Deck 16: The Arts at Home and Abroad

Question 1

Which of the following statements about jazz is LEAST accurate?

A)It was reviled by many middle-class blacks who worried about its association with "primitivism" and sexuality.
B)For many Americans,black and white,its rhythms and spontaneity came to define the 1920s.
C)Its evolution followed the path of and depended on the Great Migration out of the South.
D)It was the first black musical style to develop entirely in the North with little contribution from southern black musicians.

Answer 1

It was the first black musical style to develop entirely in the North with little contribution from southern black musicians.

Question 2

Whose phenomenally popular recording of "Crazy Blues" in 1920 paved the way for black women to become musical recording artists?

A)Mamie Smith
B)Gertrude "Ma" Rainey
C)Ida Cox
D)Sippie Wallace

Answer 2

Mamie Smith

Question 3

Who became the leader of the New York jazz scene after 1919,fostering an image of professionalism and respectability which made his music popular among white and black audiences alike?

A)Louis Armstrong
B)Fletcher Henderson
C)Sidney Bechet
D)Harry Pace

Answer 3

Fletcher Henderson

Question 4

What city had become the center of the jazz world by the late 1920s?

A)Chicago
B)Memphis
C)New York
D)New Orleans

Question 5

Who was the first male blues singer to have his own recording?

A)Son House
B)Charley Patton
C)Robert Johnson
D)Blind Lemon Jefferson

Question 6

Which later winner of the Presidential Medal of Honor and the French Legion of Honor was the most frequently broadcast black musician of the 1920s?

A)Louis Armstrong
B)Ella Fitzgerald
C)Duke Ellington
D)Bessie Smith

Question 7

The cultural movement known as modernism exhibited all of the following characteristics EXCEPT

A)a fascination with African and Asian art forms.
B)a commitment to free and dynamic expression.
C)an emphasis on long-standing artistic traditions.
D)an appreciation of the nonlinear,experimental,and abstract.

Question 8

Who founded Black Swan Records in 1920?

A)Henry Pace
B)Son House
C)Albert Ammons
D)Eubie Blake

Question 9

What controversial 1929 King Vidor film produced arguably Hollywood's most realistic and sensitive portrayal of black family life before the 1970s?

A)Birthright
B)Black and Tan
C)St.Louis Blues
D)Hallelujah!

Question 10

Which of the following statements about Black Swan Records is LEAST accurate?

A)It consciously targeted its products to black audiences.
B)It succeeded by hiring "earthy" and "rough" singers like Bessie Smith and Jelly Roll Morton whom white labels would not sign.
C)It ultimately proved unable to compete with white-owned labels which discovered that there was a lucrative market in blues and jazz records.
D)It consciously strove to infuse the black community with both capital and with an aura of respectability in the eyes of whites.

Question 11

Which play,with music and lyrics by Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle,was the longest running black-authored musical of the 1920s?

A)Porgy
B)Shuffle Along
C)The Emperor Jones
D)All God's Chillun Got Wings

Question 12

Who led Club Chef in the 1910s,helped to develop the New York style of jazz,and played a crucial role in introducing jazz to Europe during World War I?

A)Louis Armstrong
B)Lucky Roberts
C)Thomas "Fats" Waller
D)James Reese Europe

Question 13

Which of the following statements about independent black filmmakers in the 1920s is LEAST accurate?

A)Black filmmakers of the 1920s ultimately lacked the capital,equipment,and distribution networks which might have allowed them to compete with white filmmakers.
B)Black filmmakers of the 1920s established patterns of advertising and promotion which would be employed by later generations of independent filmmakers.
C)Black filmmakers of the 1920s produced films with all-black casts which were screened in segregated theaters in the South and in black neighborhoods in the North.
D)Black filmmakers of the 1920s created their own genres addressed to the specific concerns of black audiences rather than producing black versions of established genres.

Question 14

George and Noble Johnson and Oscar Micheaux were black pioneers in which genre?

A)motion pictures
B)jazz
C)poetry
D)sculpture

Question 15

What James P.Johnson song from the Broadway show Runnin' Wild remains the "theme song" of the 1920s?

A)"The Charleston"
B)"Ain't Misbehavin'"
C)"I'm Just Wild about Harry"
D)"Love Will Find a Way"

Question 16

In 1900,the residential heart of black New York and the site of black bohemia was located in

A)Harlem.
B)SoHo.
C)the Tenderloin.
D)the Village.

Question 17

What city is identified as the birthplace of jazz?

A)New Orleans
B)Chicago
C)New York
D)Atlanta

Question 18

A defining feature of the "classic blues" genre is that

A)the singers played their own instruments.
B)the singers were women.
C)the singers adopted a country twang.
D)the singers sang without accompaniment.

Question 19

Which of the following statements about radio in the 1920s is LEAST accurate?

A)Radio exposed white listeners to the works of black artists whose works they might have otherwise rejected out of hand.
B)Radio allowed black listeners to hear the work of black artists whose live performances took place in clubs which excluded blacks.
C)Even as black artists came to dominate the national airwaves,they received little exposure on local stations,which mostly remained under the control of conservative white owners.
D)Black musical styles such as jazz and dance band became the most popular musical trends in America,thanks largely to the radio.

Question 20

The most prominent New York jazz style of the 1920s developed from

A)small band "stride."
B)big band music.
C)classic blues.
D)rural blues.

Question 21

Which Caribbean-born author of Batouala played a crucial role in providing the budding writers of the Harlem Renaissance with an international audience?

A)Lamine Senghor
B)Maurice Satineau
C)Jessie Fauset
D)René Maran

Question 22

Which author of Plum Bum also played a critical role in introducing and encouraging much of the new talent associated with the Harlem Renaissance?

A)Jessie Redmond Fauset
B)Nella Larsen
C)Zora Neale Hurston
D)Florence Embry Jones

Question 23

Which European city experienced an explosion of black artistic creativity reminiscent of the Harlem Renaissance and fueled by performers like Louis Mitchell's Jazz Kings,Florence Embry Jones,and Eugene Bullard?

A)London
B)Paris
C)Prague
D)Madrid

Question 24

The poetry of Langston Hughes was marked by all of the following characteristics EXCEPT

A)an attempt to capture the tenor of black vernacular.
B)frequent expressions of racial pride.
C)an emphasis on traditional poetic structures.
D)the influence of jazz and blues rhythms.

Question 25

Whose hotel on West 53^rd Street was the center of black bohemia in New York before the First World War?

A)Bob Cole
B)Ernest Hogan
C)James Weldon Johnson
D)Jimmie Marshall

Question 26

Which black iconoclast argued that the concept of a unique black artistic movement was a myth,and that the artistic works of African Americans were essentially as European in influence as the works of white Americans?

A)Langston Hughes
B)Richard Bruce Nugent
C)George Schuyler
D)Wallace Thurman

Question 27

Which of the following statements about Claude McKay is LEAST accurate?

A)Though an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance,McKay spent most of the 1920s living outside of the United States.
B)Though he had written poetry for years,his work was ignored until the advent of the Harlem Renaissance brought attention to black writing.
C)An active socialist,McKay was fascinated by the culture of the black working class,and wrote about it in raw,even lurid,terms.
D)Though McKay started out as a poet,writing,among other things,an anthology of poems in Jamaican dialect,he would later shift his focus toward prose.

Question 28

Born Peyton Cole Hedgeman,which artist won fame for A Midsummer Night in Harlem and other scenes of urban black life?

A)Aaron Douglas
B)Archibald Motley
C)Palmer Hayden
D)Sargent Johnson

Question 29

As a poet,Countee Cullen

A)developed a constant theme of militant racial protest.
B)experimented with a variety of non-traditional poetic forms.
C)received little critical attention during his lifetime.
D)insisted on his right to explore non-racial subjects.

Question 30

Which dancer,having enjoyed success on Broadway,became a legendary figure in Europe through the Revue Negre?

A)Florence Embry Jones
B)Josephine Baker
C)Jane Nardal
D)Lamine Senghor

Question 31

Which of the following statements about the Harlem Renaissance is LEAST accurate?

A)The Renaissance resulted in part from the Great Migration which brought large numbers of blacks to Harlem for the first time.
B)The Renaissance attracted the attention not only of black audiences but also of white socialites,tourists,and politicians.
C)The Renaissance was opposed by leaders of civil rights organizations,who regarded its emphasis on the arts as a distraction from the struggle against racism.
D)The Renaissance did not develop a coherent ideology,but instead grew out of the interplay among and competition between a number of different ideologies.

Question 32

Which Chicago artist shifted from realist portraiture to modernist depictions on nightlife in his Bronzeville series of paintings?

A)Aaron Douglas
B)Archibald Motley
C)Palmer Hayden
D)Sargent Johnson

Question 33

Which New Negro artist's West Coast setting introduced him to artistic styles such as California modernism which distinguished his work from that of East Coast artists?

A)Aaron Douglas
B)Archibald Motley
C)Palmer Hayden
D)Sargent Johnson

Question 34

Which artist's photographs of ordinary blacks,later exhibited as Harlem on My Mind,played a crucial role in shaping popular images of the Harlem Renaissance?

A)James Van Der Zee
B)Aaron Douglas
C)Archibald Motley
D)Sargent Johnson

Question 35

Whose 1923 novel Cane is widely recognized as the first black modernist work?

A)Countee Cullen
B)Nella Larsen
C)Jessie Fauset
D)Jean Toomer

Question 36

Which Howard University professor and editor of the anthology The New Negro emerged as the architect of the Harlem Renaissance in 1924?

A)Alain Locke
B)Countee Cullen
C)Paul Kellogg
D)Charles S.Johnson

Question 37

In Their Eyes Were Watching God,Zora Neale Hurston

A)focused on interracial conflict and cooperation.
B)glorified the bourgeois values of the black middle class.
C)praised the authenticity of rural black culture.
D)celebrated the pleasures of Harlem nightlife.

Question 38

As a group,the writers of the Harlem Renaissance believed that

A)race was a bankrupt concept which should be abandoned.
B)art could be an instrument of social change.
C)political freedom was less important than freedom of artistic expression.
D)the primary purpose of art should be to portray a respectable image of black Americans.