African-American culture in 1920s New York City is discerned through the poetry of Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and Claude McKay, seen through the eyes of painter and muralist Aaron Douglas, and told through the voice of art historian David Driskell in Of Ebony Embers: Vignettes of the Harlem Renaissance. These iconic figures form an ensemble that reprises the role of a Harlem jazz band while playing full-out tributes to Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton, Billy Strayhorn, Thelonius Monk and Charles Mingus.