Langston Hughes believed in creating black art. In his famous essay "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" he argued it's impossible to separate the artist from his or her art, so literature, in this case, created by African-Americans is "negro art." The Harlem Renaissance, which occurred in the 1910s and lasted to the mid-1930s, was an era in which African Americans created art—music, literature, artwork—that represented the black experience. Hughes's masterful "The Weary Blues" explores two of the most dominant forms of expression in this era: poetry and blues.

Many of Hughes's poems that occur in the Harlem Renaissance explore the themes of weariness and sadness. While African Americans fled the South to places like Harlem, they were often met with racism and difficulty in finding places to live and places to work. "The Weary Blues" explores all of these ideas, but also provides a setting—a blues club—that is representative of this movement.

It's important to note that blues was considered music for the lower classes of black Americans, while the Jazz being performed for white audiences by musicians like Louis Armstrong was the more respected genre.

So you can imagine this blues singer and the speaker sitting in this club on Lennox Avenue—the heart of Harlem—struggling in their daily lives. This musician played a "sad raggy tune" that "came from a black man's soul."

Additionally, the Great Migration in which millions of blacks fled the South for places like New York meant African Americans oftentimes left their loved ones behind. This blues singer touches on this idea:

“Ain’t got nobody in all this world,
Ain’t got nobody but ma self.
I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’
And put ma troubles on the shelf.”

Ultimately, "The Weary Blues" represents many of the themes of the Harlem Renaissance, particularly the weariness and sadness African Americans still faced every day in the North, but also their ability to overcome challenges by using music and art as expressional outlets, such as blues music and poetry.