Spirit of Harlem
Glass Mosaic located at North Fork Bank
280 West 125 Street in New York, NY.
By artist Louis Delsarte,
Manufactured in Munich, Germany by Gabriel and Franz Mayer

Blues Fantasy
By Langston Hughes

Hey! Hey!
That’s what the
Blues singers say.
Singing minor melodies
They laugh,
Hey! Hey!

My man’s done left me,
Chile, he’s gone away.
My good man’s left me,
Babe, he’s gone away.
Now the cryin’ blues
Haunts me night and day.

Hey!….Hey!

Weary,
Weary,
Trouble, pain.
Sun’s gonna shine
Somewhere
Again.

I got a railroad ticket,
Pack my trunk and ride.

Sing ’em sister!

Got a railroad ticket,
Pack my trunk and ride.
And when I get on the train
I’ll cast my blues aside.

Laughing,
Hey!….Hey!
Laugh a loud,
Hey! Hey!

Street mural of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Harlem.

To Midnight Nan At Leroy’s
By Langston Hughes

Strut and wiggle,
Shameless gal.
Wouldn’t no good fellow
Be your pal.

Hear dat music….
Jungle night.
Hear dat music….
And the moon was white.

Sing your Blues song,
Pretty baby.
You want lovin’
And you don’t mean maybe.

Jungle lover….
Night black boy….
Two against the moon
And the moon was joy.

Strut and wiggle,
Shameless Nan.
Wouldn’t no good fellow
Be your man.

 

It is suggested that the blues emerged in the United States after slavery had been abolished, when African-Americans finally had a chance at individualism and self expression while struggling with being educationally and economically unprepared for freedom in an oppressive society. Though no one can pinpoint when the first blues songs were sung, we do know that it was in the 1890’s that they were first collected and printed. Edison’s first phonograph records came out in 1877, but it was not until 1920 that the blues were recorded for commercial sale. These recordings were immediate successes and became part of the fuel that got the Harlem Renaissance swinging.

From its roots in the rural South, the blues moved to the city and took Langston Hughes right with it. He remembers hearing the blues performed for the first time when he was about six years old in Kansas City with his grandmother. Besides having both a love of this music and the common black folk it was created by and for, one of the reasons that Hughes began to draw on the blues tradition for writing his poetry is that he hoped to capitalize on the blues craze. Though the markets for music and poetry were quite different, he thought he could somehow merge the two.

Another reason for employing blues music in his poetry is because the “New Poetry” movement that was going on at the time shared philosophical similarities with the Harlem Renaissance poets and a group of poets called the Imagists which included Ezra Pound and F.S. Flint. The “New Poetry” movement sought to humanize poetry by using fresher and more original language, while the Imagists in particular “sought to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not the metronome” (Tracy 219). Hence, Langston Hughes had been influenced by this movement that included music in its writing format. Additionally, Vachel Lindsay, a poet of the Chicago Renaissance, was very important in setting a poetic precedent for Hughes. He used music and dramatic performance to revive poetry within a Chicago movement that drew from Walt Whitman, a poet who sought to unshackle poetry from the iambic pentameter and who showed an interest in the common man in his poetry. The times were ripe for him to use the blues.

Langston Hughes employed the structures, rhythms, themes and words of the blues that he heard in the country, the city, the field, the alley and the stage. When he used the musical and stanzaic structures of the blues to write his poetry he most often relied on the twelve-bar blues which is the predominant structure, though there are others that predate, coexist with, or derive from it. These are often called blues in the classic form and about half of his blues poems fit this structure. The twelve-bar blues is a musical composition with these basic and variable characteristics:

Source: http://www.milforded.org/schools/foran/turtola/bluesessay.html

Link back to the Poetry Wednesday tour on Laurita’s page

[mp3j track=”bornunderabadsignalbertking.mp3″]

deletereply sistahpoet wrote on Jul 13, ’09 beautiful, thank you..have a wonderful day! ((((((hugs my friend))))))))))))

deletereply caffeinatedjo wrote on Jul 13, ’09 Hey, Hey, this was great!

deletereply kwika wrote on Jul 14, ’09 always been a big fan thanks

deletereply sweetpotatoqueen wrote on Jul 14, ’09 Laurita: I lingered here and listened to the music…love the blues & these selections. Langston Hughes has put a rhythm to his poetry that just goes with the composition of notes to make the blues. Enjoyed my time here…thank you for this treat!

deletereply sylvie1 wrote on Jul 15, ’09 Love this soul moving music … it touches something deep within me. Creative idea for Poetry Wednesday … music is poetry personafied …

deletereply forgetmenot525 wrote on Jul 17, ’09 taken me a while to get here this wek but……………..better late than never. You always find such nice and relevant paintings to go at the top of the page, and I LOVE the way you are featuring blues and jazz artists .Another wonderful page, as always, great stuff Laurita

editdeletereply lauritasita wrote on Jul 17, ’09 forgetmenot525 said You always find such nice and relevant paintings to go at the top of the page, and I LOVE the way you are featuring blues and jazz artists Thank you so much for your kind words, Loretta. I love the artwork you choose to go with your poetry, too ! and don’t worry about coming late. I’ve been coming late to host too, but I’ve finally made it !