How Did Langston Hughes Contribute To The Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance and personal experiences, being main inspirations, motivated Hughes to take new and creative approaches such as folk and jazz poetry. Langston Hughes was a voice that got across the unfair treatment and limited opportunities that many African Americans experienced throughout their lifetime. The Harlem Renaissance was a period in which African Americans prospered with great achievements. The process of these achievements involved variety and the will to be experimental. Langston Hughes was inspired by the efforts of these people and took their success into consideration when developing his own work. Hughes portrayed his message through “poetry, plays, essays, novels short stories, newspaper columns, magazine articles, and song lyrics” (Ed 2). The variety of Hughes’ compositions, just like many
Hughes mainly wrote in free verse to get across the ideas lingering in his mind, however, in some cases he wrote in jazz poetry (Williams 1). Jazz poetry is a style of writing that brought together the characteristics of writing and the style of jazz. The technique of jazz poetry is not only something used in Langston Hughes’ literature, it is something that Hughes was first to experiment with and therefore created (Williams 1). Langston Hughes explored with jazz in several of his works tracing all the way back to highschool. In high school the jazz poem “When Sue Wears Red” was created (Williams 1). Hughes’ jazz poems in high school were just the beginning, he published a book of poems called “The Weary Blues” (Williams 1). Throughout time Langston Hughes mastered the skill of jazz poetry to the point that “in The Weary Blues, romantic love shapes the ghetto into moonlit roof-tops and turns cabaret jazz into an echo for two singing evening strollers” (Emanuel 129). Langston Hughes also features jazz in the poem “Jazzonia”. Hughes