Langston Hughes The Weary Blues Essay examples -- Music Blues Jazz Mu

Langston Hughes The labor discolorJazz music is often associated with hanker, lazy melodies and ornate rhythmical patterns. The discolour, a type of jazz, also follows this comparable style. Langston Hughes song, The Weary Blues, is no exception. The sound qualities that make up Hughes work are intricate, yet quite apparent. Hughes use of consonance, assonance, onomatopoeia, and rhyme in The Weary Blues gives the poem a deep feeling of sorrow while, at the same time, anyows the reader to feel as if he or she is actually listening to the blues birdcall by the poems character.The Blues musical move was prominent during the 1920s and 30s, a time known as the Harlem Renaissance. Blues music characteristically told the story of someones anguish, the keystone factors, and the resolution of the situation. This is precisely what Hughes poem, The Weary Blues, describes. Hughes uses the rhythmic structure of blues music and the improvisational rhythms of jazz in his innovative develop ment of The Weary Blues. The poem opens by first gear setting the scene. Down on Lenox Avenue the speaker heard a mellow croon (lines 2 and 4). The tune was played on a delicate and sung by a man with the emotions coming from the black mans soul (15). The piano man expresses his feelings of loneliness and dissatisfaction with his life in lines 19-22 and 25-30Aint got nobody in all this world,Aint got nobody but ma self.Is gwine to quite ma frowninAnd put my troubles on the shelf.I got the Weary BluesAnd I cant be satisfied.Got the Weary BluesAnd cant be satisfied-I aint happy no moAnd I wish that I had died.The piano man, in a slightly backward order, tells how he wished that he had died because he feels so alone. But, instead of an ultimate end, the piano man decides to put his troubles on the shelf, or rather, push them aside and continue living without the distraction of those pains.The tone of The Weary Blues is quite dark and melancholy. This matches the sorrowful theme of th e poem. Sound patterns play a key role in this poem. They enhance the already somber mood by way of consonance, assonance, onomatopoeia, and rhyme patterns. Consonance is found within the first line of the poem. Droning a drowsy? brings a hard d sound to... ...O BluesThe end of each of the above lines has the long u or oo sound but doesnt exactly rhyme with the preceding line or lines. This off-rhyme gives this blues poem to a greater extent dimension. With precise rhyme, the poem would seem too forced but with this off-rhyme, the true flow of the blues is apparent and works very well. Additionally, the near rhyme of the long u or oo sound reinforces, once again, the sorrowful and melancholy theme of the poem. With the consistent use of consonance, assonance, onomatopoeia, and rhyme patterns of The Weary Blues, Langston Hughes produces a poem with a great enshroud of emotion. The feelings of sadness and loneliness resonate throughout the poem. The long, lazy melodies and ornate rh ythmical patterns of jazz music and the blues are really brought to life in The Weary Blues via Hughes intricate workings of sound patterns that are cleverly implemented in every nook of the poem. Because of these descriptive sound words, I can more or less picture myself walking down Lenox Avenue and hearing the old piano man and his Weary Blues.BibliographyHughes, Langston. Selected Poems. New York Random House/Vintage Books, 1987.