In this poem, Langston Hughes focuses on a trumpeter who is on stage playing his instrument in a bar. He is also telling his story through his music. Here the similarities are beginning to show. Though there are two different instruments being talked about in the poems, the concept is the same. However, the mood in the poem differs in regards to beliefs of the reader because the story that the trumpet player is telling focuses on the aspects of the different views of African American experiences in the United States as he speaks of the memories that are brought back to him in lines 1 through 5. I believe that he was actually referring to his ancestors. “And, like earlier expressive forms of the Harlem Renaissance, bebop's hybrid style reflected the social heterogeneity of Harlem while registering the jarring but liberating impact of a new urban environment.”(Lowney) In lines 17 through 20, he refers to the music as honey and liquid fire. This could be Hughes saying that the trumpet player’s music is mesmerizing and addicting.
The Trumpet Player
“The Negro
The Trumpet Player
“The Negro
With the trumpet at his lips
Has dark moons of weariness
Beneath his eyeswhere the smoldering memory"
“the music
“the music
from the trumpet at his lips
is honey
mixed with liquid fire"
I think that Cadet Walker did a good job at interpreting how Hughes portrayed the trumpet player and how both the player and the music seem to have told a story. I also agree with how Cadet Walker talks of the music that it is both "mesmerizing and addicting" and you can see examples of that in the poem as Hughes has indicated. The poems also have a hint of subtle sadness and the trumpet player seems tired but his music is what motivates him to go on. This is just one of the poems that Hughes stream out emotions through the passion of another to send a message similar to " this is my story and hear me play".
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