Langston Hughes was a prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance and a leading voice in the African American literary movement of the 1920s and 1930s. His poem "The Weary Blues" is a testament to his commitment to capturing the struggles, triumphs, and experiences of black Americans in his work.
The poem begins with the lines, "Droning a drowsy syncopated tune, / Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon, / I heard a Negro play." These lines immediately set the scene and establish the speaker's perspective as an observer of a black musician playing the blues. The repetition of the word "Negro" and the use of the word "syncopated" highlight the racialized nature of the music and the speaker's awareness of the black musician's identity.
The speaker goes on to describe the musician's performance in great detail, noting the "blue notes" and the "moaning strings" of the piano. The musician's playing is described as both "weary" and "bluesy," evoking the sadness and struggle that are central to the blues genre. Hughes uses vivid imagery and sensory language to convey the emotion of the music and the musician's performance.
As the poem progresses, the speaker reflects on the impact of the blues on the listener, saying that the music "flows on in a vein of melody." The blues is not just a form of entertainment, but a way of expressing and coping with the pain and hardship of life. The speaker recognizes that the blues is "born of a pains," but also that it has the power to bring solace and release.
In the final stanza, Hughes adds a layer of social commentary to the poem, as the speaker reflects on the role of the blues in the African American community. The blues is a way for black people to "sing their hearts out" and "ease their troubles down." It is a form of resistance and resilience in the face of oppression and injustice.
Overall, "The Weary Blues" is a powerful and poignant tribute to the blues genre and the black musicians who have used it to express their experiences and emotions. Hughes' use of vivid imagery, sensory language, and social commentary make this poem a rich and enduring work that speaks to the enduring power of the blues and the resilience of the African American community.
Hughes, Langston The Weary Blues *African American A...
The blues made romance modern; modernism borrowed from the blues a new way of saying what it saw: Hughes made the blues his own, and ours too. I made mortar for the Woolworth Building. In the poem, The Weary Blues Hughes did just that by pointing out the African American culture and tradition- the blues. There's a focus or maybe a maturity I bid earlier writings that is arguably missing or just decreased in his later work. However, Hughes also published many other poems that would appear in The Weary Bluesinmagazines like Opportunityand Survey Graphicin the years leading up to the publication of his first book. The sunny-faced South, Beast-strong, Idiot-brained. Moreover, playing at this location shows that whites also experienced blues and jazz music that is attributed to African Americans who composed it out of pain and suffering brought about by the social conditions at the time.
The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes
Been a long time since I've read Langston Hughes. With his large body of life work, I hope to revisit Hughes later this year as he is truly an American treasure. He was the first to realize the blues are plural — to see in their complicated irony and earthy tone the potential to present a folk feeling both tragic and comic, one uniquely African American, which is to say, American. Langston Hughes wrote the poem in Harlem and people noticed it because it was very different from the poetry of that time. Once situated in Harlem, Hughes flourished, allowing Americans of all shades to read his jazz in motion captured on paper.
Langston Hughes' the Weary Blues Analysis
I will end with mother to son, which I still enjoy all these years later. A declaration of our independence, whether our rejection was romantic, social, cultural or racial. It was published by Knopf in 1926, with a The Weary Bluescontains several of Hughes' best known poems, including Critics such as Arnold Rampersad have particularly singled out Hughes' innovative embrace of concepts borrowed from jazz and blues music as the defining innovation of this collection. His poems are always a joy to read aloud. So many gems in The Weary Blues.
An archive of The Crisisup to 1922 can be found at the This text was produced using the scanned version of the first edition of the book available at --Amardeep Singh, Lehigh University. Use discount The title of the poem The Weary Blues captures the weariness that African Americans felt due to the struggles they had to go through in the society. The broken heart of love, The weary, weary heart of pain,- Overtones, Undertones, To the rumble of street cars, To the swish of rain. Droning a drowsy syncopated tune, Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon, I heard a Negro play. Host Bob Quintrell introduces the performance. Some of the poems address Hughes' own experience and aspirations and the joy and promise of life. Above is my absolute favourite.
