Use By Langston Hughes in The Poem Ask Your Mama
At the beginning of his poem sequence Ask Your Mama, Langston Hughes says "The traditional folk melody of the 'Hesitation Blues' is the leitmotif for this poem." Throughout the poem, Hughes placed musical direction for the poem on the right margin of each page. The direction calls for performance of song several times in the poem sequence. In his biography of Hughes, Arnold Rampersad says the song's chorus, which asks, "How long must I have to wait?" emphasizes Hughes's impatience with the progress of the civil rights movement.
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