a lgd,g:'a, - j-stage

American Literature Society in Japan

NII-Electronic Library Service

itmericanMteratureSociety in Japan

34 YariSAKUMA

Yuri SAKUMA

Montage of a Dream Deferred:

Langston Hughes, Hareem,

and Jazz in the 1940s

1. Significance of the 1940s for Hughes' Careeg Harlem, and Jazz

fro-American music has had an undeniable impact on nineteenth

A lgd,g:'A,i:th,xe:.t.';,.:r'es,77ar

.tic

.'i7rll,eS",,oE".M.ZZ7:",,YuerS,'

is one of the earliest texts by an ex-slave writer that depicts plantation songs.

Douglass states that the plantation songs "to

many would seem jargon, but [. ..] nevertheless were full of meaning to themselves" (36). He identifies songs

as the medium through which the slaves secretly expressed their lives. In other " !t

words, they used songs to convey the highest joy and the deepest sadness as li ii '

wel! as their prayer and complaint (36). "Yemisi

Jimoh suggests that Douglass

description of plantation songs is one of the earliest expressions of modernisrn

in the American literary tradition. Although plantation songs revolve around

the experience of dehumanization and the lived reality of human capital under

slavery, they expose the slaves' "historical

discontinuity, alienation, loss, despair,

recognition of the incongruity inherent in life, and rejection of social mythologies

and ersatz histories" (6). These, Jimoh argues, are all fundamental elements of

modernism that mark an inconsistent view of human nature that is associated with"modernity's

movement out of an agrarian economy into an alienated, industrial )t

machineeconomy (6).

This essay investigates the representation ofAfro-American music in literature

in relation to modemity. The idea that the literar}t application of Afro-American

The Joumal of the American Literature Society of Japan, No. 5, February 2007.

@2007 by the American Literature Society of Japan




MontageofaDreamDeferred 35

music such as slave spirituals, the blues, andjazz is an expression of modemism

gained remarkable popularity particularly during the Harlem Renaissance of

the 1920s; it was a time when Afro-American writers, artists, and musicians

congregated in New Ybrk and sought to define the Afro-American culture. In "J

the context of music, the Harlem Renaissance is known as the period of mtense

interaction between music and the writers engaged in interpreting Afro-American 1-life

(Long 130). Prolific writers of the 1920s-such as W,E.B. DuBois, James

Weldon Johnson, Zera Neale Hurston, Jean Tbomer, and several poetstxpressedan interest in black composers, perfbrmers, and traditional Afro-American musical

genres and consciously described their music in literary works.

Among these writers, Langston Hughes is assumed to have been most

committed to the possibilities of using musical elements in ]iterature to represent

the reality of black Iives. Perhaps, the essential association of Hughes was with

the blues poems, during the Harlem Renaissance, through which he expressed "

the conditions of the modem blaek folks who were poor and lonely, and homes tl

busted up, and desperate and broken. The blues was an appropriate medium "

that conveyed the sense of loneliness and alienation in the crowded streets tl Tt i-

ofbig towns (Hughes, Songs 159). Hughes also exhibited a tremendous

potential for the use ofjazz idioms: in his1926 essay, Hughes defines jazz as"one

of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America; the etemal tom-tom

beating in the Negro soul-the tom-tom of reyolt against weariness in a white +t tt"

world ( The Negro Artist 694). The depictien ofjazz, however, barely enabled

his poems to represent the reality of black urban experience. In the era of the

Harlem Renaissance, jazz was associated with the exotic primitivism of Harlem

cabaret life that had both fascinated and irritated the white society in New Ybrk.

Reflecting the demands of voyeuristic white readers, Hughes depicts jazz in tl " IT " ii

cabaret poems such as Cabaret (1923), Jazzonia (1923), and Jazz Band in !T

a Parisian Cabaret (1925). He illustrated the sensational and primitive side of tt "

Afro-American lives that endorsed the stereotypical Sambo image prevalent in

the commercialized entertainment industry.

Hughes stopped writingjazz poetry in the so-ca]led Jazz Age as if to recognize

the dicaculty of rewriting white-identified and commercialized jazz in his poems.Throughout his poetic career in the 1930s, Hughes was dedicated to producingsocial poerns. It was not until 1948 that he wrote ajuzz poem entitled Montage ofa Dream DojZirr:ed (1951), which I examine in this essay. Hughes' return to jazz




36 YinriSAKUMA

s -

poetry may reflect the shift ofjazz style from the 1920s swing jazz to the 1940sbe-bop, which is depicted in MOntage. The emergence of be-bop can be traced

back to the modern fragmentation of black consciousness and the intensified

militancy after the end of the Harlem Renaissance in 1929 and the subsequent

beginning of the Great Depression. Owing to the Depression and World War II,

the generation of black youth that was born and raised in Harlem regarded the

town as being no more than a hotbed of unrest and anxiety. For them, Harlem

had no direct relation to the ideals of the `'Promised

Land" of the 1920's-ideals

associated with the Harlem Renaissance, economic opportunity, and liberal

notions of race reiations. As a result, the younger generation of the 1940s came to lt li

possess the sensibilities of Double V-victory abroad and yictory at home that t - -aimed to achieve what their parents generation was unable to achieve at the end

of World War I (Lott 458). This simmering militancy finally exploded in the fbrm

of the Harlem racial uprisings in 1935 and 1943.

Such sociai dynamics of the 1940s framed the emergence of be-bop, as is ti

explained by Eric Lott: Militancy and music were undergirded by the same

social facts; the music attempted to resolve at the level of style what the militancy - tt -- Jcombated m the streets (459). Jazz critics have generally distinguished be-bop

from one of its precedents, the swing jazz. The swing style is characterized by

its danceable rhythm and its considerable reliance on arrangement rather than

on individual improvisation. Be-bop musicians reacted against swjng because it

evenrually led to the standardization and commercialization ofjazz music in terrns

of sound and style. Therefore, be-bop musicians developed individualized and

complex solo improvisations of be-bop as a display of antagonism toward white

commercialization and standardization. In Blues People, LeRoi Jones concludes tt si

that some be-bop musicians seemed to welcome the musical iso]ation (191), and "

the urban black youth fbrmed the opinion that be-bop musicians were willfu11y

tt

harsh, anti-assimilationist social critics (181). Be-bop musicians, who refused

to be mere entertainers fbr white people, served as models to exemplify the Afre-

American survival tactics appropriate for combating the conditions of urban

malaise, dislocation, and sociaj isolation in the 1940s. The nonconformist attitude

of be-bop was funher strengthened by various immigrants{oming not only from

the U.S. but also from the West Indies and Africa-and their music. Jones points

out the influence of immigrants in the fbllowing:




Mo"tageofaDreamDeferred 37

What seems to me most important about the music of the fbrties was its " 71

reassertion of many non-Western concepts of music. Certainly the re-

establishment of the hegemeny of polyrhythms and the actual subjugation of

melody to these rhythms are much closer to a purely African way of making

music, than they are to any Westem concepts. (194)

By claiming African origins, be-bop functioned as an ideological marker and a

political declaration of the black desire fbr artistic and economic autonomy and "

alienation from the West. Consequently, be-bop established jazz as one of the li pt

great modernisms (Lott 462). Be-bop was regarded as a great revolution injazz rt

which made all subsequentjazz modernisms possible (DeVeaux 3).

Be-bop also established Montage as an expression of modernism. Steven Tracy "

suggests that Hughes was searching for new structures, new ways of making tt

poetry fit the rnodern experience and finally found be-bop as the structural model ll li

fbr his poetry (224). In the introductory NOTE to Montage, Hughes reveals

that his poem is structured on be-bop:

NOTE: In terms of current Afro-American popular music and the sources

from which it has progressedriazz, ragtime, swing, blues, boogie-woogie,

and be-bop-this poem on contemporary Harlem, like be-bop, is marked

by conflicting changes, sudden nuances, shaip and impudent inteljections,

broken rhythms, and passages sometimes in the manner of the jam session,sometimes the popular songs, punctuated by the riffs, runs, breaks, and

distortions of the music of a community in transition. (89)

rr " Tt il

Asdescribedinthis NOTE, Hughesattemptstoportray contemporaryHarlem

by incorporating the techniques of playing be-bop into his poem. Hughes wished

to reconstitute the primitive image of cabaret jazz poems and to present the crude

reality of modernism and the black working-class in Harlem in the 1940s. In

Montage, one such technique borrowed from be-bop is the arrangement of eighty-

four short poems, which is in itself evidence of modernism's representation

of assembling separate pieces into one work. This technique parallels the

improvisation of be-bop, the crux of which inyolyes the impromptu gathering of

various melodies and musical phrases that ride over a fixed chord progression.Due to its fragmented, undecipherable, and unpredictable melody lines, jazz




38 YUriSAKUMA

"

improvisation came to be described in such terms as racing, nervous, melodic !p "

fragments, cipher, hasty (Berendt 18) or conflicting changes, sudden nuances, rt

sharp and impudent inteijections, broken rhythms (Hughes, Montage 89)

after the emergence of be-bop. When Hughes transplants this improvisational

technique onto a piece of writing, it assumes the form of Montage-uxtaposing

short poems in rapid succession to avoid logical transitions that a conventional "

storyline would demand. These short poems reflect the new fragmentation of

blackcultural consciousness" in modemity (Rampersad 2: 151). This fragmented

consciousness is not new but is one that has persisted from the era of slayery.

Hughes also constructs the distinctive language of Montage on the model

of be-bop. In the 1940s, be-bop mtisicians invented a musical jargon that was

understood only by those who were familiar with be-bop. Small indicates that the

jargon was "as

if someone had taken a famjliar yocabulary and, by altering the

syntax by means of which the relationships between the words were established, t!

had created a new language (303). Similarly, Hughes creates an experimental

jargon in Mbntage. He conducts a music dictation from be-bop tunes and writes t7 ti "

them in English: Hey, pop! / Re-bop! ! Mop 1 Y-e-a-h! (90) and Oop-pop-a- p I) 1

da!fSkee! Daddle-de-do!/Be-bop!1Saltpeanuts!/De-dop! (91). Hughes

presentation of the unintelligible jargon appears to be an effort to separate his

language from the standard English of the white. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. argues

that one of the major failures of the Harlem Renaissance writers arises from theiT

attempt to transmute the aesthetic richness of black vernacular into standard

English. According to Gates, the continuity of the black writers' ability to write "L ,

in standard English is the proof of the humanity of blacks in the Enlightenment Jr

of Europe (Figun?s xxi). In contrast to the standard English employed by these

Renaissance writers, Huggins suggests that Hughes' literary use of musical

`'rhythm

and rhyme" signifies his refusal to assimilate into the Western literary !t "

tradition as Hughes was not writing to be approved as a literary poet who '

wins acceptance according to the literary criteria of the white (227). Hughes s:

application of vemacular jargon, which holds some of the meanings and rhythms

ofjazz," acts as a counterpoint to the black literature written in standard English.

As Hughes remarks in his essay, he believed that the blare of jazz and the blues "can

penetrate the closed ears of the colored near-intellectua]s untjl they listen and t! 71"

perhapsunderstand ( TheNegroArtist 694).

It is not surprising, given the predilection to critically interpret Afro-





American vernacular as an expression independent of standard English, that the

scholarship on Hughes has typically placed his works in diametric opposition to

the sophistication ef white rnodernism. Huggins regards Hughes as a writer who t il :s 4

rejected the serious high culture of white modernism in the name of black"fblk

art" (227), Hughes' biographer Arnold Rampersad insists that Hughes' " Tl 1

dedication to the idioms of the black working-class or to the low-down folks

speech and the musical fbrms of the blues and jazz serves as a repudiation of

Western modernism itself. This interpretatien of black folk idioms allows " lt

Rampersad to conclude that Hughes was seeking fbr a version of rnodernism " lt

that was quite unlike the modernism typified by Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, "

whose literary standard is defined by elitism, hyper-intellectualism, and privacy tr

of language (Rampersad 1: 29, 102). These views closely parallel the criticisms

on the Harlem Renaissance in general. Critics have frequently defined the

distinctive features of the Harlem Renaissance in opposition to white modernism:

if the critics wish to assert that the Harlem Renaissance is an independent ethnic

art movement of Afro-Americans, they must exclude it from white modernism.

For example, Houston Baker, Jr. juxtaposes black modernism with white

-- " T! --

modernism; his argument, however, mamtams a separate but equal position ti IT

that enables him to place black modernism as the other to white modernism.

"i -l t

Baker arrives at the contention that Judgments on Afro-American modemity l !

that begin with notions of British, Anglo-American, and Irish modernism as4 t

successfu1 objects, projects, and processes to be emulated by Afro-Americans fs "

are misguided because Afro-Americans have little in common with Joycean or tt

ElioticprQjects (xvi).

I would argue against this dichotomized formulation of black and white

modernism. It reduces the possibility of not only acknowledging the diversity

of modernism but also of interpreting Montage outside the context of black T

modernism. Rampersad interprets Hughes works on the basis of such a reductiye

binary categorization despite the fact that the latter's works are extremely complex

to be possibly accommodated by such a dichotomized analysis. Rampersad

claims that Hughes was a stranger to the language of white modernists because - t -- t

he was unable to identify his poetic voice with the white modernists language

that expressed the "exigencies

of post-war European civilization" and "tragic

sense of irnpotence and decay, of a fatally fragmented rather than a still unified - rl

consciousness (1: 102-03). Was Hughes really indifferent to the language of




40 YUriSAKUMA

the white modernists that conveyed a sense of fragmentation? In fact, it appears

that the fragmented consciousness of modern Afro-Americans was precisely what

Hughes strived to express in Mbntage.

In this essay, I will present a new kind of modernism that is different from the

dichotomy by emphasizing its interracial aspect. I will focus on the manner in

which Monmge reflects Afro-American literature and music that were developed

partly on the models of white modernism in the 1940s-a period when Afro-

American modemism could not essentially be defined as an authentic movement

of black racial consciousness that was contemporaneous with, but independent

of, white modernism. In fact, the Afro-American writers and musicians of the

1940s drew from Western modernism no less than the Western modernists drew

from the Harlem Renaissance. A musicological analysis of be-bop reveals its

reliance on modern Western classical music composed by the 1ikes of Stravinsky,

Ravel, and Debussy as well as on Western musical theory to envision theirjazz as

modern music that is on par with Western classical music. An instmctive example

in literature is evident in the shift that can be traced in Hughes' jazz poetry fromthe 1920s to the 1940s. Montage, written mostly in 1948 and published in '

1951, reveals Hughes ambivalent fascination with Ezra Pound who shared with

Hughes such primary modernist concerns as alienation and experimental form. I -Exploration of Montages rich allusions to modernism and be-bop evokes interplay

between poetry and music, intertextuality between black and white modernism,

and on a personal level, interaction between Langston Hughes and Ezra Pound.

2. Intertextual Connection between Black and White Modernism " tt '

One of Montages short poems entitled Theme for English B exemplifies the " t!

workings of black-white intertextuality. Theme for English B begins with the

instructions of a white professor:

The instructor said,

Go home and write

a page tonight.

And let that page come out of you-Then, it will be true. -TI wonder if it s that simple? (108)





The title "Theme

fOr English B" ostensibly refers to Hughes' college assignment! -- " 11

m his composition class, which was called English B. The white professor "t-

believes that if Hughes attempts to write from within, his page will be true

to himself. However, in the same stanza, Hughes cannot help wondering if this" rl

truth can be determined so simply:

,It

s not easy to know what is true for you or me '

at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I m what

Ifeel and see and hear, Harlem,Ihear you:

hear you, hear me-we tworyou, me, talk on this page.

(I hear New Ybrk, too.) Me-who?

Well,Ilike to eat, sleep, drink, and be in loye.

I 1ike to work, read, learn, and understand life.

I 1ike a pipe for a Christrnas present,

or records-Bessie, bop, or Bach. (108)

- ". t--

Knowmg that [he is] the only colored student in the class, Hughes does not " tt

consider his truth and that of the other white students to be identical. Thus, " ll

confused,hequestions, Me-who?

One possible answer to the question may lie in this stanza itself: Hughes is

not different from the other white students to the extent that he leads the same

life as they do and ebjoys westernized tastes such as "Bach"

and "Christmas."

t-

Nevertheless, the third stanza presents Hughes identity as one that is still different Ls '

from that of the white students. He says, I guess being colored doesn t make me

not like / The same things other folks like who are other races. ! So will my page ll

be colored that I write? 1 Being me, it will not be white (109). As long as his

racial identity is "black,"

Hughes is unable to write his page exclusively in the

standard white English of the white world to which he is not permitted to socially

belong. If this is the case, does Hughes possess his own black English that renders

his page "colored"?

The answer to this question is "no't,

the page would not be" -I

colored merely because its author is not white and is therefore black. This is - -

suggestive of Hughes skepticism toward the idea of essentialism based on racial

authenticity. As we notice at the end of the second stanza, Hughes possesses a

record of Bach, which apparently symbolizes the Western classical tradition, as




42 YuriSAKUMA

well as records of Bessie Smith and be-bop, which may be considered as emblems " !J

of Afro-American heritage. In this sense, English B -which

is reminiscent " !T tt lt t[ !T

of English Bessie, English Be-bop, and English Bach -represents a

"lt tt Il

heterogeneity that calls into question the very validity of the truth and color

of his page based on the dichotomized opposition between black and white. It " 7- st " 4:

In addition, English B implies side B of a record, the reverse of side A.

This reversibility oi one record alludes to the duality in English: "English

B" -i TT

could also be an abbreviation for English Black that constantly coexists with " tt" !J

English White. This duality is comparable to the theory of signifyin(g) that

Gates defines as fbllows:

Signifyin(g) is black double-voicedness; because it always entails formal

revision and an intertextua] relation.[...] I find it an ideal metaphor for black

literary criticism, or the fOrmal manner in which texts seem concerned to

address their antecedents, Repetition with a signal difference, is fundamental

to the nature of Signifyin(g). (MOnkey 5l)

+s tt - Signifyin(g) is a manner of revealing that the language authorized by the

Western concept is no more than a trope operated by its desire to construct a tL !7

hierarchical white on black opposition wherein lies complicity. Signifyin(g),

taking advantage of the fact that there is no absolute or essential definition of what "tt -appears to be true, subverts the very truth of the word by means of writing it

otherwise or employing a figuratiye substitution. It creates an indeterminacy of

interpretation within a system of differences and presents a word that always has a

double, and therefore, deferred meaning. T t tt 11

Theme for English B obviously reveals Hughes or other black writers

potentialities of "signifyin(g)"

upon earlier white texts in order to explore the

multiple meanings and emotional nuances contained within a single word. In . Jr "TT .. ""

Theme for English B, the word true appearing in the white professors it ill -- iiJ-

instruction is signified upon : Go heme and write 1 a page tonight. 1 And let 7r

that page come out of you- 1 Then it will be true. In the last part of this poem, li tt

Hughes repeats the word true.

Being me, it will not be white.

But it will be a part of you, instructor.





Ybu are white-

Yet a part of me, as I am a part of you. 'That

s American. ,

Sometimes perhaps you don t want to be a part of me,

Nor do I often want to be a part of you. '

But we are, thatstrue! (109)

ts + T-

Through the phrase Thats true! Hughes suggests that the truth of his page is

derived neither from entirely assimilating into white English such that he forgets

his blackness nor from dissociating from it completely with a view to claiming

his black racial authenticity. Rather, the truth lies in the process of rewriting

the presupposed white truth in a different context that would render alternative - - t l -meamngs to it. In this respect, Hughes page is always a part of his whiteJ l

lnstructor s page.

Mbntage's short poem entitled "Chord"

exemplifies "signifyin(g)."

Although" tt

Chord appears to be dissociated from the works of white modernists, it

constitutes a complex constellation that can lead to a rethinking of intertextuality

between black and white modernism:

CHORD

Shadow faces

In the shadow night

Befbre the early dawn

Bops bright. (120)

ti ct tl --

According to Meta Jones, Chord is a revision of In a Station of the Metro

written by Ezra Pound:

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough. (Pound 204)

l t

Jones explains that Hughes rewriting of Pound s poem follows the principieof Imagism. Hughes compresses the first eight words of Pound's poem-"The tt - ttt II st

appamtion of these faces m the crowd -mto two words Shadow faces by

omitting definite articles and prepositions such as "the,"

"of,"

`'these,"

and "in"




44 YinriSAKUMA

'

from the first line (1147). In addition to Jones analysis, I would suggest that

Hughes succeeds in arranging his poem through a racial perspective by replacing " t- it IJ

the word apparition with its synonym shadow. Traditionally, the word" )t -- - - shadow carries racial connotations in Afro-Amerrcan literature. For mstance,

7i, ) "

Hughes poem WhiteShadows illustratesaubiquitousshadow:

I'm looking for a house

In the world

Where the white shadows

Will not fa11

There is no such house,

Dark brother,

No such house " IT

At all ( Collected 138)

lt "

Hughes creates a notion of white shadows to describe the contrasts between

the whites, who define themselves as sources of light, and the blacks, who are

fbrced to live in the darkness. Further, in Shadow and Act, Ralph Ellison states,"The

act of writing requires a constant plunging back into the shadow of the past !t

where time hovers ghostlike (7). This indicates the impossibility ofblack writers

" !7

escapingfromthe shadow oftheearlierWesternliterarytradition. "t lt

Evidently, fbr Hughes, Ezra Pound was the white shadow that he had to . " TT,

overcome. In 1931, Hughes published White Shadows m a magazine named

Contempo-a liberal journal run by two students at the University of North

Carolina-in order to protest against racial discrimination and white domination.

However, more important to the argument in this paper is the fact that it was on I !

a page of Contempo that Hughes poem first came in contact with Pound s essay.

After having shared the front page of the journal, Pound and Hughes began

exchanging letters. Hughes sent Pound letters, a Christmas card, and his novels t t

and poems including Mbntage (Roessel 232). Pound kindly read Hughes poems

and even offered some advice in a letter he sent to Hughes in 1932:

+ t

Now about yr/ poems. I dont know whether you want yr/ great grandads ,

opinion or not.[. . .] Every word that don t work ought to be put out[. . .]

Poem on next page much better done.[. . .] The strength of folk songs gets




Montage of a Dream De ferred 45

into it because everything unnecessary is forgotten in the oral transrnission, " rr

and simply drops out. I think you were dead right in starting with the blues

as model. (Roessel 221)

Pound recognizes the affinities between his use of Provengal song forms and - t

Hughes use of Afro-American musical elements and admires Hughes works

because they possess a natural vitality and vernacular spontaneity. However,

despite their similarities, their relationship is not symrnetrical. As is apparent in t dl 17 -Pounds reference to himselfas yr! great grandad, he ranks his own works ahead "

of those by Hughes by stating that the best he can hope for Hughes is the clarity

- dtl- - t

and simplicity (Gill 87) of his poetry. Pound suggests that Hughes works are

scarcely comparable to his own poetry, which expresses the universality of high

culture. This high-low relationship between Pound and Hughes reminds us of the

teacher-pupil relationship between the white instmctor and Hughes in "Theme

for rT "

English B. Further, the phrase Hear you, hear me-we two-you, me, talk on 7J

this page in the poem may be a reference to the conversation between Hughes

and Pound on the same page of Contempo. ii tt :d :1 "

In contrast to white shadow, the fo11owing line of Chord, namely, In the -t

shadow night, emphasizes the blackness ef the shadow. This interplay between

the white and black shadows implies that the representation of whiteness cannot

exist without a corresponding and opposing representation of blackness even

though the blackness is always shadowed or hidden in a white shadow. In Playing- i " -in the Dark, Tbni Morrison argues that Even, and especially, when American i !

texts are not about Africanist presences or characters or narTative or idiom, the tl

shadew hovers in implication, in sign, in line of demarcation (46-47). According c; t-

to Morrison, Afro-Americans have served as a necessary shadow for white

literary imagination to articulate dichotomies in the context of constructing a - - " tt 7 " tt

white consciousness m the New World. Hughes use of the word shadow

reveals that both the black and white literary imaginations are constantly inhabited

by the shadow of the other, even when one attempts to erase the other. - r lt ts

Finally, Hughes revises Pound s second line, Petals on a wet, black bough, tl tt

to his third and fourth lines, Before the early dawn / Bops bright. Hughes

overlaps white-colored petals on a black bough with the brightness of be-bop " sl

before the break of dawn, and completes rewriting In a Station of the Metro as

4S :7 lt !r

Chord. The word chord refers to the number of musical notes that are played




46 MiriSAKUMA

-! si

or sung at the same time, and as atitle, Chord is an appropriate metaphor fbr fs tt l4"

signifyin(g) that always assumes the echo or shadow of a precedent white tt t: !l "

voiceinablackvoice. Interestingly,theword chord togetherwith theme in" tt - Theme for English B can immediately be associated with be-bop because the

latter is an improvisational technique of appropriating a

"theme"

and

"chord"

progression from white popular songs to weave new changes and melody lines.

In this respect, improvising be-bop resembles '`signifyin(g)."

Gates clarifies this sL -point by stating that Improvisation, of course, so fundamental to the very idea

ofjazz, is `nothing

more' than repetition and revision" (Monkey 63). In fact, Tti Tr

Mbntage presents some ofthe examples ofbe-bops signifyin(g) on white tunes. t tt . ' it "

For example, the phrase Salt Peanuts that appears m the poem Childrens

Rhyme" (91) is the title of a be-bop tune composed by jazz trumpeter Dizzy - -- "

Gillespie, a ftiend of Hughes. Although Gillespie recorded Salt Peanuts as his

own and built a completely new version, it is based on the chord progression of"I

Got Rhythm" written by Geotge Gershwin fOr the 1930 Broadway production -t"

Girl Crazy. Tt "

Ironically enough, signifyin(g) neyer popularized be-bop. When a popular

song is played by white musicians, it is praised as being beautiful music.

However, when a popular song is played by black jazz musicians, it is derided :l Ti . ,as nonsense. Although the basic structure and chord progresston are identical, t! "

the music is judged by its surface melody line and the color line of musicians.

Similarly, Mbntage is not evaluated highly because, on the surface, it contains ti 1!

poetic lines that appear to be nonsense and too simplistic when assessed

according to Western literary criteria. Critics have judged that Hughes' poetry "

fails to satisfy their desire for a modernist literature attuned to the complexities

of modern life" (Coltected 3). Other black writers like James Baldwin also

belittled Hughes because, in his opinion, Hughes has never lived up to his ia

potential because his wotks take refuge, finally, in a fake simplicity in order to !t

ayoid the very difficult simplicity of experience (Baldwin 609). s: tl

Unlike these laments, Rampersad holds a different opinion on the nonsense

presented in Montage:

Traditional lyrics had been replaced rnost spectacularly by a language of " tt

sound often without apparent sense, or nonsense. In this new style Hughes

saw the growing fissures in Afro-American culture, the myth of integration




MontageofaDrearnDeferred 47

andAmerican social harmonyjarred by a message of deep discord. (2: 15l)Viewed in this light, Montage declares a complete departure from the

consciousness of the Harlem Renaissance writers who rnimicked the standard

English of white authors: the act of writing in standard English was a - t -manifestation of the black writers desire to be like their white counterparts. In

other words, they attempt to let their works assimilate into the white literary lt "

tradition and create harmony with it by means of disowning the black ' +! "

vemacular language and dialect. Montage s discord, on the other hand,

underscores a theme that denies racial integration, which is a recuning therne that ,

appears throughout Hughes poems and novels.

In Montage, for instance, Hughes arouses discord in the poem entitled" I-

Passing. It writes about light-skinned Afiro-Americans who choose to "

masquerade as whites in order to live harmoniously in white society: the ones

who've crossed the line to live downtown / miss you, / Harlem of the bitter

dream, X since their dream has come true" (115). Although "the

ones who've tt - -crossed the line symbolize the blacks, whose dreams of integration haye

actualized, they cannot help missing their mothers and grandmothers living in st "

Harlem. In this sense, their dream is reduced to a bitter dream created from

the erasure of their racial identity: racial passing is associated with negation, an

erasure of the self, and a denial of the Afro-American community. If the word

'`passing"

is reconsidered in a musical context, one might be reminded of be-bop's`'passing

chord." It is a kind of musical "signifyin(g)"

on a white popular song's t afundamental chord to acomplex one suited fbr be-bopssound. This new chord is

placed between two other chords in order to lead to a smooth transition between ii s!

the two chords during improvisation. In the words of DeVeaux, passing chord

is characterized as fo11ows:

The resultant chord (with the flatted fifth) is a rich, complex hybrid.

Dominant seventh chord and tritone substitution become ambiguously

commingled, raising the level of dissonance and pointing unmistakably

toward a new harmonic soundtharacteristic sound ofbebop. (1 1O)

On a superficial level, the passing chord facilitates the pregression frorn one

chord to another in jazz improvisation, akin to the seemingly happy blacks who tt "

easily crossed the line between the black and white worlds by masquerading




48 yUriSAKUMA

as whites. However, on a deeper level, the '`passing

chord" is also a source of

dissonance because it is created by substituting some fundamental notes to the"fiatted

fifth," which is the crucial riote in forming a "blue

note." The "blue

note"

is commonly used in traditional blues songs and it might best be identified by its

indeterminate or unidentifiable pitch that leads to dissonance. In addition, the" tt ]-

blue note creates a sense of melancholy and bitterness in the listeners minds, rt "

as is suggested by the word blue. Thus, I would posit that this melancholic

" l! i[ !t

blues feeling evoked by the passing chord prompts the recognition of how

Hughes textualizes his ambivalent sensibility teward those blacks who wish to be

whites by concealing their black racial identity. Although Hughes is attracted by tt -"the white world, he neyer permits his dream to come true within the white value

system based on white literary criteria.

3. Why did Hughes Name His Poem "Montage

of a Dream Deferred?"

lb conclude this paper, I would like to retum to the title of Hughes' poem, t! s-" "

Montage of a Dream Deferred. Hughes uses the phrase dream deferred to

signify the breken promise of Harlem that is separated from the white society "

and from the realization of a dream: Dream within a dream / Our dream

deferred" (126). "Dream"

is Montage's central unifying theme that signifies the

realization and fulfillment of these rights, including access to education, decent

housing, employment, and a family life. On the other hand, Hughes uses the term ll"

dream deferred to show the lack of these rights. For example, in the poems tl tt '

entitled Deferred, Hughes dreams of material happiness are deferred because

he cannot even have "one

more bottle of gin," "civil

service," a "television

ts" lt Lt tt

set, a decentradio, anda white enamel stove (lll-13). Recognizing the

difficulty in fulfi11ing the promise of the dream, Hughes also writes in the poemtd 1! lt I `lt il

Same in Blues that there s a certain f amount of nothmg, a certain f amount rT s- lr is tt

of impotence, and liable l to be confusion in a dream deferred (124-25). " JI

Interestingly, for Hughes, be-bop also signifies a dream deferred ; in his essay, il

he mentions, Tb me jazz is a montage of a dream deferred. A great big dream- Tt" !l

yet to come-and always yet-to become ultimately and finally true ( Jazz " !J

494). Why does he refer to be-bop as Montage of a Dream Deferred ? The 7" " :7 :!

poementitled Harlem dealsdirectlywithHarlems dreamdeferred :

What happens to a drearn deferred?



itmericanMteratureSociety inJapan


Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun? (123)

" T!

Dream deferred is probably the name given to the unresolved racial confiict " tt

and racial inequality in Harlem. Besides, the description dry up in the second

line alludes to a deferred dream of be-bop. Four years after Montage was

published, Ralph Ellison described the death of Charlie Parker, a famous be- " !s

bop saxophone player, as dried and frozen (242). Although the official cause 1 ---of Parker s death was pneumonia, it is generally assumed that his death was

precipitated by his drug and alcohol addiction, which was partly a result of his

frustration with racial discrimination. Rampersad writes that Hughes dedicated

Montage to Ellison just after its publication (2: 202); thus, it is not extremely far- ,

fetched to claim that Ellison, having discoyered an echo of Harlem s dried-up ' ltt'rt !

dream in Parkers dmed body, may have consciously selected Hughes words

,

from Mbntage to describe Parker s death. ii lt " !l

Thefourthlineof Harlem picturesanother dreamdeferred :

Or fester like a sore-

And then run?

Does it stink Iike a rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over-

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode? (123)

" 7T

Here, I would suggest that rotten meat may be a rnetaphorical representation

: -of a lynched black persons body hanging from a tree. Lynching, the practiceof which peaked in the late njneteenth and early twentieth centuries, is a motif

widely used by many writers across genres and through generations. As Afro-

American writers sought a distinct tradition of their own, the portrayal of lynching "

and buming scenes came to reflect stylistic experimentation, symbolic language, rt

and multiple levels of interpretation, especially after the Harlem Renaissance




50 YUriSAKUMA

t+ t ."(Trudier 71). Hughes use of symbolic language in Harlem thus renders further ii Jt

significance to the poem: rotten meat symbolizes a lynched human body is tt i- t- .dripping with a bloody syrupy sweet and sagging like a heavy load that is to "tt

be burnt. The crust covering the meat evokes the image of the hard coating of

dried blood on human skin.

The imagery of a bumt meat as a metaphor for a burnt body can also be traced

in other writers' works. Jean Tbomer refers to a L`barbecue"

in "Georgia

Dusk"

in Cane (1923) : "Passively

darkens for night's barbecue, / A feast of moon and

men and barking hounds, ! An orgy for some genius of the South / With blood-hot Il

eyes and cane-lipped scented mouth (15). The sweet taste and scented smell in " !1 " 71

the last phrase of this poem evokes the phrase syrupy sweet from Harlem and t-" li

another poem in Cane entitled Face : Her eyes- 1 Mist of tears f Condensing

on the flesh below 1 And her channeled muscles ! Are cluster grapes of sorrow / +t

Purple in the evening sun 1 Near]y ripe for worms (1O). Here, 'Ibomer

presents " t-

the fragmented body of a lynched victim and refers to her flesh as cluster grapes it. Jr ti

that are ripe for worms, which are not only rerniniscent of the phrases rotten tt !T " tt "

meat and fester like a sore from Harlem but also of ajazz song entitled"Strange

Fruit" (1939) sung by jazz singer Billie Holiday. The lyrics of the song

are about Iynching:

Southern trees bear a strange ftuit

Blood on the leaves, blood at the root

A black body swinging in the Southern breeze

Strange frtiit hanging from the poplar trees (qtd. in White 50)

"Strange

ffuit" symbolizes the lynched black bodies dripping with

"blood"

and

swinging from a tree waiting to be burnt. These descriptions of lynching scenes

become an exhibition of violence and expose the manner in which a lynched black

flesh is picked on and eaten up by white exploiters, like a ftuit to be picked and

eaten.

A "dream

deferred" in be-bop as well as in "Harlem"

originates from black

people's suffering under the violence. According to Hughes' explanation, the

etymology of be-bop can be traced back to the sound of violence, too. Hughes lt "

writes the fbllowing in an essay titied Where Bop Comes From : be-bep comes"from

the police beating Negroes' heads," because "Every

time a cop hits a Negro





with his billy club, that old club says, `BOP!...BOPI...BEBOP!...MOP!...BOP!";

that is to say, behind the nonsensical syllables of be-bop, there always exists " t! 'a reference to the dark days of the black people. Hughes goes on to wnte,"Folks

who ain't suffered much cannot play Bop, neither appreciate it" (Simple118). Be-bop and Harlem, as the sound of violence, seem to represent the

unending frustration of black lives. However, I do not intend to imply that this "

is the reason Hughes pessimistically names his poem and be-bop Montage of a it "

Dream Deferred. As I quoted earlier, for Hughes, jazz is a big dream to become ti }}

ultimately and finally true. Hughes also mentions that Charlie Parker was

looking fbr that future like mad" ("Jazz" 494). These optimistic recognitions

arise from Hughes' anticipation of an unknown yet possible future when the

deferred dreams ofAfro-Americans come true.

However, at the same time, Montage expresses the impossibility of a dream

being realized; in other words, the impossibility of reaching a final definition

or truth, which is in fact one of the essential truths of Montage and be-bop. All tl rt

that which is defined as being perfect has no future at all, and any dream

completely realized is no longer a dream. In order to leave Mbntage open to

the future, Hughes had to let the truth of the poem remain undetermined or ]et

the dream of the Afro-Americans remain unrealized. This is the reason Hughes -i tt

names Montage and be-bop Dream Deferred, demanding the creation of a

never-ending dream of the future in Harlem. Keeping in mind the infinite nature

of an (im)possible "`dream,"

we can now provide an answer to Hughes' question )I " Js" Tl"

Me-Who? that appears in Theme for English B. English B may well " l! " ..be read as English Be that connotes the line of the peem, Being me, it will

!t

not be white. / But it will be 1 a part of you, instructor. Hughes lets his English

be a part of white English, and in doing this, he represents a unique version of " !T

black being infdrmed not merely by blackness but also by multiple others

who share the context of Afro-American expressive culture. The solos of be-

bop musicians cannot be improvised without interplay between the members

of the band, white popular tunes, and white chord progression. Hughes cannot

permit his works to be independent of the works written by white modernists. In -- t:t ttt -a similar fashion, Hughes being is unidentifiable without the presence of the - ! +- -white instructor, or Ezra Pound. Montage s vamous mtertexts, which embody

the everlasting imperfection of writing/perfbrmance, prove to be a non-essential

artistic composition for Hughes, Harlem, and the jazz of the 1940s. They have a




52 YtiriSAKUMA

weary drearn of attajning a perfect state of being. However, their dream is always tt "

represented in the form of Montage of a Dream Deferred yet to be realized.

Always yet, and finally, true.

Works CitedBaker, Houston A., Jr. Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. Chicago: U of

Chicago R 1987.

Baldwin, James. "Sermons

and Blues." Lansston Hbeghes: 71he Contemporar:y Revieyvs.

Ed. Tish Dace. New Ybrk: Cambridge UR 1997. 608-09.

Berendt, Joachim E. 71he lazz Book: Frvm Ragtime to Fusion and Beyond. Trans. B.

Bredigkeit and Dan Morgenstern. New Ybrk: Lawrence Hill, 1992.

Coyle, Michael, ed. Ezra Pound and African American Modernism. Orono, ME:

National Poetry Foundation, 2001.

DeVeaux, Scott. 7:he Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical Histocy. Berkeley: U of

California R 1997.

Douglass, Fredrick. Arbrrative of the Lij7? of Fredeick Douglass: An American Stave,

l-}'itten by Himself 1845, Ed. Beajamin Quarles. Cambridge: Harvard UR 1969.

Ellison, Ralph. Shadow and Act. New Ybrk: Random, 1964.

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. Figures in Black: VPloncts, Signs, and the CCRacial"

Seijl New

Ydrk: Oxford UR 1987.

-. The Signij5,ing Mbnkey: A 71heory ofALfrican-American Literar:y Criticism. New

Ydrk: Oxford UE 1988. -ti "

Gill, Jonathan. Ezra Pound and Langston Hughes: TheABC ofPo try. Coyle 79-88.

Harris, Trudien E)voncising Blackness: Historical and Literary ]bynching and Burning

Rituals. Bloomington: Indiana UR 1984.

Huggins, Nathan Irvin. Htirtem Renaissance. New Ybrk: Oxfbrd UP, 197 1 .

Hughes, Langston. The Best ofSimple. New Ydrk: Hill and Wang, 1969.

-. 77ie Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. Ed. Arnold Rampersad and David

Roessel. New Ybrk: Knopf, 1994.

-. `'Jazz

as Communication." Hughes, Reader492-94.

-. 71ie Langston Htighes Reader. New Ydrk: George Braziller, 1958.

-. `LThe

Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain." 77)e IVation 122 (1926). Rpt. in

Within the Circle: An Anthology oj' IY}'ican-American Literary Criticism 1hom the

Hdrlem Renaissance to the Present. Ed. Angelyn Mitchel}. Durham, NC: Duke





UR 1994. 166.68. It "-.

MontageofaDreamDeferred. Hughes,Reader89-126. t- Li-.

SongsCalledtheBlues, Hughes,Reader159-61,

Jimoh, Yemisi A. spiritual, Btues and Jazz People in Af}'ican American Fiction: Living

in Paradox. Knoxville: U of [[lennessee R 2oo2.

Jones, heRoi. Blues Peopte: Negro Music in White America. New Ybrk: Morrow, 1963. "

Jones, Meta DuEwa. Listening to What the Era Demands: Langston Hughes and his ll

Critics. Callaloo 25.4 (2002): 1145-75, "

Long, Richard A. Interactions between Writers and Music during the Harlem

Renaissance," Btack Music in the Hbrlem Renaissance: A Collection of Essays.

Ed. Samuel A. Floyd, Jr, New YOrk: Greenwood, 1993,

Lott, Eric. "Double

Y Double-Time: Bebop's Politics of Style." 7)lie Jazz Cadence

ofAmerican Culture. Ed. Robert G. O'Meally. New Ybrk: Columbia UE 1998.

457-68.

Morrison, [foni. Playing in the Dark: Vlihiteness and the Literary imagination, New

Ybrk: Vintage, 1993. " Tv

Pound, Ezra. In a Station of the Metro. 1913. Anthotogy of Medern American

Poetry. Ed. Cary Nelson. New Ybrk: Oxford UR 2000. 204,

Rampersad, Arnold. 71he Lijle ofLangston Hughes. 2 yols. New Ybrk: Oxford UR 1988. it t ' t±Roessel, David. A Racial Act : The Letters of Langston Hughes and Ezra Pound.

Coyle 207-42,

Small, Christopher. Music of the Common 7bngue: S"rvivai and Cetebration in ALfrican

American Music. Hanover: Wesleyan UR 1987.

Ibomer, Jean. Cane. 1923. Ed. Darwin T. Turner. New Ydrk: Norton, 1988.

Tracy, Steven C. Langston Hitghes and the Blues. Urbana: U of Illinois R 1988,

White, John. Billie Hbliday: Her Lde and nmes. New \brk: Uniyerse, 1987.

a lgd,g:'a, - j-stage

Documents