Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet

I remind myself today that I sometimes write lyrics, so here's a piece that features my own words and music. 

What the Parlando Project usually does is combine other people's words (usually literary poetry) with the variety of original music we compose and make. You can hear over 700 examples of that at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

William Carlos Williams' Spring poem reminds us that it's never too late to sing. I had to cancel a more pristine time in a recording space this week but produced this quick & dirty version of this song using Williams' words instead. 

Spring itself, has a way of being quick & dirty -- and I'll remind you of the musicians' and composers' prayer: "May music find a way."

For more than 700 other combinations of various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in differing styles visit our archives and blog at frankhudson.org

Edwin Ford Piper is an early 20th century Midwestern American poet who's largely been forgotten. I've only started to read him this week, but this poem captured me immediately and I had to perform it with music, Parlando style.

The Parlando Project combines various words (usually literary poetry) with original music in different styles. We've done over 700 of these things, and you can find out more about them and hear them in our archives at frankhudson.org

Poet Dave Moore's song about when "Follow your dream" or "Do what you love..." meets up with reality.

Here's the cool thing about this piece: it's not a put-down.  I play on it with The LYL Band, and I think the song applies to me. One of the Parlando Project's mottos is "All Artists Fail." You have to accept that and do what you choose to do anyway.

The Parlando Project combines various words (usually literary poetry) with original music in various styles. We've done over 700 audio pieces over the past 8 years, and you can find out more about them and listen to our archives at frankhudson.org

Black Chicago poet Fenton Johnson published these two free-verse poetic portraits in Others magazine in 1919, gaining him some notice as an Afro-American who was working in the avant-garde forms of Modernism.

I performed his two poems with a rock band accompaniment for today's example of what the Parlando Project does: combining various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in different styles. We've been featuring work of this lesser-known, but pioneering, poet Fenton Johnson this month; and you find out more about him and check out our over 700 other audio pieces at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

Pioneering Black Chicago Poet Fenton Johnson termed this poem a literary spiritual in his 1915 collection Visions of the Dark. I read it as predecessor to later Gospel songwriting, and so set it to music for this spare solo performance with just acoustic guitar and voice.

This is one example of what the Parlando Project does. We explore various words (mostly literary poetry) and combine them with original music for these performances. You can find over 700 examples of this at our archives and blog frankhudson.org

BONUS TRACK

Black Chicago poet Fenton Johnson was using Blues Language as early as his 1913 poetry collection "A Little Dreaming." That could make this poem an early example of a literary page poet using Blues Language. 

Just for fun I decided to create one of our rare Parlando Bonus Tracks. This version has been made to sound like an old, somewhat worn 78 RPM record as a tribute to the early Blues musicians. 

The Parlando Project takes various words, mostly literary poetry, and combines them with original music we compose and perform in different styles. Ther are over 700 other examples at our blog an archives located at frankhudson.org

Even in 1913, Black Chicago poet Fenton Johnson was already using Blues-language in his literary poetry.  In this poem he printed in dialect from his first book-length poetry collection "A Little Dreaming" Johnson may be encoding a message not every listener will understand. 

There will be a discussion of that and more than 700 other combinations of various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in different styles at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

Early 20th Century Afro-American poet Fenton Johnson again shows his range with this Celtic dark fantasy poem that I've turned into a song. 

That "turned into a song" is something the Parlando Project does. We've created over 700 combinations of various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in various styles. You can find them at our blog and archives locate at https://frankhudson.org/

Early 20th Century Black Chicago poet Fenton Johnson's dream poem references Virgil's "The Aeneid." I've turned it into a song as part of my month-long celebration of this lesser-known Midwestern poet who preceded the Harlem Renaissance. 

That's what the Parlando Project does: it takes other peoples words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in various styles. You can find over 700 such combinations at our archives and blog located at frankhudson.org

In 1906, Paul Laurence Dunbar, the first Afro-American poet to receive substantial notice, died, only 33 years old. Only a few years later in 1913, a 24 year old Black poet from Chicago, Fenton Johnson, publishes his first poetry collection which in which he pays tribute to Dunbar as he tries to pick up the standard from the fallen Dunbar.

I've made Johnson's poem into a song, and as this Black History Month continues I plan to perform more of Johnson's work and tell something of his career as part of the Parlando Project where we combine words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in various styles. You can find more than 700 examples of that at our archives and blog located at frankhudson.org

American poet Robert Frost assiduously read the book of nature even when the pages were blank. Here's a beautiful short poem that looks out on a wintery night and sees a blank whiteness. I've made the poem into a song accompanied by acoustic guitar.

The Parlando Project takes words, usually other people's words, usually literary page poetry, and combines them original music in various styles. You can find over 700 examples of this at our archives and blog located at frankhudson.org

At least on the face of it, this short Emily Dickinson poem asks for a lifetime of experience all at once, all its grief and joy. As I understood it while creating this performance with original music, she weighs grief and joy as Taoist components.

My music today for this has a touch of a slowcore approach. but I was also thinking of John Lee Hooker, and mic'ed up my foot-stomps for percussion in the electric guitar and voice recording that mimics that combination on Hooker's earliest Blues sides.

The Parlando Project combines various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in different styles. You can hear over 700 other examples at our blog and archives at frankhudson.org

Goethe's short lyric poem in German wanders into this short folksong arrangement via an English translation by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that I slightly modified for this song performance with my music for 12-string guitar, bass, and piano.

Here's song version of a Paul Lawrence Dunbar's poem. Dunbar is often reckoned the first successful Afro-American poet, and this poem, now song, shows how Dunbar wrote both of the Afro-American experience and universal themes within his poetry.

This is a winter sonnet I wrote portraying my thoughts of the mortal illness of another poet Robert Okaji while I, an old man, am bike riding though some winter crows. For the first Parlando piece of this year, I declaimed this with a rock band behind my reading. 

For more than 700 other examples of various words (usually someone else's', usually literary poetry) combined in various ways with original music in several styles, visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org.

Robert Frost included this rural winter poem in his first collection A Boy's Will.  Concise it may be, and it works by tiny increments, but I think it's as harrowing as Dylan's "Hollis Brown" or Springsteen's Nebraska.  So, I set it to original music and performed it.

That's an example of what the Parlando Project does: we take other people's words, usually literary poetry, and set them to various kinds of original music. You can find over 700 examples of that at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

Sara Teasdale praises life while facing death in her poem I've now performed with music. 

For more than 700 other combinations of various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in various styles, visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org

Here's a musical performance of my setting of Thomas Hardy's deft poem about Christmas miracles. 

For more about this and more than 700 other combinations of various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in various styles visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org

Russian poet Akhmatova's poem portrays a skeptical and experienced view of falling in love. I made a new English translation of this last summer, but its cold winter view of love convinced me to put off arranging a song-version of it until December.

For more than 700 other combinations of various words (mostly literary poetry) with music in various styles, visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org