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Analysis Of Langston Hughes The Weary Blue

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The African people were enslaved by American slave-owners for centuries and were deprived to enjoy even basic human rights. Even after the slave Emancipation Act of 1863, Afro-Americans were exposed to racist police brutality, discriminated in transport, hotels and segregated everywhere. The Afro-Americans of Harlem section of New York City started voicing their strong criticism against the racial prejudice and inequality in their society soon after the First World War. Harlem Renaissance was built upon the ‘New Negro Movement’ of 1917 with its chief aim of revolting against race and class issues. It also paved way for the renewal and embellishment of black literary and musical culture. Black artists who supported the renaissance consciously broke the traditional white regime and eliminated their classical music and even poetry and established a new genre in arts. As a result a revival in arts, especially in literature and music happened. Langston Hughes a prominent Afro-American writer had introduced many musical rhythmic patterns and forms into English poetry thereby gaining a unique Identity in the poetry of 1940’s. This research paper attempts to analyze the various musical forms used by Hughes and further prove that his …show more content…

When the poet heard an Afro-American play a tune in a piano, he was able to recognize the tune suddenly as Blues. But the poet commented that the Black played it like a ‘musical fool’, and further writes his poem as weary Blues. This poem proves that Hughes already had a strong knowledge on Blues music even from his childhood in Kansas where he had been taken to the black churches on Sundays by his auntie Reed (Jack Rummel 18). His intention of setting English lyric into Blue’s music shows the poets true spirit of renaissance and his ironical representation of honoring the traditional Black music by using a recognized foreign

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