Degrees of Transcendence: Opposing Views by McKay and Hughes on the Consumption of Art

In Hughes poem “Note on the commercial Theatre” he started off with an angry tone, upset that African American music was used by the whites, but the African Americans didn’t receive the credit for the artistic work: “You’ve taken my blues and gone you sing them on Broadway” (1043). Furthermore, at the end of the poem Hughes does expresses a powerful ending, our culture is beautiful, but you will never be me: “Black and beautiful and sing about me, and put on plays about me! I reckon it’ll be me myself” (1043)! Hughes poems focused on the urban cultures, while Zora Neale Hurston short story “How it feels to be Colored Me” focused on her as a woman who is discovering herself and her worth.

Claude McKay’s poems reflect on American culture during a specific time in history, known as Harlem Renaissance. A time where racism was predominately a way of living for many, this was a beneficial time in history for African Americans. Bringing blacks together in a new movement that had not been present in America. Development in which blacks emphasized themselves by taking on their racial identity. It was a time period in which the black community helped each other to be able to express themselves as who they truly are, creating a true African American visual doing so

The Harlem Renaissance was a time of revival and awakening in which the African American community produced a new form of cultural identity. After years of oppression and slavery, African Americans struggled to discover their own distinctive culture. It was through the literature and artistry of the Harlem Renaissance that the African American community began to express the suffering and resentment they truly experienced. In addition, the movement allowed them to find a way to escape their hardships. James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” and Langston Hughes’ “The Weary Blues” address the addiction, poverty, and violence that surrounded African Americans and the triumph of life that was captured in their attempt to escape the suffering.

Claude McKay and Langston Hughes were both prominent African American Men in the Harlem Renaissance of the early 1900s. As such, they have received their fair share of the racism prevalent during this time period. Their concerns with this issue are addressed in McKay’s “America” and Hughes’ “I, Too, Sing America.” Both poets show disregard for the treatment they receive but still desire for an America in which African American prejudice does not exist. However, McKay conveys his vision of a bleak, foreboding fate for blacks while Hughes displays his confidence that America will have a hopeful future in which he is treated as an equal.

Singing as a form of communication and as an expression of emotions was deeply rooted in African American culture. Slaves who were shipped across the Atlantic in the 1700’s used song to communicate during the several-month-long journeys. Slave songs were used to pass down history through generations and ensured the survival of African American culture. Black slaves worked and lived in horrendous conditions and were constantly oppressed by blacks. Slaves had no rights or freedoms and living their culture in the form of song in a foreign land oppressed by foreigners was key to the survival of their culture and legacy for future generations. Claude McKay lived during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920’s, which was decades after the civil war and after slavery was abolished in America. After the reconstruction, the Jim Crow laws were laws that enforced racial segregation and blacks second-class status. During the post reconstruction, thousands of blacks were lynched primarily in the South and were oppressed by whites. In Claude McKay’s “Outcast,” the difficulty of being black is unceasing oppression by whites as seen through their inability to connect with their past roots, their treatment by White’s as sub-human, and their belief that they have lost their humanity.

The speaker thinks highly if the dancer. This is displayed in the statement “To me she seemed a proudly-swaying palm grown lovelier for passing through a storm (926) and her voice was like the sound of blended flutes blown by black prayers upon a picnic day” (926). Both if these statements reveal that the speaker had a deep appreciation for the dancer, he in a way amazed at her work. The audience, however, does not seem to have the same admiration that the speaker does. Even though the speaker is considered a part of the audience, there are two different perspectives the have about the dancer. At the beginning of the selection, the speaker states “applauding youths laughed with young prostitutes” (926). What I grasped from this statement

Langston Hughes’s book, Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz, presents several jazz pieces that express the suffering African Americans have had to face over many years. The vernacular tradition in these works, is expressed through the jazz music that plays in the background while the poems recited (Pasadena City College). The jazz music gives the poems a feeling of Blues, but also tends to have a more upbeat feeling during certain points of the poems. In Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz, all of the twelve pieces have a connection to each other in various ways. The connections involve the degree of suffering, money, or success. In “Ode to Dinah” and “Horn of Plenty,” Hughes exhibits all three of these connections, both in similarities and differences.

By understanding Brown’s deviance from the typical ingroup-outgroup dichotomy that poets used to describe racism during the Harlem Renaissance, we find that he places part of the onus of racial progress on African-Americans. This understanding allows us to further comprehend the significance of blues poetry (or for that matter, the African-American folk tradition) as a coping mechanism for African-Americans through times of oppression and

Although the Harlem Renaissance made a huge impact on repairing the psychology of ‘the negro’, Langston Hughes contributed a great deal to this movement of change as well. In his essay, The Negro Artist and The Racial Mountain,

From “Mother to Son” to “Harlem Sweeties”, Langston Hughes uses various themes and poetic structures within his writing. Hughes writing style consisted of the black pride and strength of the black community that would later be considered as the “driving force” behind The Harlem Renaissance. His poems and short stories seemed to evoke a feeling of hopefulness, pride and self- realization. He wrote song lyrics, essays, autobiographies and plays however, his multi-dimensional style of writing consisted of varying themes. Captured in each theme is Hughes’ interpretation of the identity within the African-American culture. Dignity, Racism, Music and Knowledge of Self are some of the common themes that are embodied in Hughes’ work. In the poem “Harlem Sweeties”, he pays homage to the physical beauty of the African-American women living in Harlem during a time when being black was not considered to be a beautiful trait within the eyes of “white society”. He captures the dignity of the women of Harlem by comparing their varying complexions to decadent desserts and sweet fruits. Langston Hughes had a witty way of using similes and metaphors to capture the inner strength and integrity of the black community. His writing reflects a sense of pride in his racial identity and he was realistic about the oppressive nature of living in a “white society”. In order to gain a further understanding of the complexities within Hughes free style of writing, we must explore the common themes

Harlem is no longer a place where dreams can be reached, but rather where they go to die. What was once a glittering mecca of hope and creativity is now a hopeless jungle of oppression and destitution. Hughes is describing the African American experience at its most melancholy and

"Most of my own poems are racial in theme and treatment, derived from the life I know. In many of them, I try to grasp and hold some of the meanings and rhythms of jazz. I am as sincere as I know how to be in these poems and yet after every reading I answer questions like these from my own people: Do you think Negroes should always write about Negroes? I wish you wouldn 't read some of your poems to white folks. How do you find anything interesting in a place like a cabaret? Why do you write about black people? You aren 't black. What makes you do so many jazz poems? But jazz to me is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America; the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul—the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile." Langston Hughes

Nevertheless, Hughes through his literary works embraced the spirit of the Afro American community through his attempts to capture everyday life. Using his poetic works, he could give a platform to the powerless and provide the marginalized people a voice, along with his willingness to depict the realities of life by popularising the blue theme genre. One of his earliest poetic works The Weary Blues captures the inner tensions of the Harlem experience during this period, by portraying a sadness within the oppressed black community, although beginning to find relief through the power of music. Hugh’s had adopted a jazz styled form of rhythm within his poems as he drew inspiration from the Harlem streets and black music. Johnston and Farrell praised Hugh’s innovations in evolving the idioms of blues and jazz into poetic verse and reinvigorating the genre all together. Music had now functioned as an expressive medium within this movement as the Afro American communities were beginning to redefine themselves and the music created a common bond amongst them. This recognition had ventured beyond the realms of the Afro-American community as it encapsulated the attention of all sections of mainstream society. Hughes recognized the power of music in uniting the different races, but called for this cultural respect to go far beyond simple interracial meetings during the night. Davies explores Hughes admiration for the region of Harlem as it became a new world filled with energy and excitement comparing it to a “never land of Jazzonia”. However, Harlem’s exuberance was restricted to the night life, as during the rise of dawn it fell back in upon itself exhibiting the bland and bleak nature of area, full of its tensions within social and economic problems. Hugh’s offers an insight into this characterisation of Harlem, describing the phenomenon of the Renaissance as “When Negro was in Vogue”, drawing attention to the importance of night live entertainment for the majority of Afro-Americans as means of gaining agency over their lives. Hence, Hughes through his writing explored how the development and growth of nightlife had played a profound role in the shaping of the Harlem experience, where this music and dance gave

Within the era of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was a time that manifested the act of slavery and segregation. In these centuries, the African American Literature was born and based its focus on themes of interest of a select group of people who were known as Negroes, along with oral poetry, gospel music, blues and rap (“African America literature” 1). African American Literature began with slavery and colonization, however, was not originated until the attention of the Caucasian audience was pronounced with the emergence of Frederick Douglas and Phillis Wheatley that were formal slaves during that specific decade (“African America literature” 1). The roots of the formation of this literature began to develop through the views of the black man’s form of living and struggles. For that very reason Waldron states in the Critical Survey of Poetry, “All the works of Langston Hughes illustrate the depth of his commitment to a celebration of black American life in all its forms and make immediately evident the reason why he has been proclaimed the poet laureate of black America”. (Waldron 1). One of the characteristics of the African American Literature, is the role of the black American descendants of Africa within the larger American Society, as explained in black history month (“African American Literature” 1). In the poems “We Wear the Mask” and “I, too, Sing America,” they come to unfold the characteristics of the African American

Mia’s desire to escape social constraint is further revealed through her attempt to connect to the ‘Black American’ culture. Mia’s dance moves and music choices create an interesting dynamic to her self expression, for example, Mia’s burgeoning connection to Connor is revealed through her choice to dance to his favourite song. Further, as Mia dances in front of the television in her kitchen, she does so to an African-American pop-song, featuring street dance (0.13.19). Mia’s copying of the dance moves is emblematic of her attempt to re-construct and re-define her identity. The..cultural..messages..that..she..receives from the television, dance and music therefore, are presented as being key in Mia’s process of self-discovery. Connor’s comment ‘You dance like a black’ is intended as a compliment, yet reveals further Mia’s attempt to construct her identity out of cultural fragments. Broadly, through dance, and ‘performing’ aspects of African-American street culture, Mia’s powerful desire to escape societal constraint is made apparent. Mia’s attempt to connect with a world different to her own, is emblematic of Mia’s attempt to seek freedom.