Langston Hughes, Jazz Poet
collection and introduction by Mitch Losito
Prototype 1 - April 28, 2017
“Young Jazz Musicians” by Tom Nachreiner
LANGSTON HUGHES, JAZZ POET - MITCH LOSITO
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Table of Contents
Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………1
“The Weary Blues”
The Weary Blues……………………………………………………………………………………….5
Song for a Banjo Dance………………………………………………………………………………..6
Harlem Night Club…………………………………………………………………………………….7
Lenox Avenue: Midnight…………………………..…….……………………………………………8
Response to “The Weary Blues”…………………………………………………………………………9
“Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods For Jazz”
Jazztet Muted…………………………………………………………………………………………..8
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Introduction
Poetry is meant to be read. Langston Hughes’s poetry is meant to be read aloud. This is
the first thing that we notice when reading Hughes’s work: the simplicity of the diction, the
repetition of phrases, and the overall rhythm of the pieces feel ready to jump off the page to
be spoken. There is a reason for this. Despite the overarching positioning of Hughes as the
“poet laureate” of black culture, reading his later works without this lens provides an
intriguing view on the way that his poetry is perceived (Rampersad 3). The problem with
reading Hughes as merely a stand-in of Harlem Renaissance poetry is that it ignores a key
influence on Hughes’s writing, namely jazz. Since he was writing in a period when jazz was
at the forefront of society, it is reasonable that his poetry would be effected by its intricacies
and forms. As a result, his poems are more than just effected by jazz’s intricacies and forms.
Langston Hughes, in stylizing his poetry like that of the popular music of the culture in
Harlem, creates a uniquely black art, one that builds off of the tradition of jazz and blues
through its incessant celebrations—and lamentations—of life as a black person.
It is my purpose in creating this anthology to show that Hughes’s work is a product
primarily of the black jazz culture that surrounds him. Scholar Meta DeEwa Jones notes that
“the current critical figuration of Hughes’ work fosters a limited representation of his poetic
aesthetic, particularly his jazz-influenced verse” (Jones 1145). This anthology plans to address
this issue, especially by analyzing some of his later works, in order to stop making Hughes
merely the placeholder of his cultural generation of poetry and to effectively place him as the
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jazz poet that he is. Perhaps the most obvious indication of this is found in his poetry
collection, Ask Your Mama, 12 Moods For Jazz. The collection is technically one poem broken
into 12 parts—the same number of sections as number of measures in a blues and the number
of chromatic notes in an octave—and has instructions for a jazz band playing behind the
poetry. These instructions run parallel to the words, mirroring the sentiments expressed by
the poems. By even asking for readers to think to incorporate music into their reading greatly
privileges a spoken reading of the poetry. Hughes’s supposed simplicity, when read aloud,
manifests itself not as symbolic of “low” culture diction, but rather evokes the rhythmic
callings of the jazz and blues tradition born from black culture. Beyond this, Hughes provides
his readers with a sample of the “Hesitation Blues” on the first page of the anthology
(Hughes 475). He describes the blues as a “leitmotif” for the poem as a whole, meaning that
Hughes himself decided to base his poetry off of this musical form. He is literally asking for
us as readers to accompany the poem with music, particularly jazz. How is it that we so often
refuse to read Hughes the way he meant for us?
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THE WEARY BLUES
Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway.…
He did a lazy sway.…
To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
O Blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
Sweet Blues!
Coming from a black man’s soul.
O Blues!
In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan—
“Ain’t got nobody in all this world,
Ain’t got nobody but ma self.
I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’
And put ma troubles on the shelf.”
Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang some more—
“I got the Weary Blues
And I can’t be satisfied.
Got the Weary Blues
And can’t be satisfied—
I ain’t happy no mo’
And I wish that I had died.”
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.
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SONG FOR A BANJO DANCE
Shake your brown feet, honey,
Shake your brown feet, chile,
Shake your brown feet, honey,
Shake ’em swift and wil’—
Get way back, honey,
Do that low-down step.
Walk on over, darling,
Now! Come out
With your left.
Shake your brown feet, honey,
Shake ’em, honey chile.
Sun’s going down this evening—
Might never rise no mo’.
The sun’s going down this very night—
Might never rise no mo’—
So dance with swift feet, honey,
(The banjo’s sobbing low)
Dance with swift feet, honey—
Might never dance no mo’.
Shake your brown feet, Liza,
Shake ’em, Liza, chile,
Shake your brown feet, Liza,
(The music’s soft and wil’)
Shake your brown feet, Liza,
(The banjo’s sobbing low)
The sun’s going down this very night—
Might never rise no mo’.
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HARLEM NIGHT CLUB
Sleek black boys in a cabaret.
Jazz-band, jazz-band,—
Play, plAY, PLAY!
Tomorrow.… who knows?
Dance today!
White girls’ eyes
Call gay black boys.
Black boys’ lips
Grin jungle joys.
Dark brown girls
In blond men’s arms.
Jazz-band, jazz-band,—
Sing Eve’s charms!
White ones, brown ones,
What do you know
About tomorrow
Where all paths go?
Jazz-boys, jazz-boys,—
Play, plAY, PLAY!
Tomorrow.… is darkness.
Joy today!
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LENOX AVENUE: MIDNIGHT
The rhythm of life
Is a jazz rhythm,
Honey.
The gods are laughing at us.
The broken heart of love,
The weary, weary heart of pain,—
Overtones,
Undertones,
To the rumble of street cars,
To the swish of rain.
Lenox Avenue,
Honey.
Midnight,
And the gods are laughing at us.
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On “The Weary Blues”
Langston Hughes’s first poetry collection establishes him distinctly within the
framework of a blues poet. This anthology aimed to find some of the poems from that
collection which best indicate that tradition. To do so, I analyzed the poems in respect to how
they represent the blues culture of the 1920-30s in Harlem. These representations manifest
themselves in a variety of ways, whether through rhythm and repetition, allusions to musical
terms, or in simultaneous celebration and lamentation of the good and bad from life.
“The Weary Blues” opens on a scene involving a blues singer in a club late at night,
one of the very common subjects of Hughes’s jazz poetry. The repetition of the lines “O
Blues!” and “he did a lazy sway” highlight the repetitive nature of the blues progression and
the instrumental hits. Even the diction gives this flavor: “that poor piano moan with melody”
emphasizes pop of the jazz syncopation and cross-rhythms.
The “Song for a Banjo Dance” shows us, in its title even, its relationship to the blues
because the repeated lines make the poem songlike, while changing the last word provides
an element of improvisation. The song seems to frame the narrator’s voice, which is heard
expressly on the indented lines. The narrator is speaking to an assumedly young girl, asking
for her to dance with him; the lines of the song encourage this behavior because the sun
might not “rise no mo’—“.
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JAZZTET MUTED
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On “Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods For Jazz”
By Hughes’s later works, the jazz influence had expanded, and, in my opinion,
outweighs the effect of a racially-based manner of understanding his poetry. A first obvious
thing to note about the poems from Ask Your Mama is to see that each one has directions for
accompaniment by a jazz band that mirrors the text. These instructions change to match the
mood of the poem, going from moments of total silence (marked by “Tacit”) to loud African
bongos or crashing “bop jazz”.
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