Music

Quote: “Hughes said that jazz and blues expressed the wide range of black America’s experience, from grief and sadness to hope and determination.”

       Langston Hughes was one of the many famous poets during the 1920s. Hughes once said “jazz and blues expressed the wide range of black America’s experience, from grief and sadness to hope and determination.” From my understanding the history I agree with what Hughes said. The quote Hughes’ point of view that in the 1920s jazz and blues really played an important role in black Americans’ lives, since they related to African Americans’ grief or sadness and sometimes there was some hope and determination too. The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes and Laundry Worker’s Choir by Vivian Morris, are both works of literature that support this idea of jazz and blues.

       According to Hughes’ voice, the poem The Weary Blues depicted the circumstance by using the mournful words and tones in terms of grief and sadness. Within the poem,the conflict between man and the society was shown. It’s really hard for African Americans to be "real" Americans in the America back that point in time. Black Americans were discriminated against by all the whites in the society. Furthermore, in this poem, the author depicted a musician who played his blues with all his heart and slowly changed his mood and became to sad.

       In another work of literature named Laundry Worker’s Choir, Vivian Morris showed the effects on how does the music played an important role in people’s lives during the 1920s. In the story of Laundry Worker’s Choir, it was told by the first person point of view throughout the entire story. The story teller had seem ladies working in the clothes factory, and these ladies were really tired, but they never tried to slack off at any point in time. Once he saw the music played an important role in their lives when they sang their hymn together. Although some people didn’t sing aloud, they were still humming together with the rhythm. The workers used music to kill time, so they could as if feel the time moving faster to get off the duty earlier.

      In terms of music, most of the people had fallen in love with jazz and blues during the 1920s. At that point in time, most of the people seem to be addicted to the jazz and blues, people at that point in time thought that the music were every single thing in their lives. From grief and sadness to hope and determination because they felt the power of music.