Langston Hughes's "Bop"

In Langston Hughes’s “Bop,” the narrator and fictional character Simple discuss the evolution of jazz music and its relationship with the oppression of blacks. This essay, written in 1949 as a column in the Chicago Defender, brings attention and reveals to white people the immense amount of racial discrimination between whites and blacks during that time period. Hughes, being a successful poet, playwright, and blacks right activist, expresses his disdain for the abhorrent mistreatment of black people by connecting it with “be-bop.”

Hughes uses a huge connection throughout the whole narrative between jazz music and black oppression to reveal the heinous treatment of blacks. He uses two fictional characters, Simple and the narrator, to discuss how “be-bop” came to be. Simple, one of the two characters in the essay, explains to the narrator the origin and evolution of jazz music. Although the narrator claims that “Be-bop is passe, gone, finished,” Simple insists that although “it may be gone, its riffs remain behind” (190). Like be-bop, although huge acts of black oppression have gone and past, there are still elements of racial discrimination everywhere.

Hughes wants to show that although many people think that racial oppression does not occur anymore, there are still several instances where they occur. He uses another example through Simple who claims that the reason why “many white folks don’t dig Bop” is because “white folks do not get their heads beat just for being white” (191). Here, Hughes uses the connection to show that white people do not understand jazz music because they have not gone through the rough, oppressing experience that black people have. By using this analogy between music and racial discrimination, Hughes is successfully able to portray to his audience the idea that black oppression should be stopped. Hughes’s connection also includes an element of pathos. Using the example of how a white person cannot relate to a type of music made by blacks because they are not treated equally highlights the difference between how whites and blacks were treated at the time. Highlighting this aspect of racial discrimination tugs on the audience’s heartstrings, evoking an emotion of guilt for not taking action for such a huge mistreatment between races.

Nina Simone was a famous jazz pianist and a huge civil rights activist. Many other rights activists like Hansberry, Baldwin and even Langston Hughes himself admired her talent for jazz as well as her contribution to end racial discrimination.