Themes Of The Weary Blues By Langston Hughes

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Music: A Force in African American Tradition

Poetry written by Langston Hughes employs several themes: the deeply- ingrained culture of his African heritage, metaphors about light and darkness, and his thoughts on dreams, and how they die. Perhaps one of the most influential of Hughes’ themes is that of music - jazz, dance, syncopated blues, and how their rhythms illustrate the soul of the black experience, and hold the traditions of Africa deep within each African Americans very being. Music is used as an explanation about what the black experience truly is, in spirit, in life, and Hughes channels his pride in his heritage - all of his cultures pride in their shared heritage - into words that’s very format match the beat of the music.
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His poem “The Weary Blues” is a perfect example of how Hughes ties music and poetry to explain the black experience. In the poem, a man is swaying back and forth as he pours his troubles into the music emanating from his piano. The song is sad, and comes from the very core of his self - the music dually makes him dwell in his sorrow, and escape. He claims that “ I got the Weary Blues/ And I can’t be satisfied…I ain’t happy no mo’/ And I wish that I had died”
This man “Has dark moons of weariness/ Beneath his eyes/ Where the smoldering memory/ Of slave ships/ Blazed to the crack of whips/About his thighs” (5-8). His music comes from the deepest of sadness, but the rhythm of the trumpet is happy and upbeat. No matter how his race struggled in the past, and continues to struggle, they are always able to ignore that pain in order to gain joy from the soul-soothing ecstasy of music. Just like in “The Weary Blues,” this weary trumpet player allows the trouble in his life to mellow with the music that drifts out of the trumpet. Whether they are playing the trumpet or the piano, listening to opera or dancing madly in the street, music will always act as a balm to the struggles going on within the people that dance along, and on the streets beyond the music hall. That is why Hughes’ poems so often have music as a theme, as do other great writers such as Hurston, or James Baldwin. From the fields of slavery, to the streets where riots and race struggles continue to battle, music will always be the place to confront the demons of a slighted race, and dance away the

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