This Miami Beach music festival shows how the Harlem Renaissance took Europe by storm

Before there was hip-hop, R&B and reggaeton, African-American visionaries were taking Paris nightlife by storm.

An ocean away from New York City, the Harlem Renaissance took hold in Europe, changing the way music was made forever. Starting Friday, a festival hosted by New World Symphony will bring Europe’s Harlem Renaissance to Miami.

“I Dream a World: The Harlem Renaissance in Europe,” a two-week music and arts festival that ends Feb. 15, explores the Harlem Renaissance’s influence abroad and pays homage to the Black creatives who came to Europe in search of artistic freedom. The festival includes concerts, artwork, talks and a film screening at the New World Center in Miami Beach and Lyric Theater in Overtown.

The festival was curated by Tammy Kernodle, a leading music history expert and professor at Miami University in Ohio.

“This music is about individuals who dreamed of a world free from racial, gender, economic exploitation,” Kernodle said. ”So, we are dreaming a world. This music is about the world that we hope to one day live in.”

This is the New World Symphony’s second season hosting a festival focused on the Harlem Renaissance, an intellectual and cultural revival of African-American dance, literature, music, theater, politics and art. The movement, largely based in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood, spanned from the end of World War I in 1917 to the 1930s.

Martin Sher, the symphony’s senior vice president for artistic planning and programs, said the festival is an opportunity for the symphony’s fellows and audiences to dive into the Harlem Renaissance’s rich musical history. As predominately white orchestras strive to become more inclusive, it is important for New World Symphony to turn to the expertise of Black music historians to guide the festival, Sher said.

“One of the great challenges here is that there’s just so much material, so much to address, and we just can’t possibly do all of it,” Sher said. “But we are doing everything we can to provide some really important snapshots of the time.”

A Parisian Cabaret in Miami

At the start of the 20th century, many African-American creatives didn’t see a future for themselves in the United States. They faced political and legal oppression, lynchings and racist violence were prevalent and artistic freedom for Black Americans was limited.

“Europe offered an escape from that,” Kernodle said. Paris especially became a hot spot for African-American artists to find better opportunities. Writer Langston Hughes, dancer Josephine Baker and painters Henry Ossawa Tanner and Lois Mailou Jones all found refuge in France.

Artwork by Tanner and Jones, the first internationally recognized male and female African-American artists, will be on display at an art exhibition in New World Center’s atrium curated by Christopher Norwood, the founder of Hampton Art Lovers at the Historic Ward Rooming House in Overtown.

On Friday, the festival opens with an immersive concert that will transform New World Center’s Truist Pavilion into a Parisian 1920s nightclub, Kernodle said. The show was inspired by Chez Bricktop, a popular Paris nightclub run by African-American dancer Ada “Bricktop” Smith. Anybody who was anybody — celebrities, writers, royalty — hung out at Bricktop.

“The only thing you won’t get is the cigarette smoke,” Kernodle said, laughing. “But we’re gonna take you there! We’re gonna take you to Paris in 1920.”

During the concert, American sopranos Julia Bullock and Louise Toppin, pianist Christian Reif, and New World fellows will perform jazz and blues songs by Billie Holiday, Alberta Hunter, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, Duke Ellington and Bricktop.

Bullock, who has been singing and researching music from the Harlem Renaissance for years, said she is excited for audiences to learn more about the African-American musicians who influenced white European composers. Bullock is especially inspired by the female artists who were “writing liberation in every respect into their work.”

“It’s saying what they want, saying what they wanted to do, how they wanted to live, and then not only articulating it in their art, but that is exactly how they lived their lives,” Bullock said. “Their work is a direct reflection of who they were as people. I just enjoy the hell out of singing it.”

‘The Martin Luther King of music’

One of the festivals biggest stars is James Reese Europe, the African-American bandleader and lieutenant. He helped change the course of music history, yet most people don’t know his name, Kernodle said.

If you’ve seen photos of the Harlem Hellfighters, the all-Black regimen that fought in World War I, you’ve seen his face.

Before the war, Europe was a composer and musician who advocated for the advancement of Black artists and music. He later enlisted to fight in World War I, convinced other Black musicians from Harlem and Puerto Rico to join and formed a regimental band.

Europe, now called the “Martin Luther King of music,” introduced Black music styles to French audiences and the allied troops, Kernodle said. This ignited a cultural revolution that sets up the Jazz Age in Europe and the States. The rest is literally history, Kernodle said. Jazz, blues and ragtime created a “sonic genealogy” of swing, R&B, and rock n roll.

The festival organized a concert on Feb. 7 of Europe’s music and a screening of “The Harlem Hellfighters Great War,” a 2019 documentary, on Feb. 15.

At a time when education about African-American history is being suppressed in Florida, Kernodle said she hopes people leave the festival eager to learn more and reconcile with the past. Healing can only be done by understanding history, even if it makes you uncomfortable, she said.

“Music has been the one thing that has bound us as human beings regardless of race or gender or sexuality,” Kernodle said. “And it is also the thing that has deposited and incubated and preserved that history. These melodies, these rhythms, these harmonies, they are all ripe with information that has the potential to not only heal the present, but hopefully help us create a new future.”

I Dream a World: The Harlem Renaissance in Europe

Where: Most events held at New World Center, 500 17th Street, Miami Beach

When: Feb. 3 - 15

Info: Full festival schedule tickets available at https://www.nws.edu/events-tickets/concerts/#/calendar

This story was produced with financial support from The Pérez Family Foundation, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The Miami Herald maintains full editorial control of this work.