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Though this may be quite an extreme example, similarities can be seen here. In Oceola's case, her 'producer' attempted to force her to produce music with which she did not care to associate. Kesha, a prominent member in today's music realm, was forced to participate in things she would rather not.

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Kesha Sues Producer Dr. Luke for Sexual Assault and Battery

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Kesha has sued producer Dr. Luke for sexual assault and battery.

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This man provides us with a detailed summary and analysis of "The Blues I'm Playing". Due to the length of the video, I would recommend watching it on double speed.

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Teaching Langston Hughes "The Blues I'm Playing" - Oceola Jones never Sold Out!

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This video gives a small look into the history of the music that emerged from the Harlem Renaissance and the Great Migration. This is the same time period in which Oceola lived and played.

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This article takes a brief look into poetry and music from the Harlem Renaissance. It does not fail to recognize Langston Hughes, one of the most notable people of the age.

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There was a time when Harlem was the center of the universe for many African Americans. Thousands of black families found a place to call home in this new suburb of Manhattan north of Central Park in the 1920s. Black churches and political organizations sprang up next door to black theaters, dance halls and dives. This 'coming together' of poets and musicians, intellectuals and entrepreneurs gave rise to the Harlem Renaissance, a time when all things seemed possible. All along Harlem's bustling Lenox Avenue, optimism was in th and cash jingled in the pockets of stylish new suits. It was the world of the "New Negro" whose ideas and art are at the heart of the Jazz Age.

Riverwalk Jazz captures the high spirit of the Harlem Renaissance with a program combining music of Duke Ellington, Eubie Blake, Fats Waller and James P. Johnson with the poetry of Langston Hughes, celebrated as the "Poet Laureate of the Harlem Renaissance." Special guests on this broadcast are film and theater legend William Warfield and Broadway's Vernel Bagneris who present Hughes' poetry in tandem, and piano virtuoso Dick Hyman sitting in with The Jim Cullum Jazz Band.

The 1921 hit musical Shuffle Along brought black rhythms to Broadway and with its all-black cast and score by Eubie Blake, Shuffle Along was the "wake-up call" that launched The Harlem Renaissance. Other black musicals followed in the wake of Shuffle Along, but nothing could touch its success until Runnin' Wild in 1928 and its hit song "The Charleston." Composed by James P. Johnson, "The Charleston" is performed here by Vernel Bagneris on vocals with The Jim Cullum Jazz Band.

A high point of Harlem music was the long tenure of Duke Ellington and His Orchestra at the notorious Cotton Club, where mobsters called the shots while white celebrities in diamonds and minks enjoyed glittering floor shows, starring the greatest black entertainers of the day. In spite of the strange culture collision at the Cotton Club, Ellington created some of the most enduring jazz songs in history-"Black and Tan Fantasy," "Mood Indigo" and "Creole Love Call."

Harlem composers interested in 'elevating' their art sought to present their music in the concert halls of New York. W.C. Handy and James P. Johnson were among those who succeeded. In 1928 W.C. Handy put on the cultural event of the year as Carnegie Hall hosted its first evening of black music-a concert of jazz, blues, work songs, and spirituals-with a full choir and orchestra on stage. The highlight of the evening was Yamecraw: A Negro Rhapsody, a "serious" concert piece composed by James P. Johnson. It was given its premier performance that night by Johnson's protégée-a young Fats Waller at the piano. The Jim Cullum Jazz Band presents their dazzling arrangement of Yamecraw with the twin pianos of John Sheridan and Dick Hyman.

In Harlem's rich cultural stew, a remarkable young poet raised in the midwest found his voice. Langston Hughes heard of the success of Sissle and Blake's Shuffle Along and knew he had to come to Harlem to find out what was going on for himself. He was nineteen years old in 1921 when he published his first poem, A Negro Speaks of Rivers, which is presented here by William Warfield along with other serious works including I, Too, Sing America. Harlem nightlife teased out a playful side in Hughes' poetry, equal to his serious work. Here, Vernel Bagneris performs Hughes' Harlem Sweeties, Lenox Avenue Midnight, and The Cat and the Saxophone (2am).

Photo credit for home page teaser image:
Cotton Club Ext 1920s. Photo courtesy NFO.net

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Riverwalk Jazz - Stanford University Libraries

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There was a time when Harlem was the center of the universe for many African Americans. Thousands of black families found a place to call home in this new suburb of Manhattan north of Central Park in the 1920s. Black churches and political organizations sprang up next door to black theaters, dance halls and dives.

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From meeting Mrs. Ellsworth, she also spends a lot of her time in Paris. Paris experienced its own form of the Harlem Renaissance and thus created a sort of safe haven for African-Americans of the time.

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The Harlem Renaissance in Paris | Christie's

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The Archibald Motley exhibition at LACMA reveals a rich and relatively unreported seam in the history of black 20th century art. Meredith Etherington-Smith reports

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It may be subtle, but pieces of racism can be picked out of this story. One that really sticks out is Mrs. Ellsworth (roughly) stating that she has never known a black person before. One might read right over this, but through close examination more can be revealed. Mrs. Ellsworth is basically saying that she has never known a black person of which she thinks as a real person.

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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With the end of the Civil War in 1865, hundreds of thousands of African Americans newly freed from the yoke of slavery in the South began to dream of fuller participation in American society, including political empowerment, equal economic opportunity, and economic and cultural self-determination.

Unfortunately, by the late 1870s, that dream was largely dead, as white supremacy was quickly restored to the Reconstruction South. White lawmakers on state and local levels passed strict racial segregation laws known as "Jim Crow laws" that made African Americans second-class citizens. While a small number of African Americans were able to become landowners, most were exploited as sharecroppers, a system designed to keep them poor and powerless. Hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) perpetrated lynchings and conducted campaigns of terror and intimidation to keep African Americans from voting or exercising other fundamental rights.

With booming economies across the North and Midwest offering industrial jobs for workers of every race, many African Americans realized their hopes for a better standard of living-and a more racially tolerant environment-lay outside the South. By the turn of the 20th century, the Great Migration was underway as hundreds of thousands of African Americans relocated to cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, Philadelphia, and New York. The Harlem section of Manhattan, which covers just three square miles, drew nearly 175,000 African Americans, giving the neighborhood the largest concentration of black people in the world. Harlem became a destination for African Americans of all backgrounds. From unskilled laborers to an educated middle-class, they shared common experiences of slavery, emancipation, and racial oppression, as well as a determination to forge a new identity as free people.

The Great Migration drew to Harlem some of the greatest minds and brightest talents of the day, an astonishing array of African American artists and scholars. Between the end of World War I and the mid-1930s, they produced one of the most significant eras of cultural expression in the nation's history-the Harlem Renaissance. Yet this cultural explosion also occurred in Cleveland, Los Angeles and many cities shaped by the great migration. Alain Locke, a Harvard-educated writer, critic, and teacher who became known as the "dean" of the Harlem Renaissance, described it as a "spiritual coming of age" in which African Americans transformed "social disillusionment to race pride."

The Harlem Renaissance encompassed poetry and prose, painting and sculpture, jazz and swing, opera and dance. What united these diverse art forms was their realistic presentation of what it meant to be black in America, what writer Langston Hughes called an "expression of our individual dark-skinned selves," as well as a new militancy in asserting their civil and political rights.

Among the Renaissance's most significant contributors were intellectuals W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Cyril Briggs, and Walter Francis White; electrifying performers Josephine Baker and Paul Robeson; writers and poets Zora Neale Hurston, Effie Lee Newsome, Countee Cullen; visual artists Aaron Douglas and Augusta Savage; and an extraordinary list of legendary musicians, including Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Eubie Blake, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Ivie Anderson, Josephine Baker, Fats Waller, Jelly Roll Morton, and countless others.

At the height of the movement, Harlem was the epicenter of American culture. The neighborhood bustled with African American-owned and run publishing houses and newspapers, music companies, playhouses, nightclubs, and cabarets. The literature, music, and fashion they created defined culture and "cool" for blacks and white alike, in America and around the world.

As the 1920s came to a close, so did the Harlem Renaissance. Its heyday was cut short largely due to the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and resulting Great Depression, which hurt African American-owned businesses and publications and made less financial support for the arts available from patrons, foundations, and theatrical organizations.

However, the Harlem Renaissance's impact on America was indelible. The movement brought notice to the great works of African American art, and inspired and influenced future generations of African American artists and intellectuals. The self-portrait of African American life, identity, and culture that emerged from Harlem was transmitted to the world at large, challenging the racist and disparaging stereotypes of the Jim Crow South. In doing so, it radically redefined how people of other races viewed African Americans and understood the African American experience.

Most importantly, the Harlem Renaissance instilled in African Americans across the country a new spirit of self-determination and pride, a new social consciousness, and a new commitment to political activism, all of which would provide a foundation for the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In doing so, it validated the beliefs of its founders and leaders like Alain Locke and Langston Hughes that art could be a vehicle to improve the lives of the African Americans.

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A New African American Identity: The Harlem Renaissance

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Between the end of World War I and the mid-1930s, African Americans produced one of the most significant eras of cultural expression in the nation's history-the Harlem Renaissance.

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This theme is displayed throughout the entire course of the story. Mrs. Ellsworth's entire life is devoted to art. I refrain from saying the same for Oceola, though it is similar. Art is a major part of her life, yet she puts first a much more important part, love. This article gives an interesting look at the art of the Harlem Renaissance.

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The main character, Oceola, is a musical prodigy that is sponsored by the wealthy Mrs. Ellsworth. This small excerpt gives an insight into her character and a slight insight into Hughes' inspiration.

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BLUES TO LIVE BY: LANGSTON HUGHES'S "THE BLUES I'M PLAYING" on JSTOR

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Steven C. Tracy, BLUES TO LIVE BY: LANGSTON HUGHES'S "THE BLUES I'M PLAYING", The Langston Hughes Review, Vol. 12, No. 1 (SPRING 1993), pp. 12-18

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Earlier this year, a young boy was discovered singing to whoever he could in a Walmart. He almost instantly became a viral sensation and now attends many large events where he plays his old country music. This story is similar to that of Oceola. He was discovered from nothing and grew from assistance from those who had already made it.

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Mason Ramsey: Inside the Curious Fame of 'Lil Hank Williams'

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How Mason Ramsey became country music's first-ever viral-born star by yodeling Hank Williams in a Walmart.

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The protagonist, Oceola, spends much of her time in Harlem. This is where she and her culture reside. She refuses to leave when offered a fancier place in New York.