Blog to Self

Monday, March 16, 2009

Lovely Lieder, Leontyne

There was a fascinating piece on the radio about a new musical production based on Langston Hughes poem/book Ask Your Mama starring Jessye Norman. I wrote about Langston Hughes for a high school report once and in the process discovered a beautiful copy of this book in the Worcester Public Library.

I thought the radio piece was toned down a bit. The work has a lot of anger in it. A section called "Cultural Exchange" was reused as part of "The Panther and the Lash." The most memorable bits of the poem for me came out of the following, from that section:

IN THE
IN THE QUARTER
IN THE QUARTER OF THE NEGROES
WHERE THE DOORS ARE DOORS OF PAPER
DUST OF DINGY ATOMS
BLOWS A SCRATCHY SOUND.
AMORPHOUS JACK-O'-LANTERNS CAPER
AND THE WIND WON'T WAIT FOR MIDNIGHT
FOR FUN TO BLOW DOORS DOWN.

...

IN THE POST BEHIND THE
PAPER DOOS WHAT'S COOKING?
WHAT'S SMELLING, LEONTYNE?
LIEDER, LOVELY LIEDER
AND A LEAF OF COLLARD GREEN
LOVELY LIEDER, LEONTYNE.

...

YOU KNOW, RIGHT AT CHRISTMAS
THEY ASKED ME IF MY BLACKNESS,
WOULD IT RUB OFF?

I SAID, ASK YOUR MAMA.

The website for the event at Carnegie Hall tonight is pretty impressive with an elaborate flash introduction, and portrays more of the edginess of the original than the radio piece, in my (very humble) opinion.

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