Jazz Rhapsodies in Black and White: James P. Johnson's Yamekraw

By John Howland

From the 1910s to the 1940s, the symphonic jazz vogue intersected in a number of ways with the world of Harlem, and African American, entertainment. In the larger arena of popular culture, most of these activities were overshadowed by the dominant white symphonic jazz entertainments of the day and the bona fide jazz tradition itself. While the wellknown concert jazz activities of Duke Ellington were one major exception to this trend, so were the lesser-known extended compositions of Ellington's early musical mentor, James P. Johnson. Johnson was known chiefly as a successful broadway composer of the 1920s, a popular songwriter, and the father and main exponent of Harlem stride piano. After 1930, Johnson turned his artistic aspirations toward the composition of racially expressive, jazz-based concert music. From the late 1920s to the 1940s he created a large and varied body of symphonic jazz-oriented instrumental and choral concert works for forces that ranged from solo piano, to string quartet, to large hybrid orchestral ensembles.