VIEWPOINTS OF HUGHES AND SHAKUR

1. The celluloid images that accompany poet Langston Hughes' Weary Blues on the website youtube.com
( ) are as much a foil for the poems lyrics as today's Hollywood fare that's saturated the airwaves. It's easy for impressionable minds to be swayed by the images of good times, extravagant lifestyles, and carefree, cushioned existence. The definition of "gospel", i.e., "somethng regarded as true and implicity believed" might even seem to fit. Combined, however, with a second definition, "a doctrine regarded as of prime importance: political gospel", it seems to befit the lyrics of Hughes as well as Tupac Shakur's Ghetto Gospel. These pieces describe the reality for masses of people, i.e., desparate living conditions, imminent mortal danger and lack faced particularly by minorities in American society.
Source: Dictionary.com

2. Shakur's protagonist has adapted to the conditions in which he lives, and believes that those who fought and died in the effort to create a different outcome sacrificed foolishly. Tupac's character believes in the wisdom of "eating rather than being eaten". In the corresponding videoclip () , however, the main figure appears to be on the losing end of that equation, and is murdered during a casual moment in a public place, the end of a life despairing in ignoble surroundings with seemingly no prospects.

3. "We out of the projects/ Jumped into another form of slavery" might refer to descendants of African slaves who were emancipated in the late 1800's. Emancipation was immediately followed by the horror of Jim Crow segregation, deprivation, racism and disenfranchisement. Rendered relatively powerless politically and socially, many of the descendants of these slaves are now ensnared in poverty and are still hampered by rasicm today. Tupac states "I shouldn't let it phase me" inferring that today's construct is nothing new, and is a familiar evil.

4. In Hughes' time, it appears that there is temporary respite from rasicm and injustice within one's community. There was an underlying culture that allowed for a "grand funeral" for a boy "who was so dear" in Night Funeral in Harlem. In Weary Blues, there was a place where one could go to socialize and listen to music. In Tupac's ghetto world, the community is the killer. Death at the hands of a neighbor seems to be constant and untimely and the onlookers seem desensitized. Even the living have lost a spark and given themselves over to drugs, prostitution, being gangsters, or the like.

5. From a Baruch music history class, I learned that Blues is genre of music that originated in the South, a derivation of the work songs slaves used to sing while laboring. The precursor to jazz and rock music, the theme of blues music is usually melancholy. Hughes' poem, Weary Blues, describes blues' characteristic syncopation and melancholy lyrics which are employed by the artiste who is the focus of the piece. The piano he plays is also a main feature of blues, as well as percussion and brass instruments. That the music is "coming from a black man's soul" is a reference to the African-American slaves with whom the blues originated, who most certainly ended each day of forced labor sleeping "like a rock or a man who's dead".