The Early Years of Black American Expression - Zora Neale Hurston's "Characteristics of Negro Expression"

 

In Zora Neale Hurston’s “Characteristics of Negro Expression” she defines the black language as one of action and physicality. She says that African American speech, being more primitive, relies on description even to express abstract ideas. This, she believes, takes the form of metaphors, similes, and a continuous ceremony of acting and performance. This characterization can clearly be seen in Zora Neale Husrton’s The Gilded Six Bits, where Missie May and Joe put on a performance of exaggerated love and affection both at the beginning and end of the story, filled with the metaphors and physicality Zora Neale Hurston classifies as distinctly black. In addition to the physicality of black speech that Hurston describes, she also defines it as original, angular, and asymmetrical. According to Hurston, these qualities characterize African American artforms during the Harlem Renaissance and are the sources of cultural expressions such as folklore and dialect. In works by Zora Neale Hurston herself, such as the aforementioned short story, The Gilded Six Bits, these elements are all present to varying degrees, but the real question is if these features were consistent throughout black art of the time.

            Black poetry during the Harlem Renaissance was characterized by various different forms, from jazz poetry to primitivism. Jazz poetry is characterized by its rhythmic, syncopated, musical tone, elements of collage, and themes pertaining to jazz itself. In poems like Jazzonia and The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes, we can see the physicality and asymmetry that Hurston describes. These features are staples of jazz music as Hurston herself mentions and clearly fit the style she describes. In other poems, such as Cabaret by Sterling Brown, it is interesting to note that the writing style utilizes almost solely physical descriptions, even to convey more abstract ideas.

            In primitivist poems by black authors of this time period, this same physicality can be observed. In the poem Heritage by Gwendolyn Bennet, she describes a yearning for Africa by describing physical characteristics that she herself has never seen. The final stanza: “I want to feel the surging/ Of my sad people’s soul/ Hidden by minstrel-smile.” Utilizes metaphors grounded in the tangible actions of “surging” and being “hidden”. Both black primitivism and jazz poetry are clearly based in physical description and metaphors, but what is even more interesting is the concept of their originality. Hurston explains how black art can be both inherently descriptive and at the same time original. Jazz poetry and jazz itself are the epitome of this idea, with repetition and common themes, but the unique element of improvisation. Through the physical communication of emotions, black art becomes original. It is not just describing what one sees, but infusing the visible world with thoughts and ideas.

            Zora Neale Hurston’s characterization of black language and art as “primitive” can seem reductive, but what it truly describes is the early stages of a journey that black artists were only just starting during the Harlem Renaissance. Rather than primitive, I would describe black art and language of this time period as unprecedented. Viewing the evolution of black American art in the present, it is easy to see how unique and novel it was. Jazz has become the predecessor to many modern day forms of music, which continue to heavily utilize the asymmetry, physicality, and angularity that characterized art during the Harlem Renaissance.