The Langston Hughes Project is a multimedia concert performance of Hughes’s kaleidoscopic jazz poem suite. “Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz” is Hughes’ homage in verse and music to the struggle for artistic and social freedom at home and abroad at the beginning of the 1960s. It is a twelve-part epic poem which Hughes scored with musical cues drawn from blues and Dixieland, gospel songs, boogie woogie, bebop and progressive jazz, Latin “cha cha” and Afro-Cuban mambo music, German lieder, Jewish liturgy, West Indian calypso, and African drumming — a masterwork left unperformed at his death.
The performance will feature spoken-word and music by The Ron McCurdy Quartet.
Recreating Hughes’ vision of the global struggle for freedom and equality in the early 1960’s has linked words and music to a kaleidoscopic of images. By way of videography, this concert performance links the words and music of Hughes’ poetry to topical images of “Ask Your Mama”‘s people, places, and events, and to the works of the visual artists Langston Hughes admired or collaborated with most closely over the course of his career.
Together the words, sounds, and images recreate a magical moment in America’s cultural history, which bridges the Harlem Renaissance, the post World War II Beat writers’ coffeehouse jazz poetry world, and the looming Black Arts performance explosion of the 1960s.
Abstract
The Langston Hughes Project is a multimedia concert performance of the renowned African-American writer’s kaleidoscopic jazz poem suite “Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz.” This concert will marry the words of Langston Hughes with an original score and images that correlate with the poem. “Ask Your Mama” was dedicated to Louis Armstrong, “the greatest horn blower of them all,” and to those of whatever hue or culture of origin who welcomed being immersed in the mysteries, rituals, names, and nuances of black life not just in America but in the Caribbean, in Latin America, in Europe and Africa during the years of anti-colonial upheaval abroad and the rising Freedom Movement here at home.
Poetry Slam Component/Student Engagement
In addition to the LHP performance, three students from the VCU student body will be selected by the English Department to recite their own poetry. Ron McCurdy will compose an original score to accompany the students as they open the Langston Hughes Project.
Submitted by Rex Richardson, professor, Department of Music
Award: $8,500
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