Voices of the People: Our African-American Heritage
Teacher’s Guide, Grade 9, Level I
The Weary Blues, p. 62
Introducing the Lesson
Vocabulary for the Selection
Before students begin reading the selection, refer
them to the definitions of vocabulary items from
the selection. These are located in the Glossary
beginning on page 92 of the student text.
sway, n. Act of moving from side to side (Note:
This word is much more commonly used as a verb
meaning “to move from side to side.”)
melancholy, adj. sad
Prereading
Discuss with students the Prereading note on page
62 before they begin reading the selection. Discuss
the following with students before they begin
reading:
• Origins of the blues. Blues music originated
in the South and grew out of work songs, field
hollers, and other preceding materials; these, in
turn, were developments of pre-existing forms
from West Africa.
• Technical characteristics of blues music. Blues is
characterized by use of scales containing flatted
thirds or sevenths and repetition that mirrors
the call-and-response forms of song from West
Africa. Common forms are 12-bar blues and
8-bar blues, but there are many variants. Imamu
Baraka (LeRoi Jones), in his book Blues People:
Negro Music in White America, says that the
Civil War was decisive for the development of
the Blues and of Jazz. Some of the Northerners
who came South as soldiers and later as
carpetbaggers brought with them instruments,
and people of African descent came into
possession of these. Most did not have formal
instructors to teach them how to play, so they
imitate human voices, improvising, creating the
characteristic one-line riffs that would develop
into jazz improvisation and rock ‘n’ roll lead
guitar, and bending, slurring, and using vibrato
on individual notes as a human voice might.
• Content of the blues. The lyrics of blues songs
typically deal with problems, difficulties,
struggles, hard times, and challenges.
• Influence of the blues. Blues had a powerful
influence upon many subsequent musical
genres, including gospel, jazz, R&B, rock, soul,
funk, country, hip-hop, and jazz.
The best way to familiarize your students with the
blues is to share with them some examples of classic
blues recordings. See the list under Additional
Resources at the end of this lesson. Make sure to
review any recordings that you share beforehand
because some contain lyrics that may not be
appropriate in the classroom, and many early blues
songs exist in many variants, so one recording may
be quite different from another.
Close Reading
Have students glance through the questions under
Key Ideas and Details on page 65 and answer these
questions as they read through the selection. (See
the answers given below under “Answer Key.”)
Checktest
After students have read the selection, administer
the multiple-choice checktest to ensure that they
have done the reading.
Discussing the Selection
After students have finished the checktest, hold a
class discussion of the selection.
Summarize for your students A Reading of the
Selection on page 64. Point out that Langston
Hughes is probably the most famous poet of the
Harlem Renaissance period. Hughes tells the story
copyright © 2012, Callisto School Publishing. All rights reserved.
Voices of the People: Our African-American Heritage
Teacher’s Guide, Grade 9, Level I
The Weary Blues, p. 62
of how he was “discovered” when leaving in Harlem,
in New York city, and working at the Wardman
Park Hotel, busing tables in the restaurant. Hughes
always carried paper and pencils with him and would
scribble poems whenever he had a chance. He left
some of his poems beside the plate of a famous
poet, Vachel Lindsey, who happened to be dining in
the restaurant. At first annoyed, Lindsey nonetheless
started reading the first poem, which was “The
Weary Blues.” He called the bus person over and
asked, “Who wrote these?” Hughes answered, “I
did.” Lindsey then introduced Hughes to various
publishers and literary people around town and so
helped to get the young man’s career off the ground.
Choose a student to read aloud the note on the
Cultural/Historical Context of the selection, on page
64. Share the following with your students:
During the era of slave trading, people were stolen
away from their homelands in Africa, stripped
naked, and chained in the holes of ships for a cruel
passage into bondage, taking with them nothing of
their homelands except what existed in their own
minds and hearts--their ancestral memories and
cultural traditions. Among these traditions was a
rich musical heritage that included communal work
songs, chants, and songs of praise and satire. The
bondage of this people did not end until 1865. Flash
forward 150 years and what do you find? The music
of this people, which came to the Americas in chains,
has gone back out and conquered the world. Today,
you can hear jazz music in clubs in Beijing, China;
blues in clubs in Paris, France; rap on the streets
of Tel Aviv. There are very few indigenous forms of
American music that do not owe a debt to African
roots. African-Americans gave us the spirituals,
gospel, ragtime, the blues, jazz, soul, funk, R&B, hip
hop, rap, and slam poetry and performance art. Rock
‘n’ roll owes its origins to the blues and jazz, and
the first rock ‘n’ roll records were known as “race
records” that were imitated by performers such as
Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis Presley. All
the great bands of the British Invasion--the Beatles,
Herman’s Hermits, Cream, the Rolling Stones, Led
Zepplin, etc.--recorded rock versions of classic blues
tunes. American classical music would never be the
same after George Gershwin, who adapted AfricanAmerican motifs and themes for his opera Porgy
and Bess, for his famous Rhapsody in Blue, and for
other works. Even country and western music owes
its modern form--that of the lovesick ballad--to the
blues. In the Caribbean and Latin America, persons of
mixed African, Spanish, and Native American descent
created the Latin sound, in its many varieties,
including Reggae, Soca, Samba, and Bossa Nova.
And interestingly, modern African music, so-called
Afro-Pop, is partially an IMPORT to Africa from the
Americas—a fusion of traditional African music and
African-American pop. Little wonder that songwriter
Paul Simon would write that “the music” (meaning
popular music generally) was “born under African
skies.” For more on African-American influences on
the origins of popular music in the United States, see
the section in the Grade 11 book on “Early AfricanAmerican Song.”
Read the note under About the Author on page 64.
Explain that “The Weary Blues” was first published
in Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, a publication
of the National Urban League from 1923 to 1942.
This was an extraordinarily important journal, a
pioneering vehicle for budding Harlem-Renaissancewriters that helped spur a flowering of achievement
in the arts in New York and elsewhere in the
country. Opportunity first published and/or greatly
encouraged the careers of many important AfricanAmerican writers, including Zora Neale Hurston,
Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Sterling
Brown. Another important journal of the day was
The Crisis, published by the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Refer students to the questions raised under
Key Ideas and Details, Craft and Structure, and
Integration of Knowledge and Ideas on page 65.
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2
Voices of the People: Our African-American Heritage
Teacher’s Guide, Grade 9, Level I
The Weary Blues, p. 62
Discuss the questions raised in these sections, in
turn. (See the answers given below under “Answer
Key.”
Answer Key
Key Ideas and Details
1. What
physical motion is made by the singer as he
plays?
He is rocking back and forth.
2. W
hat instrument is he playing? What kind of
song?
He is playing a blues tune on a piano.
3. Where
does the singer say he is going to put his
troubles? What does this mean?
He says that he is going to put all his troubles “on
the shelf.” That means that he is going to lay them
aside. (Music is a means for doing that.)
4. What emotions does the singer sing about in the
last verse from his song? What effect do you think
the singing itself has on the singer?
The singer sings about extremely negative
emotions, saying that he has “the Weary Blues,”
that he “can’t be satisfied,” that he isn’t “happy
no mo’,” and that he wishes “that [he] had died.”
Ironically, singing about these negative emotions
helps to relieve them so that he sleeps soundly
that night.
5. How does the singer sleep? Does he toss and turn,
troubled, all night long? What effect does the
performing have on him? How does the power of
music help people to cope with their troubles?
The singer sleeps “like a rock or a man that’s
dead.” The usual interpretation of this line is that it
means that he sleeps very well (which is the usual
meaning of “I slept like a rock”). However, the end
of the poem can also be interpreted to mean that
the expression of all that negative emotion wiped
the singer out, making him like someone dead. A
strong reading of the poem would suggest that
both are the case, that there is an ambiguousness
to the experience and to the blues generally. This
same sort of ambiguousness is expressed in the
common expression “Whatever doesn’t kill you
makes you stronger.”
Craft and Structure
Answers will vary. Possible answers are given.
Examples of straight repetition in the poem: “He did
a lazy sway,” (repeated once); “O Blues!” (repeated
once); “And I can’t be satisfied” (repeated once)
Examples of repetition with variation in the poem”
“O Blues! . . . “Sweet Blues!”; “Ain’t got nobody in all
this world. . . . Ain’t got nobody but ma self”; “I got
the Weary Blues . . . Got the Weary Blues”
Examples of rhyme in the poem: tune/croon, play/
sway, night/light; key/melody; stool/fool; tone/
moan; self/shelf; floor/more; satisfied/died; tune/
moon; bed/head/dead.
Integration of Knowledge and Ideas
Answers will vary. Aspects of this early experience
certain to give people the blues included bondage
and the resultant lack of control over one’s own
destiny, the separation of friends and family
members by slave trading, relative poverty, and
the people’s having been cut off from ancestral
community and heritage. After the war, experiences
that contributed to giving people the blues
included uncertainty about the future; lack of a
ready means to earn a living; menial, low-wage,
and difficult jobs (such as sharecropping); lack of
access to good living conditions, health care, and
copyright © 2012, Callisto School Publishing. All rights reserved.
Voices of the People: Our African-American Heritage
Teacher’s Guide, Grade 9, Level I
The Weary Blues, p. 62
education; continuing racism and discrimination
(in schooling, housing, public accommodations,
etc.); the epidemic of lynching; and the vicissitudes
of fortune economically, in love, etc., that most
people experience. All these became subjects
for blues lyrics. Producing music is enjoyable and
brings comfort, and shared experience helps to
create community, which in turn is a major solace.
Obviously, both work strongly on people’s emotions,
which facts made blues extraordinarily popular.
Writing Practice
Use the Writing Rubric: Narrative to assess the
student’s work. This rubric is available at http://
callistoeducation.com/Teacher9.htm.
Speaking and Listening Practice
Answers will vary. The source of the value of art
(music, literature, painting, etc.) is a very big
question to which, over the centuries, people have
given many, many answers. Obviously, people value
art for many different reasons. Here are some major
ones:
Art distills what people in the past have experienced,
including what they have learned and what they
value, and so it is a major vehicle for cultural
transmission from generation to generation.
Art gives people new perspectives, enabling them to
“see” what they didn’t before.
Art is valuable in and off itself because it is enjoyable.
This is the so-called “art for art’s sake” argument.
Certainly, the vast amount of time and energy given
to the arts (to music, books, films, performance art,
etc.) lends credence to this argument.
Art provides a distraction from the problems and
concerns of everyday life.
Art increases understanding of other people.
Through art, people express their deepest values
and beliefs and their most profound, meaningful
experiences of the world, and by experiencing
art, we share in these and so come to understand
others better. One of the best ways to come to know
another people is through that people’s artworks.
Language Practice
Refer students to the Online Etymological
Dictionary at http://www.etymonline.com/
for research into these etymologies. Answers
will vary. Possible answers are given.
1. idiot
current meaning: ignorant or foolish person
original meaning: from Latin idiota, meaning
“an ordinary person,” one lacking in
professional skill (a layman); before that, from
idios, “particular to oneself” or “one’s own”
relation of the two meanings: A person
lacking professional skill in some area (such as,
say, carpentry) might be considered relatively
ignorant or foolish in that area; a person who
is concerned only with himself or herself is
ignorant or foolish with regard to others’
needs or desires.
2. o
af
current meaning: ignorant or foolish person
original meaning: from auf or oph, meaning
“a changeling, a child left by the fairies” (from
Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary); related to elf
relation of the two meanings: There are
many fanciful folktales throughout the world
that contain the motif of a child who is not
the actual child of its parents but, rather, was
switched in its crib or cradle by fairies or elves
or other supernatural beings. Such a child
copyright © 2012, Callisto School Publishing. All rights reserved.
4
Voices of the People: Our African-American Heritage
Teacher’s Guide, Grade 9, Level I
The Weary Blues, p. 62
might have special qualities—might be very
different from an ordinary child—and might,
therefore, appear foolish, not being, itself
human and used to human ways or capable of
human-style learning.
3. f ool
current meaning: ignorant or foolish person
original meaning: from Latin follis, meaning “a
bellows, or bag used to blow air to feed a fire”
relation of the two meanings: If one is simply
“blowing air,” one is not saying anything
sensible or reasonable, one is acting in an “airheaded” way
4. d
unce
current meaning: ignorant or foolish person
original meaning: from Duns disciple,
“a follower of Duns Scotus” a medieval
philosopher, from the humanist reaction
against Scholastic philosophy
relation of the two meanings: The term was
original applied to persons with whom the
speaker did not agree and later came to mean
anyone who holds silly or unfounded or stupid
beliefs
5. s tooge
current meaning: ignorant or foolish person
original meaning: from student,
mispronounced STOO-jent, meaning “someone
who is learning” and, therefore, hasn’t learned
yet and so is, with respect to what needs to be
learned, ignorant
relation of the two meanings: The usage
derives from the fact that each, the learner
and the not-so-bright person, has “much
to learn.” It’s an unfortunate usage, for
being humble about what one knows and
recognizing that we all have much to learn
is the beginning of wisdom, as the Greek
Socrates pointed out long, long ago: “I am
wiser than this man, for neither of us appears
to know anything great and good; but he
fancies he knows something, although he
knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know
anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling
particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he,
because I do not fancy I know what I do not
know.” (from Plato’s Apology)
6. g
eek
current meaning: freakish person
original meaning: carnival freak (1916), from
Low German geck, an onomatopoetic verb
meaning “to croak or cackle”
relation of the two meanings: The original
term may have been a derogatory reference to
a person, suggesting that he or she did not so
much talk as croak or cackle in a bestial way.
The use of the term to refer to unfortunate
persons employed by sideshows because
of their unusual appearance points to an
extraordinarily sad phenomenon of the past;
the disappearance of such spectacles in the
modern era is a sign of considerable moral
progress.
7. louse
current meaning: despicable, unscrupulous
person; parasitic insect
original meaning: from proto-Indo-European
*lus, meaning “louse,” referring to the
parasitic insect. (Note: the star before a term
is a conventional symbol used by linguists to
indicate a hypothetical, or reconstructed, word
based on later cognates.
copyright © 2012, Callisto School Publishing. All rights reserved.
5
Voices of the People: Our African-American Heritage
Teacher’s Guide, Grade 9, Level I
The Weary Blues, p. 62
relation of the two meanings: A despicable or
unscrupulous person might be one who takes
advantage of others, as a parasite does.
8. c hump
current meaning: ignorant or foolish person,
especially one who is gullible (easily duped)
original meaning: from Old Norse kumba,
meaning “a block of wood”
relation of the two meanings: A block of
wood is insensate and therefore far from being
smart.
9. c lod
current meaning: ignorant or foolish person
original meaning: from Old English clod-, a
combining form meaning “field” or “lump of
earth”
relation of the two meanings: A lump of earth
is insensate and therefore far from being smart
klutz
current meaning: clumsy person
original meaning: from Yiddish klots,
meaning “a clumsy person,” from German
klotz, meaning “a block of wood;” compare
blockhead
relation of the two meanings: A block of
wood is insensate and therefore far from being
smart.
Differentiating the Instruction
Here are some ideas for differentiating your
instruction for the selection:
• Ability with spoken language generally outpaces
reading and writing ability. You may wish to read
aloud part or all of the Prereading and other
study apparatus for the selection to your English
language learners.
• Consider reading part of the selection aloud to
you class and having them then complete the
reading on their own.
• Divide you class into study groups and have each
group choose, with your assistance, a gifted
reader to introduce (and read aloud) each part
of the study apparatus.
Additional Resources
Here are some additional resources for teaching the
lesson:
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8llL1czb1yU.
Recording of “Blues in B Flat” by Art Tatum,
probably the greatest blues and jazz piano player
of the period in which “The Weary Blues” was
written.
Roots of the blues:
• http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=uGBoP70A7Q0. Recording of the song
“John the Revelator” by the pioneering blues
artist Son House.
• http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=4up4VP8zjyc. Recording of the song
“Come on in My Kitchen” by the early blues
artist Robert Johnson, considered one of the
pioneers of the form.
• http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=BNj2BXW852g. Recording of the song
“Dark Is the Night, Cold Was the Ground” by the
pioneering blues artist Blind Willie Johnson.
• http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=fnWxZtI3ONY. Recording of the song
“Statesboro Blues” by the pioneering blues artist
Blind Willie McTell.
copyright © 2012, Callisto School Publishing. All rights reserved.
6
Voices of the People: Our African-American Heritage
Teacher’s Guide, Grade 9, Level I
The Weary Blues, p. 62
• http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=uGBoP70A7Q0. Recording of the song
“John the Revelator” by the pioneering blues
artist Son House.
Later development of the blues:
• http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=GnDwgRgpYcE. Recording of the jazz
piece “Blue in Green” by the great jazz trumpet
player Miles Davis, from the best-selling jazz
album of all time, Kind of Blue, featuring Miles
Davis on trumpet, Bill Evans on piano, Wynton
Kelly on piano, Jimmy Cobb on drums, Paul
Chambers on bass, John Coltrane on tenor
saxophone, and Cannonball Adderley on alto
saxophone.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI2IaJiZUTM.
Recording of the song “Red House” by the great
rock ‘n’ roll guitarist Jimi Hendrix.
Documentary film series on blues and jazz:
• http://www.pbs.org/theblues/. PBS
documentary film series, The Blues, created by
executive director Martin Scorsese with several
guest directors. programs and directors in the
series are as follows:
Feel Like Going Home by Martin Scorsese
The Soul of a Man by Wim Wenders
The Road to Memphis by Richard Pearce
Warming by the Devil’s Fire by Charles Burnett
Godfathers and Sons by Marc Levin
Red, White & Blues by Mike Figgis
Piano Blues by Clint Eastwood
• http://www.pbs.org/jazz/. PBS documentary film
series, Jazz, directed by Ken Burns.
copyright © 2012, Callisto School Publishing. All rights reserved.