Expressions Of National Consciousness In Blues

Harlem Renaissance is a cultural and enlightenment movement which spanned between the1920s and1930s. It was centered in Harlem neighborhood of New York City. Aimed on reviving folk cultural legacy, expressing racial identity, opposing racial discrimination and revitalizing African American culture, it is a movement to enter the mainstream of American life while keeping Afro-Americans’dignity and individuality. One of the most important goals of the Harlem Renaissance is to revive African American folk tradition, and African American music is its most essential part. It is an art form used to express their attitudes towards existence and their way of responding to the outside world. The new African American intellectuals started to blend their folk music with poetry composition and thus formed a unique way of expression. The most outstanding representative figure is Langston Hughes for he has made the biggest contribution.As one of the greatest Afro-American writers of the20th century, Langston Hughes’s prominent achievement lies that he has innovatively introduced African American music into his poetry creation and thus formed his ideal African American poetry mode. Being an African American writer, his black identity did not hinder him from integrating into American literature. On the contrary, he has become a renowned representative of African American literature. His works are steeped in the richness of African American culture and have become an indispensable part of American literature. It is this vivid national characteristic that has enriched the diversification of thought, theme and artistic form in American literature.With the development of study on Hughes’s poetry, critics are discussing the various themes in Hughes’s poetry from different perspectives in different critical methods. However, the comprehensive study about his poetry from the relationship between his poems from1921to1930and the blues is quite few. As "the first poet who has introduced African American music and folk materials into his poetry writing", then what is the status of the blues? What is the characteristic of it? How does Hughes meticulously deal with the relationship between the music and poetry? These problems are all urgent to be solved. It is known that the introduction and adoption of African American music in Hughes’s poetry consists of two parts:one is the application of external forms; the other is the adoption of inherent features. While the former includes the introduction of the specific external structure such as rhythm and rhyme, and the latter includes the adoption of basic strategies and styles in the contents. By explaining the details of the above two parts and the text itself, the subject of expression of national consciousness in African American music can be revealed. Based on the above themes, the thesis aims to introduce Langston Hughes’s poetry to more people and offers some instructive suggestions to the further research of African American literature and a feasible way of appreciating his poems within a musical perspective.