In the national consciousness, Harlem has usually been defined by two eras: the artistic and cultural explosion of the 1920s, known as the Harlem Renaissance, and the drug-fueled devastation that began in the 1950s and peaked in the late '80s.
The artistic results were explosions of color and energy that were infused into a neighborhood where chickens, steep dirt roads, abandoned dogs, shoeless children, and re-bar poking out of unfinished foundations became touched with positive affirmation.
What early works may offer is the explosive inauguration of an original world, of an artist's temperament, an explosion that creates a clearing within which that artist, and others, can advance a way forward, into an artistic future.
"It was previously thought that Western Europe was the centerpiece of a symbolic explosion in early human artistic activity such as cave painting and other forms of image-making, including figurative art, around 40,000 years ago," she told Reuters.
Led by its music director, the trumpeter Jon Faddis, the band will feature music associated with the explosion of literary and artistic creativity in Harlem from the aftermath of World War I to the mid-1930's.
