The Arts
DEREK ALTON WALCOTT (b. Jan. 23, 1930, Castries, Saint Lucia), West Indian poet and playwright noted for works that explore the Caribbean cultural experience. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992.
Walcott was of mixed black, Dutch, and English descent. He was educated at St. Mary’s College, St. Lucia, and at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. He began writing poetry at an early age, taught at schools in St. Lucia and Grenada, and contributed articles and reviews to periodicals in Trinidad and Jamaica. Productions of his plays began in St. Lucia in 1950, and he studied theatre in New York City in 1958-59. He lived thereafter in Trinidad and the United States, teaching for part of the year at Boston University.
Walcott is best known for his poetry, beginning with In a Green Night: Poems 1948-1960 (1962). This book is typical of his early poetry in its celebration of the Caribbean landscape’s natural beauty. The verse in Selected Poems (1964), The Castaway (1965), and The Gulf (1969) is similarly lush in style and incantatory in mood as Walcott expresses his feelings of personal isolation, caught between his European cultural orientation and the black folk cultures of his native Caribbean. Another Life (1973) is a book-length autobiographical poem. In Sea Grapes (1976) and The Star-Apple Kingdom (1979), Walcott uses a tenser, more economical style to examine the deep cultural divisions of language and race in the Caribbean. The Fortunate Traveler (1981) and Midsummer (1984) explore his own situation as a black writer in America who has become increasingly estranged from his Caribbean homeland. Walcott’s Collected Poems, 1948-1984, was published in 1986.
Of Walcott’s approximately 30 plays, the best known are Dream on Monkey Mountain (produced 1967), Ti-Jean and His Brothers (1958), and Pantomime (1978). Many of his plays make use of themes from black folk culture in the Caribbean.
The Arts
Cabell Calloway III (December 25, 1907 – November 18, 1994) was an American jazz singer and bandleader. He was a regular performer at the Cotton Club in Harlem, where he became a popular vocalist of the swing era. His niche of mixing jazz and vaudeville won him acclaim during a career that spanned over 65 years.
Calloway was a master of energetic scat singing and led one of the most popular dance bands in the United States from the early 1930s to the late 1940s. His band included trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie, Jonah Jones, and Adolphus “Doc” Cheatham, saxophonists Ben Webster and Leon “Chu” Berry, guitarist Danny Barker, bassist Milt Hinton, and drummer Cozy Cole.
Calloway had several hit records in the 1930s and 1940s, becoming the first African-American musician to sell one million copies of a record. He became known as the “Hi-de-ho” man of jazz for his most famous song, “Minnie the Moocher”, originally recorded in 1931. He reached the Billboard charts in five consecutive decades (1930s–1970s). Calloway also made several stage, film, and television appearances until his death in 1994 at the age of 86. He had roles in Stormy Weather (1943), Porgy and Bess (1953), The Cincinnati Kid (1965), and Hello Dolly! (1967). His career enjoyed a marked resurgence from his appearance in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers.
Read more of this article on Wikipedia.
The Arts
Huddie William Ledbetter ( HYOO-dee; January 1888 or 1889 – December 6, 1949), better known by the stage name Lead Belly (not Leadbelly), was an American folk and blues singer notable for his strong vocals, virtuosity on the twelve-string guitar, and the folk standards he introduced, including his renditions of “In the Pines“, “Pick a Bale of Cotton“, “Goodnight, Irene“, “Midnight Special“, “Cotton Fields“, and “Boll Weevil“.
Lead Belly usually played a twelve-string guitar, but he also played the piano, mandolin, harmonica, violin, and windjammer. In some of his recordings, he sang while clapping his hands or stomping his foot.
Lead Belly’s songs covered a wide range of genres, including gospel music, blues, and folk music, as well as a number of topics, including women, liquor, prison life, racism, cowboys, work, sailors, cattle herding, and dancing. He also wrote songs about people in the news, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, Jean Harlow, Jack Johnson, the Scottsboro Boys and Howard Hughes. Lead Belly was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2008.
Though many releases credit him as “Leadbelly”, he wrote his name as “Lead Belly”. This is the spelling on his tombstone and is used by the Lead Belly Foundation.
The Arts
b. New York City. Mitchell studied in New York City and appeared on Broadway and with various companies at home and abroad. He joined the New York City Ballet in 1956, becoming a soloist in 1959. The first black principal dancer of a major company in history, he remained with the company for 20 years. His performance as Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1964) was especially acclaimed. He also performed with distinction in Western Symphony, Agon, Afternoon of a Faun, and Ebony Concerto. In 1968, Mitchell founded a ballet school in Harlem, New York City, in order to provide classical academic training to black students. By 1970 under his direction the school developed into the Dance Theatre of Harlem, the first black classical ballet company. His works include Rhythmetron (1968) and Ode to Otis (1969).
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1892 – 1962
A major Harlem Renaissance figure, Savage began creating clay figures as a child, but she did not begin formal art studies until she moved to New York City in 1921. Her bust of black intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois was well received, and Savage then produced likenesses of other prominent black figures, including Frederick Douglass and Marcus Garvey. From 1929 to 1932 Savage studied in Paris. Upon returning to New York, she founded the Savage School of Arts and Crafts in Harlem. In the 1930s she arranged for black artists to receive commissions from the Works Progress Administration. Savage also opened New York’s first black art gallery in 1939. In the 1940s, Savage retired and moved to Saugerties, N.Y.
The Arts
1917 ? 2000
b. Atlantic City, N.J. In Lawrence’s work social themes, often detailing the African-American experience, are expressed in angular, colorful, and richly decorative effects. He has executed many cycles of paintings, including the Migration, (completed 1941, Museum of Modern Art and Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.), Coast Guard, and Builders series. His War series and Tombstones are in the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City. Lawrence is also known for his vivid prints and has taught at several major art schools in New York City.
