The Influence of Musical Folk Traditions in the Poetry of Langston Hughes and Nicolás Guillén

Reading by Kathryn Gray

Nicolás Guillén and Langston Hughes in New York City, 1949. Photo by by Carl Van Vechten. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Most students at the middle or high school level know of Langston Hughes and can identify with him as an African-American who writes about the experience of being African-American. The students’ familiarity with him will create a bridge towards an understanding of the Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén. In my unit I will explain how these two poets had much in common before they met and even more so after they became friends and influenced each other’s writing. They were both young men of African descent born in 1902 who wrote poetry concerned with racial and class issues. One was raised in Cuba, the other in the United States, one in Spanish, the other in English and both had parents of mixed racial descent. After meeting, they eventually shared a pattern of using musical influence in their poetry as well as the experience of traveling through and living in Spain together during its civil war.

I am specifically interested in showing students how Langston Hughes, through his love of music, persuaded Nicolás Guillén to explore the rhythms and themes of Cuban son when writing poetry. Langston Hughes was known for incorporating aspects of the blues tradition in his poetry. His deep interest in this music naturally led him to seek out the music of the soneros during his travels in Cuba. The son , like the blues, is a musical folk tradition that traces its roots to traditional African call-and-response music. Nicolás Guillén set immediately to writing poetry that incorporated elements of the son tradition after meeting the American poet and listening to the soneros with him. It is to the African roots of these two American musical traditions that I would like to take my students.

In the first section of this unit, I will present brief biographies of the two poets before they met each other, as well as an account of their meeting and its results.

In the second section of this unit I will give an overview of this movement that is known by various names including “afroamericanismo”, “negrismo” or “négritude.”

In the third section of this unit I will present a history of Africans in Cuba.

In the fourth section of this unit I will present a brief explanation of why and how Langston Hughes based his poetry on the blues.

In the sixth section of this unit that I will present the poetry of Nicolás Guillén that has been based on the son.

Students of all ethnic and racial descents will not be able to help but find the poetry of these two adventurous authors fascinating. By focusing on the musical traditions that motivated Langston Hughes and Nicolás Guillén, I hope to further engage students’ interest and to create an opening for interdisciplinary collaboration with an arts teacher. I envision students creating culminating projects that include writing their own poetry or son lyrics in Spanish and performing them set to music. Finally, I hope that students will understand through the study of these poets, that being American does not only mean living in the United States, speaking English and eating hamburgers. The friendship of these two literary figures is both a symbol of the interconnectedness of the English and Spanish speaking worlds and the importance of race to human experience.