The Weary Blues Poem

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The ship would take him and his crew to many places, mainly in Western Africa. Hughes was so excited to finally see Africa and to be apart of the culture there. When the ship finally reached shore, Hughes was disappointed. Thinking that Africa was actually pretty ridiculous with men walking around in white gowns, women showing their breast and little children running around naked. There were also many brothels there that Hughes described the setting as little African boys bringing the crew members to see ‘my sister, two shillings’. These brothels not only disgusted Hughes, but also disappointed him on how the Africans praised them. Hughes wrote in his journal, which is now protected at Yale University, calling them “vile houses of rotting …show more content…

He remembers, while visiting his mother in Kansas, that she took him to an open-air theater on Independent Avenue. He said that the music seemed to cry to him, but then laugh at the same time. He would remember the feeling of loneliness with such power that he felt as a kid and turned it into a book called “The Weary Blues”, which got published in 1926. Before all of the poems got released as a collection though, one of his poems called “The Weary Blues” took off drastically before the others in 1925. "The Weary Blues" poem went on to win the prestigious literary contest, created by Opportunity magazine. Hughes was said to have wrote "The Weary Blues," a poem about a singer performing on Lenox Avenue, after a visit to Cabaret in Harlem. Hughes would then on try to change the ongoing racial discrimination with the power of jazz. Jazz was a huge musical influence on the African Americans, especially the ones in Harlem. Jazz to Hughes was a way to connect everyone, no matter his or her color, through simply a melody. Even though some white people at the time did not approve of jazz, some were actually quite fond of it and the messages decrypted in them. He wrote a plethora of other jazzy poems during this time like, “ Mulatto”, “Sport” and “Homesick Blues”. One of the most inspirational poems Hughes wrote during the Harlem Renaissance can be found in “The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes” called

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