Langston Hughes Essay

Introduction

Langston Hughes was a vital part of African American society in the twentieth century. He was a member of the Harlem Renaissance and a well-known writer whose works impacted the lives of many. Langston Hughes published several works; childrens books, and newspaper columns. Langston Hughes incorporated the metaphor of blues and jazz in his poems to portray African American life. He uses these genres in his poems The Weary Blues, Lenox Avenue: Midnight, and Dream Boogie to explore the main theme of his work which was racial and social inequality.

Biography

Langston Hughes was born James Mercer Langston Hughes on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His parents, James Nathaniel Hughes, was an attorney who was not able to take the bar exam due to him being African American. His mother, Carrie Mercer Langston Hughes, was actually an amateur actress and poet. Langston Hughes parents separated when his dad moved to Mexico to find work. According to Laurie Harris, he and his mother visited but didnt stay, No sooner had my mother, my grandmother, and I got to Mexico City than there was a big earthquake. People ran out from their houses into the Alameda, and the big National Opera House they were building sank down into the ground, and tarantulas came out of the walls and my mother said she wanted to go back home at once to Kansas, where people spoke English or something she could understand and there were no earthquakes.

Langston Hughes attended elementary school in Topeka, Kansas called Harrison Street School, where it was mostly all white. He was an excellent student and always received good grades. He was voted the class poet at the school graduation. According to Charlemae Rollins, Hughes wrote, In America most white people think, of course, that all Negroes can sing, dance, and have a sense of rhythm. So my classmates, knowing that a poem had to be written, elected me unanimously thinking, no doubt, that I had some, being a Negro. That was the way I began to write poetry.

It was his high school years when, Langston Hughes began to study other poets and writers like Paul Lawrence Dunbar, he also began to write poems of his own. He also began to organize protests against racial and social discrimination. Once, he graduated from high school in 1919 he went to Mexico to visit his dad. On this trip he wrote one of his poems called The Negro Speaks of Rivers which was published in a magazine. By 1929, Langston Hughes had obtained his bachelors degree from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.

Analysis

Research says, the blues is, a style of music that evolved from southern African-American secular songs and is usually distinguished by a strong 4/4 rhythm, flatted thirds and sevenths, a 12-bar structure, and lyrics in a three-line stanza in which the second line repeats the first: "The blues is an expression of anger against shame and humiliation" (B.B. King).

In his poem The Weary blues Langston Hughes depicts pianist playing the blues on Lenox Avenue. In those days Lenox Avenue was the place to be, it was known for its nightlife. Hughes uses the rhythm of the blues to describe the African American feelings towards racial and social discrimination. He writes, He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool. Langston Hughes also includes the word to the blues song in lines 19-22 which gives readers a sense of how sad the blues singer is.

He also uses the metaphor of the blues in his poem Ballad of the Landlord, where he describes how an African American tenant is sadly mistreated by the landlord. There are repair that need to be fixed and if thing was to get out of hand the African American will unfortunately be unfairly treated due to racial discrimination.

According to Pulitzer Prize-winning African-American composer and classical and jazz trumpet player Wynton Marsalis: Jazz is something Negroes invented, and it said the most profound things -- not only about us and the way we look at things, but about what modern democratic life is really about. It is the nobility of the race put into sound ... jazz has all the elements, from the spare and penetrating to the complex and enveloping. It is the hardest music to play that I know of, and it is the highest rendition of individual emotion in the history of Western music.

In Dream Boogie Langston Hughes, talks about the boogie-woogie which is a popular black musical style with variations of both blues and jazz; more specifically, a vigorous piano style marked and repeated bass figures. He uses boogie-woogie to explain the attitude of African American towards racial and social inequality through music.

Conclusion

Langston Hughes never married or had children but, enjoyed a great success during his lifetime. He was one of the earliest writers to combine music into his works. He uses the recurring theme of music to portray the feeling and attitudes of African Americans towards racial and social inequality. It is hard to name a writer today who comes close to Langston Hughess remarkable stylistic breadth, let along his capacity to express the pain of inequality without losing the joy of creativity., Eric J. Sundquist.