Langston Hughes, Jazz Poet Collection and Introduction by Mitch Losito

Langston Hughes, Jazz Poet collection and introduction by Mitch Losito

Prototype 2 - May 3, 2017

“Young Jazz Musicians” by Tom Nachreiner

LANGSTON HUGHES, JAZZ POET - MITCH LOSITO 1 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………………………………………………………………………………………….11 Horn of Plenty [excerpt]……………………………………………………………………………..12 Response to “Ask Your Mama”……………….………………………………………………………..13

Original Poems When Midnight Hits……………….………………………………………………………….……..15

Works Consulted

MLA Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………16

LANGSTON HUGHES, JAZZ POET - MITCH LOSITO 2 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

LANGSTON HUGHES, JAZZ POET - MITCH LOSITO 3 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?

LANGSTON HUGHES, JAZZ POET - MITCH LOSITO 4 “The Weary Blues”

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.

LANGSTON HUGHES, JAZZ POET - MITCH LOSITO 5 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’.

LANGSTON HUGHES, JAZZ POET - MITCH LOSITO 6 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!

LANGSTON HUGHES, JAZZ POET - MITCH LOSITO 7 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.

LANGSTON HUGHES, JAZZ POET - MITCH LOSITO 8 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’—“.

Hughes places himself ﬁrmly in a jazz tradition by distinct references to musical nomenclature. The ﬁrst two lines see the narrator positing that the natural rhythm over our

LANGSTON HUGHES, JAZZ POET - MITCH LOSITO 9 lives is a “jazz rhythm”; these notes color the love and the pain in our hearts as “overtones” and “undertones”, mixing the jazz term with a more artistic one to create the mood of jazz space. As the narrator moves down the street, he cannot escape the sounds of blues around him because they capture his exact mood. The last line sums up his experience: he thinks the gods laugh at him, that they cause his pain. At least he has jazz, Hughes reminds us.

LANGSTON HUGHES, JAZZ POET - MITCH LOSITO 10 “Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz”

JAZZTET MUTED

LANGSTON HUGHES, JAZZ POET - MITCH LOSITO 11 HORN OF PLENTY

LANGSTON HUGHES, JAZZ POET - MITCH LOSITO 12 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”.

Hughes later works diverge from the early blues inﬂuence by settling into the larger jazz culture as a whole. Doing this takes Hughes’s work away from being centered in the

Harlem Renaissance to being more describable in terms of the overall New Negro Movement.

What this reading allows us to do is to investigate how Hughes does not speak for the same things that many of the other Harlem poets may have been talking about. Rather than focus himself on racial issues, by his late pieces, Hughes has pivoted to talking exclusively about his favorite musical form.

“Jazztet Muted” provides an example of the manner by which the later jazz works indicate a celebration of black culture while simultaneously warning of the issues within that context. Hughes references several inﬂuential and seminal jazz players including Ornette

Coleman and Charlie Parker (“Help me, Yardbird!”). This poem follows many of the blues patterns from his old repertoire, speciﬁcally in its repetition of the phrase, “in the quarter of the negroes” and its variants. This is to mimic the repetition inherent in the jazz form, but the

LANGSTON HUGHES, JAZZ POET - MITCH LOSITO 13 slight variations harken to the improvisational aspects that were so popularized by the very names whom the narrator aspires to for help.

Part of what makes “Jazztet Muted” such a distinct poem among the movements of

Ask Your Mama is the growing sense of urgency underneath the words. We are immediately concerned when our narrator tells us that the blood is “slightly higher” in the “quarter of the negroes”, and the appeal to shadows and shade does nothing to ease this feeling. The second stanza is populated by imagery of death: the “neon tombs,” the jukebox being “laid” down, the “gravestone dates”. All of these together make the reader uneasy, as if this space is somehow mysterious. One almost feels that, when coupled with the growing bop jazz behind it, something bad is about to happen. As we disintegrate into “fire” in this space, the jazz band erupts into a single note, played high on the flute. All of the tumultuous, building suspense ends in a single moment, and a single voice. It is as if the flute itself is the one calling for Charlie Parker to come strolling in to save the narrator. “Horn of Plenty” follows suit by referencing many jazz artists in its own way.

LANGSTON HUGHES, JAZZ POET - MITCH LOSITO 14 Original Poetry

WHEN MIDNIGHT HITS

When the band hits, you best be out on the ﬂoor. All the girls be waitin’ when the band hits.

When the trumpet blares, you best be dancing for All the queens be waitin’ when the trumpet blares.

When the drums crash, you best not be a bore: All the girls be waitin’ when the drums crash.

When midnight hits, you best be out the door. All the honeys be waitin’ when midnight hits.

LANGSTON HUGHES, JAZZ POET - MITCH LOSITO 15 Works Cited

LANGSTON HUGHES, JAZZ POET - MITCH LOSITO 16