April is National Poetry Month. It is also Jazz Appreciation Month.

It’s serendipitous the two art forms are recognized during the same month. The most celebrated jazz poet, Langston Hughes, collaborated with jazz musicians. In his 1926 essay, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” Hughes wrote:

But jazz to me is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America; the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul—the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile.

Hughes read his poem, “The Weary Blues,” on a Canadian TV program in 1958.

Hughes presented the history of jazz in a children’s book, The First Book of Jazz, published in 1955.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) is celebrating Jazz Appreciation Month and National Poetry Month with online programs, including “The Power of Poetry Blog Series.” For information on African Americans’ contributions to today’s jazz and poetry landscape, visit NMAAHC.