'The Weary Blues' and The Harlem Renaissance

The rise of Modernism in the early twentieth century signaled an identity crisis in America. This identity crisis revolved around voice, culture, progress, and in the case of African-Americans like Langston Hughes, race.  His poem, ‘The Weary Blues’, highlights the racial sentiments felt during the Harlem Renaissance in the context of the Jazz Age, including ambition and uncertainty.

Hughes creates a mood of loneliness in ‘The Weary Blues’ from the very first line.  The words ‘drowsy’ and ‘droning’ have negative connotations that make the singer seem unhappy. Hughes was writing this poem in an America with the Jim Crow laws, which outlined the segregation of black people and white people. In ‘The Weary Blues’, the line “With his ebony hands on each ivory key” evokes the image of a piano – an instrument with clearly demarcated white and black keys. His works frequently criticized the Jim Crow laws and provided insight into life as an African-American experiencing racism in every avenue of society. Hughes’s gloomy language mirrors these feelings that African-Americans had all over the country. Additionally, the unhappiness could also be tied into life in an urban setting – a common theme in modernist works. The singer’s lack of belonging to the city is thematically similar to how African-American artists like Hughes felt in the modernist world of art.

The structure of ‘The Weary Blues’ is in line with the musical arrangements in jazz. The seemingly random indentation blocks mimic jazz patterns like variable time signatures. As jazz and the blues grew in popularity, they also lost credence in the eyes of conservative artists as an art form. The Harlem Renaissance sought to correct this misconception and communicated the blues values to an increasingly modern world. The Blues stems from pain, while it is a form of release from that pain; in ‘The Weary Blues’, the lines “He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool. Sweet Blues!” best exemplify this idea.  This paradoxical existence of both pain and pleasure in the Blues arises from the separation of the speaker in the poem and the singer. To the speaker, the singer’s performance is therapeutic as shown by his exclamations. The singer, however, seems miserable based on his actions.

Another recurring theme in ‘The Weary Blues’ is that of poverty. The singer is “Down on Lenox Avenue the other night by the pale dull pallor of an old gas light.” This street performer’s sadness could also come from his financial prospects in life. The idea of the American Dream often appears in Hughes’s works as he highlights the aspirations of African-Americans. The lack of professional opportunities was also a cornerstone of the Harlem Renaissance. Hughes wrote about the American Dream, often implying that the successes enjoyed by white people would soon be accessible to black people as well. Even though his poems end on a note of impending equality, in ‘The Weary Blues’, it is likely the singer is not even alive, let alone improving his prospects. This rather anticlimactic ending suggests that Hughes too felt uncertain about the future of The Harlem Renaissance and whether it would make a difference to the plights of African-Americans all over the country.

Hughes’s legacy as one of the most prolific writers part of The Harlem Renaissance proves that his efforts weren’t in vain. The Harlem Renaissance shifted the social perception of African-American music, and by extension, African-American culture.

Works Cited

Grandel, Hartmut. "The Role of Music in the Self-Reflexive Poetry of the Harlem Renaissance." Poetics in the Poem: Critical Essays on American Self-Reflexive Poetry. New York: Peter Lang, 1997. 119-31. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 218. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 9 Sept. 2016.

Lowney, John. "Langston Hughes and the 'Nonsense' of Bebop." American Literature: A Journal of Literary History, Criticism, and Bibliography June 2000: 357-85. Rpt. in Poetry Criticism. Ed. Timothy J. Sisler. Vol. 53. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Literature Resource Center. Web. 9 Sept. 2016.

Rampersad, Arnold. "Langston Hughes and Approaches to Modernism in the Harlem Renaissance." The Harlem Renaissance: Revaluations. N.p.: Garland, 1989. 49-72. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Deborah A. Schmitt. Vol. 108. Detroit: Gale, 1998. Literature Resource Center. Web. 9 Sept. 2016.

Barlow, Daniel. "Blues Narrative Form, African American Fiction, And The African Diaspora." Narrative 24.2 (2016): 134-155. Academic Search Complete. Web. 9 Sept. 2016.