“The Weary Blues” and Double-Consciousness

Envision a dark, gloomy night in the heart of Harlem where the soulful sound of a black musician empowers his emotions through Blues music. This image is characteristic of the symbolic arts movement known as the “Harlem Renaissance” (also known as “New Negro Renaissance”) starting after World War I in the 1920s and running through the middle of the 1930s Depression. Groups of talented African-Americans show their racial identity in America by producing a noteworthy amount of literature, art, and music. One of the most influential figures during this time is Langston Hughes, a black writer and poet, who expresses himself through his unique, rhythmic writing. In his poem, “The Weary Blues” Hughes creates racial identity, sorrowful tone, and soulful mood by his use of vivid imagery, rhythm (syncopation), and double-consciousness to assert the poem’s theme of music and culture.

Hughes writes about a speaker’s experience of a musical performance and relates Blues music sung by an unnamed black musician to reveal the striving African American identity in a white society during the 1920s. The title, “The Weary Blues”, introduces the poem into a flush of emotions and somberness. According to oed.com, “weary” means, “having the feeling of loss of strength, languor, and need for rest, produced by continued exertion (physical or mental), endurance of severe pain, or wakefulness; tired, fatigued.” The OED’s colloquial definition for the noun defines “blues” as “feelings of melancholy, sadness, or depression” or “a melancholic style of music, typically centered on a twelve-bar sequence based around a standard harmonic progression, and having any of a number of distinguishing characteristics intended to express the performer's...

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...oulful tone to express his emotions. This piece holds the reader’s attention throughout the entire poem because of the intriguing style and story between a speaker and singer. Overall, “The Weary Blues” interprets the speaker’s experience of blues with an empathetic view of African American soul and art. The musician tries to get relief through his music, which voices Hughes deeper meaning of African American double-consciousness during the Harlem Renaissance’s literary movement. Hughes writes that the musician’s blues exhausts him to sleep, but the tune stays stuck in his head, which infers an unanswered ending that means there is still more to the story—he is still unsatisfied with his troubles. In general, the rhythmic flow and music of the poem signifies the time of change for African Americans and racial pride in the connection between arts and literature.