Reflections on Harlem
...erican’s that moved to the north had. Seeing a train leaving for the south makes them wish they could go back home. Yet the hardships at this time held people where they were especially within Harlem. Harlem was a place where African Americans were told they would be harbored. Yet when many arrived they soon realized that the north wasn’t what it was cracked up to be. Hughes wrote of the misleading comments that others believed the north possessed in “Evenin’ Air Blues”. I came up North Cause they told me de North was fine. Been up here six months- I’m about to lose my mind. (3-6) The north was supposed to be a place that would take them away from the segregation and the burden of being black in a predominantly white society. Although Harlem did provide this in some ways, the job availability and poverty rate was high and segregation was not completely cured. At this same time many musicians began migrating from south to north looking for work in city nightclubs. Although the demand for jazz/blues artists was somewhat high, the pay was still not enough. The musicians began relating to the people of Harlem and as in any time of hardship. They began sharing this in their music and Hughes became fascinated with the blues and the diva’s that played an important role such as Bessie Smith. There was one occasion where Hughes was staying at a hotel in Tuskegee and found out that Bessie Smith was staying in the same place. She was singing in the theatre next to his room and Hughes “just sat at his window in the evening air and listened to her songs floating above the traffic and in between the buildings” (Meltzer, 135). The blues that surrounded Hughes played a large role in his poetry in the sense that people of Harlem could relate to what he and the music were talking about. There were occasions in which Hughes would recite his poetry with a blues band playing in the background to give the full effect of what he meant. The bands that Hughes heard play and the poverty he saw all played major parts in his poetry. There were poems that Hughes wrote in which he would use slavery in a blues type of tone to give black people of Harlem a remembrance of what it was like in slave days as seen in “Don’t You Want To Be Free?”. Cook them white folks dinner, Wash them white folks clothes, Be them white folks slave-gal, That is all she knows. (1-4) This poem held true in times of slavery and it the rhyme scheme would allow it to be sung in a blues setting. One of Hughes greatest works, Shakespeare in Harlem was said by Hughes to be “a book of light verse, Afro Americana in the blues mood” (Meltzer, 231). Shakespeare in Harlem dealt with themes of hunger, death, poverty and loneliness in Harlem. All of these were themes that Hughes used in many of his poems and were also many themes used in blues songs during the Harlem Renaissance. When Shakespeare in Harlem was preformed the poems were many times recited, shouted, or sung just as Hughes intended. Having dif...