's all about embracing the blues in his works—he writes in a way that channels the loose rhythms and free-styling ways of a great blues jam.