... poem works out Hughes's apprehension, his feeling that his ability to understand the emotions that generated this form of artistic expression was not on a par with the expression itself This is indicated by the last line of the poem, where the speaker notes that the piano player "slept like a rock or a man that's dead." The key word here is "or," for it denotes the ... imprecision of the speaker's understanding. What the blues articulates is the simultaneous presence of the "tragic and comic aspects of the human conditions." Thus, the blues in the poem ... is not the conventional "eith...

• Word Count: 547
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... were the harmonica--cheap, easily portable, and, in the African manner, an instrument capable of imitating the human voice--and the banjo. The form began coalescing just around the turn of the century, with the more familiar guitar and piano gaining currency. Musicologists' best guesstimates place the blues as chiefly arising in three regions: Texas, Georgia/the Carolinas, and, most notably, ... Mississippi (especially the Delta area), possibly as soon as the 1890s but definitely by the early 1900s. The blues piano, however, developed in a parallel but different course--the players coul...

• Word Count: 1753
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: Undergraduate