Singers like Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and others helped usher in the jazz and blues age, a period of "flappers" and ostentatious displays of wealth and debauchery often chronicled by F. Scott Fitzgerald in works like The Great Gatsby (Shaw 3). Musicians like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton and Dizzie Gillespie helped define jazz and the blues, making the musical form closely associated with black creativity and artistic talent. As Harlem Renaissance historian Maureen Ryan argues, "Jazz and blues composers like Jelly Roll Martin and Duke Ellington created lyrics and beats that reflected the excitement of the time. Jazz greats performed at the famous Apollo Theatre" (14). This energy in music and jazz had a profound effect on many artists that followed those of the Harlem Renaissance.

Showing the enormous influence of jazz and blues music during the Harlem Renaissance on today

In literature, Langston Hughes' poems often express a jazz-like rhythm in their short, staccato like rhyming couplets. Reciting them aloud is like singing the words to a song. However, these works also convey deep feelings about oppression and the struggle of African Americans to achieve their dreams in a prejudiced and racist mainstream culture. We see both the musicality and deep feeling in one of Hughes' most celebrated poems, "A Dream Deferred":

After a drive down Fifth Avenue in the 1920s, F. Scott Fitzgerald cried because he recognized "I had everything I wanted and knew I would never be so happy again" (Shaw 3). It is this comb