20 pages • 40 minutes read
The Weary Blues
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Background
Literary Context
Before “The Weary Blues” came out in Langston Hughes’ first book, it was published in 1925 by Opportunity, the magazine put out by the Black civil rights organization the Urban League. The poem won the magazine’s top prize in poetry. The publication history of “The Weary Blues” further ties it to the Harlem Renaissance—a period of remarkable Black creativity from the 1920s until the mid-1930s, Opportunity played a critical role in providing a platform to Harlem Renaissance writers like Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, and, of course, Hughes. His poem reflects the top priorities of Harlem Renaissance artists as it supplies an unfiltered glimpse at a Black life in diction and tone congruent with the Black community. The poem’s rhythm displays the influence of jazz and blues on Harlem Renaissance artists, and the singer’s lyrics highlight how Hughes and other artists at the time felt empowered to exhibit the locution often found in their community.
Another literary context for “The Weary Blues” is Modernism. Modernism is typically associated with white writers and poets like Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and T. S. Eliot. The emergence of big cities, advancements in technology, the ascension of psychoanalysis, and the horrors of World War I shaped Modernists and their view of the world as a fractured and alienating place. “The Weary Blues” references the brokenness of the world in the rundown space and “rickety stool” (Line 12). It speaks to the Modernist sense of alienation when the performer sings, “Ain’t got nobody in all this world” (Line 19). More so, “The Weary Blues” touches on psychoanalysis. Since “the Weary Blues echoed through his head” (Line 34), Hughes nods toward Sigmund Freud’s idea of the subconscious and the thoughts and feelings that arise within a person even if they try to dispel or suppress them.
Historical Context
There are many historical contexts with which to view “The Weary Blues,” including the Roaring ‘20s, Great Migration, and the South’s long history of violent, deadly racism. In the South, the Black codes and Jim Crow preserved the racial hierarchy that existed before the Civil War and the abolition of slavery. The laws and practices segregated Black people and white people, limited the opportunities and mobility of Black people, and exposed them to grave injustices, including lynchings. In the poem, the singer’s Southern drawl, noticed by Hilton Als, suggests that he arrived from the South, which might account for his acute weariness.
The Great Migration was a response to the South’s harrowing racism. Between 1914 and 1919, around one million Black people left the South and headed to larger cities in the North. For example, from 1910 to 1920, the population of New York City—where “The Weary Blues” takes place—grew by 66% and turned Harlem, a predominantly white neighborhood, into a Black area. The Great Migration helps explain how the singer might have arrived in New York City and why the singer and the speaker are in Harlem.
As the poem’s dreary setting and dispiriting themes indicate, the history of big cities isn’t so great when it comes to race relations. In “How New York City became the capital of the Jim Crow North” (The Washington Post, 2017), Brian Purnell and Jeanne Theoharis discuss the city in the early 1900s. They write “Black people in New York suffered from written and unwritten rules against racial mixing in marriage, public accommodations, and housing.” They also note the “brutal encounters” between Black people and the police. Such suffering and brutality further contextualize the anguish of the Black musician in “The Weary Blues.”
As “The Weary Blues” came out in the 1920s, it was a part of the Roaring ‘20s—a prosperous time in the United States marked by the popularity of cars and jazz and the blues. However, the popularity of Black music and culture, along with the influx of immigrants, swelled the ranks of the racist organization the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). In the 1920s, the KKK had almost 4 million members. As “The Weary Blues” demonstrates, not everyone flourished during this decade, as racism and inequality didn’t vanish. Indeed, the speaker and the singer aren’t in a glitzy 1920s Harlem nightclub, like the Cotton Club, but in a poorly lit, unnamed, threadbare space.
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