The Concept Of Race As Applied To Social Culture Alain Locke Summary

Alain LeRoy Locke’s publication of The New Negro in 1925 led to Locke becoming known as the “Father of the Harlem Renaissance”. Locke, a notable philosopher and interpreter of Negro art and literature, disagreed with many other philosophers like W. E. B. Dubois on the social function and culture of Negro art and literature. Dubois, along with others, believed that it was the responsibility of the Negro artist to educate the masses and offer truthful representation of the Negro experience in forms of propaganda. Locke however, believed that it was not the responsibility of the Negro artist to use their work as propaganda but to express one’s true feelings in the hopes to change the minds and social culture of our peers. In the two essays “The Concept of Race as applied to Social Culture” by Alain Locke, and the “Vindication as a Thematic Principal in the Writings of Alain Locke” by Paul Burgett, Locke interprets the relationship between race and culture along with the impact of Negro art and literature. According to Locke,

During the Harlem Renaissance certain races were known for certain genres/ types of musical styles. Black or Negro music, was music that very sporadic, rough and unwritten; an inferior type of music to its White counterparts of classical or symphonic written music.

According to Locke, there are three categories of music: folk, original folk, and formal or classical. Folk music is “[p]roduced without formal musical training or intention, Negro folk music is a product of emotional creation” ….. It is “sad but not somber, intense but buoyant, tragic but ecstatic” (Floyd, 30). Original folk is more “diluted; a form “imitatively exploited by both white and Negro musicians, it has become the principal source and ingredient of American popular music” (Floyd, 30). Formal or classical is “properly styled Negro music only when obviously derived from folk music idioms or