As a critic of the performing arts, Locke enjoyed the verve of African American actors, singers, and plastic artists from his first days as a student of the piano and an avid listener of the sorrow songs. He would remain an inveterate playgoer and concert attendee throughout his life. Frequently he traveled to New York City from his teaching post at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and would attend three or four performances over the course of a weekend, ranging from classical music to the latest Broadway play.
Not long after joining the Howard faculty, he started a drama troupe and set about altering the expectations of the African American audience by stressing the serious nature of the experience of dramatic art. He deplored the emphasis on the stereotypical “problem play” because it allowed both playwright and audience to settle for simple statements about what were often superficial manifestations of social conflict. Desiring that art always strive for universal meanings, Locke was not reluctant to continuously raise the standards, believing that African American actors and musicians were up to the challenge. In “Drama of Negro Life” he introduced a collection of plays that he felt began the arduous task of the thorough improvement of the Negro theatre. “The Negro and the American Stage” and “Broadway and Negro Drama” added to this effort.
In the realm of music, Locke often referred to the Negro spirituals as one of the great cultural gifts to America, including an essay on them in The New Negro. “Toward a Critique of Negro Music” and “Negro Music Goes to Par” traced the rise of not only jazz but popular musicians and concert hall singers and their inestimable contribution to American culture. Locke attentively engaged the visual and plastic arts, and brought to them his high standards as well. He amassed a personal collection of pieces of African art, attempting to discover what they offered as a valuable and unique resource for contemporary artists. The excerpts from his Bronze Booklets—The Negro and His Music and Negro Art: Past and Present—were part of his long-term effort to address those involved in adult education, insisting all the while that pedagogic material should never be watered down or popularized. These two booklets were born of a dedication to teaching, but they offer a direct style that easily conveys their insights, fashioned from a historical awareness and a sensitivity to the actual lives and circumstances of individual artists.
Locke watched hopefully as African American artists continued throughout the early decades of the twentieth century to expand their reception among all Americans. Few more than he appreciated the stylishness and bravado of the talent and dedication he witnessed in theatres, concert halls, and art galleries as he set about to trace the cultural forces at work in his community.