Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet

A second poem (now song)  by Jamaican-American poet Claude McKay on winter, following up from our last example. The last time McKay embraced winter as reflecting his own moods, but in this one emmigrant McKay imagines a warm island respite. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinaitons, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org  

Continuing in our celebration of the poetry of Claude McKay, here's a short, bittersweet song made from his poem "To Winter."  As a Jamaican emmigrant who lived much of his American time in the northern U.S., McKay here outlines a complex set of feelings about this time of the year. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinaitons, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org  

Continuing in our series this Black History Month focusing on the work of Jamaican-American poet Claude McKay. Here's a sonnet of his published The Liberator magazine in 1921, now performed with a new musical accompaniment. Long-time followers of this Project may remember that I've proposed something I call "The Sandburg Test:"  does any substantial collection of the a poet's work include at least one poem dealing with the world of work? McKay tests positive with poems like this one. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinaitons, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org  

For Valentine's Day and Black History Month, here's Claude McKay's poem of desire "Flower of Love" from his 1922 collection Harlem Shadows after I turned it into an exuberant song.  The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinaitons, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org  

The year for Black History Month I've doing series of song-settings of the poetry of Claude McKay, and today's piece has McKay expressing the hope that his poetry might survive the particulars of his life.  The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinaitons, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org  

Starting off our Black History Month series this year featuring musical presentations of poems by Jamaican-American writer Claude McKay with this one about the immigrant experience, "The City's Love." The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinaitons, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org  

Here's a short poem by Robert Frost that I made into a song and sang this month. Like the bird song Frost hears in his poem, it's in a minor key. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinaitons, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org  

It's been more than a week since I could begin to think of putting out more work on this Project. As I continue, this note is going to read like propaganda, but I'm not much for that, and as best as I can this is an attempt at a objective summary. Our home state of Minnesota is currently subject to a intentionally vindictive incursion by the secretive armed forces of our mad and illtempered ruler, who says this is retribution. To a significent degree, no one knows who is being taken out of their homes, cars, schools, workplaces, or their footsteps. The armed forces generally don't say, but the point is to make a great many feel they could be next, particularly if they object to this, since that's being a "violent agitator." These so called agitators are often standing on sidewalks and streetcorners in their own neighborhoods, on their own blocks, even on their own doorsteps, or they are at their own shopping sites, schools, or workplaces, armed with but cell phone cameras and whistles to call others similarly "armed" to protect them (somewhat) from the masked squads. Some step forward to try to get the names of those who are being detained (the secretive authorities do not release those names) and getting near enough to hear that risks their own detention. Their cameras minimize, but do not eliminate the vindictive street beat-downs and such that would otherwise occur. These encounters are not prayer circles. Many observing this are angry and disgusted and they are shouting out shames and curses.  Today song is going to seem topical. It's not. It was written and performed in 2014 by the LYL Band, and the song's refrain is a statement made by 19th century American Abolitionist Wendell Phillips. Phillips was asked why he aways had to be so fiery in denouncing the enslavers and slave catchers of his time. Phillips response was much-loved by a former U S Senator from Minnesota, Paul Wellstone. Phillips replied: "Yes, I'm on fire, because I have mountains of ice to melt!" So, not a topical song. For historical interest only. The Parlando Project takes various words (usually literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org  

This hiking poem by Vachel Lindsay seems appropriate for January as many look back and foreward at the beginning of the year, and in the Parlando manner I've made it into a song. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinaitons, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org  

This is a song I made for the new year from a poem written on another New Year's Day, in 1927, by my great-great-grandmother for her 61st wedding anniversary to her husband David Hudson. The couple met during the American Civil War, and the song is that story. I plan to write more about those poeple, and the poem now song. soon at the Parlando Project blog. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinaitons, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org  

Here's a fresh English translation of Paul Éluard's poem "La Vie" performed with original music. Éluard was one of the prime Surrealists and this poem casts its heroine as living dreams seriously, or life as if it's a dream.  The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinaitons, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org  

I've recently made this 16th century poem into a song, but then I hesitated to present it this week – because Robert Southwell's "The Burning Babe" seems both inappropriate and appropriate for Christmas.  Inappropriate because it's an intentionally harrowing, visionary poem. If what it describes was made into a film, its horror might ask it to be kept from children who are, after all,  a central part of modern Christmas. And for whatever audience, at whatever level of understanding of Christian dogma that it expounds, it's a stretch to call "The Burning Babe" celebratory – and that's what we expect from Christmas.  This makes the case for appropriateness a difficult one – and, at least in the United States, it's not a common part of Christmas services. The poem's metaphysical religious point would be appropriate for Good Friday or Easter service, but the poem is set explicitly at Christmas. Perhaps, on a Christmas when many in our country (and elsewhere) are suffering during a celebratory time, the lines within "The Burning Babe" that speak of justice and mercy, or the possibly of defiled souls being refined and recast – even though these things happen post-anguish – may speak to some. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinaitons, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org  

Here a new-made song from the poetry of Emily Dickinson. The music is jaunty, and I think that fits the language of the poem as I read it, but best as I can determine this is a poem that fits into the genre my wife calls "Cozy Gothic." Gothic? What? There's sunsets, mornings, cottages in this little 8-line poem made into a tidy 2 minute song. Don't you mean Cottage-core?  Nope.  Listen to this poem, now song, again. I think the cottages are graves.  I'll write more about this at our blog and archives later this week. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinaitons, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org  

I've long wanted to do a piece using the words of early 20th centery American poet Michael Strange, if only because her life story is so interesting. But there was one problem: her poetry wasn't very good, or at least it wasn't "good" in the ways I appreciate poetry. This week I came up with a compromize between this poet and my own sense of poetry: I revised and adatpted one of her poems by taking as my guide a principle I use when translating poetry written in other languages, to seek to convey the images the poet was portraying in their own language into vivid contemporary English. I'll explain more about how I adapted the poem and write some about Strange's extraordinary life in a post on the Parlando Project blog later tonight. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinaitons, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org  

The Parlando Project is predominently about its encounter with other people's words, but I do occassionally use my own, Today's piece is a setting of a sonnet (this poetic form's name means "Little Song") for acoustic guitar and piano.  If the words are mine, my encounter with them is not unlike what we usually do here.  How so? I've been doing a big cleanup of old boxes and shelves this autumn and I came over a notebook of mine with the first 9 lines of this piece in it. I can't date the notebook for sure, but I'm guessing 1990s. It seemed like it was a fragement of an unfished poem, and so while resting near bedtime after a day of dust and toting off stuff for disposal or donation I added the final 5 lines to fufull the sonnet, based on a incident I observed while biking this month.  Later in the week I did a couple of revision sessions and produced the text you'll hear performed. So, if the text today is my poem (not another's), the bulk of it was an encounter with someone's work I haven't seen for a few decades. I'll write more about this at the blog later this week. The Parlando Project combines various words (usually other people's literary poetry)  with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about how we came to make the piece at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

19th Century American "Fireside Poet" John Greenleaf Whittier wrote a Thanksgiving ode to pumpkin pie. I took the conclusion of his poem and made this little song out of it. The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these compositions, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounter with the words at our blog and archives, located at frankhudson.org

This is a loud electric Rock band performance of a piece memorializing the "Flame Wars" of the early days of the Internet when it was largely made up of Usenet groups, interest group forums, and email lists. The Parlando Project combines various words (usually literary poetry, though not this time) and original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounter with the words and process of setting them to music at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org  

Poet Langston Hughes  was an early and fervent exponent of combining the music of Jazz and the lyrical expression of Blues with literary poetry.  Here he draws us a scene with various characters in it, each of them relating to the experience of live Jazz in differing ways.  I felt compelled to perform Hughes' poem with music that is related to the Jazz that is silently sounding in the imagined background of his page poem, and this is the result.  The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read our accounts of of our encounter with the poets and their words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

Edward Thomas' poem about the lost wildness of love made into a little song. The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounter with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

Here's a piece for Armistice Day - Veteran's Day: a song made from a poem written by Irish poet Padraic Colum. The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

A poem written by a teenager who grew up to be me. In my youth I was writing here about the images of Mid-Century America and the costs in hardly grown children. I just found my handwritten manuscript of this almost 60-old-poem while cleaning out old things and thought I'd present it here in this month of Armistice Day. The Parlando Project combines various words (usually other people's literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinations, and you can year any of them and read about our encounter with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

This is a contemporary poem written this autumn by American poet Henry Gould. The musicality and lush imagery of this short poem so captured me when I read it on Halloween night that rushed to do a song setting the next morning. Gould has been generous enough to allow me to share it with the Parlando Project listeners. The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinations over the years and you can hear any of them and read about our encounter with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

Here's delightfully wicked little poem written by Vachel Lindsay now made into a short song for Halloween. The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them or read more about our encounter with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

To make this I joined a short plaintive piece of new music with some lines excerpted from Sylvia Plath's poem. The full poem is longer and deals in greater detail with the state of awakening from sleep. To fit the music and as part of our series for Halloween and the Days of the Dead, I selected lines from Plath's poem that I heard as speaking of death and remembrance. The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in a variety of styles. We've done over 850 of these pieces and you can hear any of them and read about our encounter with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

Here's a poem turned into a little song for the more light-hearted side of Halloween. English Romantic-era poet Leigh Hunt tells us about fairies' mischief in the apple orchard. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read more about our encounters with the words at our archives and blog located at frankhudson.org

This is a poem about Autumn by Minnesota poet Phillip Dacey, who wrote many poems about marriage and family that gracefully combine clear surfaces and images with more complex undercurrents.  The Parlando Project has done over 850 of these sorts of combinations, talking mostly literary poetry and performing it with original music in differing styles.  You can hear any of them by visiting our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

I translated Paul Eluard's French poem about natural law into English for this new song.   The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them or read about our encounter with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

In our last piece I wrote about finding some old writing by my late wife who died decades ago. I was charmed by this poem, which was likely written while she was in college in the mid-1970s and studying writing with Howard Mohr and Phil Dacey.  I performed this a spoken word piece to my own music, and yes, yes it was rewarding to inhabit words she wrote after all these years. The Parlando Project takes words (usually literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinations. Year can hear any of them, and read more about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

Here's a short poem I wrote about an old man going through storage boxes and finding things his late wife had packed away in the 1980s.  The Parlando Project combines various words (usually literary poetry) with original music in differing styles.  We've done over 850 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

Humorist and poet Dorothy Parker presented this sly account that I suspect many other creatives will recognize. Well, I got around to setting it to music. The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

The Indian Pipe or Ghost Flower serves as the initial image in this strange late Emily Dickinson poem, In this musical performance using acoustic guitar, tanpura, and tabla drums I try to carry forward the elusive feeling of this work. The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinations, and you can hear all of them and read accounts of our encounters about doing this at our blog and archivers located at frankhudson.org

Each year, on the anniversary of Jimi Hendrix's death, I play guitar to remember him. In the last decade this has led to a public piece each September, and this is this year's. The words for today's piece are taken from mermaid and siren poems written by Tennyson, Beckett, De la Mare, Symonds, Eliot, and Yeats. The music and guitar playing is mine.  The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 850 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounter with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

This is one of D. H. Lawrence's most esteemed poems, yet I found it exists in two versions, and the one I perform today is the lesser-known of the pair. This version differs from the other by a more raw and disturbing utilization of the Persephone myth where the sexual violence in that story is less smoothed over.  If you feel you might need a content warning for that, please consider this note one.  The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. This is the 850th officially-released example, but you can hear any of the others and read about our encounter with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org  

English poet Anna Wickham wrote "To be sung" under the title of this, so I wrote music for it and did so. My appreciation for the poem about the transience of beautiful things deepened as I worked with it for performance. The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done almost 850 of these pieces, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounter with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

No fair-minded person would say the thoughts in this piece's lyrics justify its title, but then that's part of the point it makes.*   Edmund Vance Cooke wrote this in 1917, and after all these years I thought it might be appropriate to make a song out of it for today. The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. This one has wailing electric guitars, but even I can't tell you what the next one will sound like. We've done almost 850 of these combinations, and you can any of them and read about our encounter with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org *Cooke says in his lyric after all "you can't convict conviction."

I sometimes like to take Emily Dickinson's 19th century poetry and recast it inside music that takes on the 1960s psychedelic approach. If severed from the drug associations, this style opens up paths to use sounds in unconventional ways which I think mirrors Dickinson's startlingly novel use of language and observation. This poem is a short tale of a productive spider and its mundane domestic fate, a metaphor perhaps for our artistic potential and responses. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in different styles. We've done nearly 850 such combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

Another Summer departure from our usual fare. In this satire I appear as guest on a podcast about Folk and Americana music to discuss some new protest songs decrying the current American administration's tampering with famous Universities.  There's a special reveal in last minute of this piece. What is our usual thing? The Parlando Project normally combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations, and we'll do more soon. I expect them to be better and worse than the songs featured in today's piece. You can find all our pieces and some writing about the experience of making them at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

I made this song using an extraordinarily musical sonnet by Elinor Wylie. I think her sonnet, and now this song, speaks about the desire to escape fate by fleeing to an Edenic place — but wait, deathly undercurrents are aleady there. The Parlando Project combines various words, mostly literary poetry, with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounter with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

As I approach the 24th anniversary of my late wife's death, I decided to perform this Child Ballad about the closeness and separation of lovers.  The Parlando Project generally combines other people's literary poetry with original music, but this time the piece's music as well as the words are by that prolific and mysterious author and composer Anonymous. We've done over 800 combinations over the years of the Project, and you can hear any of them by visiting our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

As part of this month's atypical series recounting long past live performances from my youth, this is an original song from a lo-fi tape of the LYL Band performing at the University of Minnesota's Wiley Hall in 1981. "China Mouth" is a Surrealistic discontented Summer song, somewhat of a contrast to the LYL Band's usual early Eighties repertoire that focused on satire and comment on current events and social issues.   The Parlando Project combines various words (usually others' literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them or read more about the 1981 concert that this song was performed at by going to our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

From a lo-fi tape of the LYL Band's 1981 concert at the University of Minnesota, the LYL Band's live performance of Dave Moore's song adaptation of Kevin FitzPatrick's poem about who faces the guns for minimum wage.  The Parlando Project combines various words (usually literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about or encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

A topical song the LYL Band sang in 1980 about privilege and the attempted assassination of President Reagan. This is part of an atypical series I'm running this summer about some performances I've been a part of over the years. What the Parlando Project normally does is combine various other people's words (usually literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of those combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounter with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

My first live performance, a public spoken word reading from Leonard Cohen's novel Beautiful Losers I did back in The Sixties. I had just turned 19 years old. No music this time, but usually the Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. You can hear any of the more than 800 of such combinations we've done at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

This Emily Dickinson poem about our fixation on losses seems to me informed by early 19th c. popular ballads, so I sang it as one. The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our experience of working with the poems at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

A sonnet from a series I've been writing about Alzheimer's disease, recorded as the LYL Band has traditionally done this kind of spoken word performance: live in the studio with the band's two poets improvising on their instruments as the poem is performed.  This kicks off your summer series where the Parlando Project will be doing things somewhat differently than we do the rest of the year. What kind of things? I'm not entirely sure yet. Our "usual thing" varies anyway, but it's generally performances of various words (mostly other people's literary poetry) combined with original music in differing styles. 

I've turned this late William Butler Yeats poem about worldly and spiritual battles into a song, because, at least to this one reader, this poem from another era of ravenous authoritarianism seems to speak to today's world and heart.  The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

Here's William Blake's other poem about children, poverty, and Ascension Day performed as a song.  The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations, and you can hear them all and read about our encounter with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

We may think of English poet Willam Blake as the writer of majestic mystical visions, but here he is simply observing the civic use of children of poverty on a religious holiday in this first of a pair of poems with this title. I've turned this poem from his Songs of Innocence  into what it says on the tin: a song.  The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done of 800 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read our accounts of our encounters with the words at our blog and archives, located at frankhudson.org

This is Edna St. Vincent Millay's bald statement of mortality and grief performed with music. Her title says it's without music, because she wished to express that beauty does not mitigate loss, and perhaps my far-from-bel canto voice here follows her intent. The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at the Project's blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

Here's a knotty poem about virtue, life, and star-dust by Langston Hughes that I've turned into a song.  The Parlando Project takes words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations and you can hear any of them at our blog and archives at frankhudson.org

The great Afro-American poet Langston Hughes was a pioneer in Jazz Poetry, so it is appropriate that managed to finish this piece for International Jazz Day and the last day of National Poetry Month:  a performance of a short poem of his about Jazz, "Cabaret." The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org