The Weary Blues: Celebrating Langston Hughes and The Harlem Renaissance

In honor of Black History Month and the 101st anniversary of the publication of Langston Hughes’ first collection of poetry, The Weary Blues, Jerry Jazz Musician Experiences, in partnership with the Oregon Music Hall of Fame, is staging a multi-media off-Broadway-style production headlined by prominent Portland entertainers that will include jazz music in the style of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Fats Waller, performance poetry, song, dance, and stunning historic visual imagery. The first edition of this show was performed before a standing-room-only audience at the Alberta Abbey in February of 2026. The 2027 edition features additional artistic elements, including singing and dancing.

The evening will be headlined by the performance poet Emmett Wheatfall, winner of the prestigious 2024 Oregon Poetry Association Patricia Ruth Banta Award, and a jazz quartet made up of musicians led by the drummer and music director Christopher Brown, and including pianist Darrell Grant, trumpeter Noah Simpson, and bassist Christian Ramirez. Performances by the singers LaRhonda Steele (Portland’s “First Lady of the Blues”) and Dani Barker (a rising Portland jazz singing talent), and the dance company “Rejoice! Diaspora Dance Theater” (led by Reed College’s Oluyinka Akinjiola) also perform in the show. A choir made up of Portland Public Schools students will also take part in it.

During the two-set show (with intermission), Wheatfall and the band will perform several poems from “The Weary Blues” that helped define Hughes’ career, including “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” “The Weary Blues,” “I, Too, Sing America,” and “The Dream Keeper.” Historic photography and art from the era will be projected on the screen behind the performers, and the singers and dancers interpret the complexity of the era in collaboration with the band.

This show, and these incredible talents – all Portland residents representing four generations and performing six different artistic disciplines – will provide audience members with an unforgettable evening of entertainment, and an uplifting, positive experience for the community to share.

Prior to the show, ticket holders can attend a talk in the venue’s Lab room on Langston Hughes and poets of the Harlem Renaissance by Professor Maude Hines, the former Chair of Black Studies, and affiliated faculty in Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies at Portland State University.