Peruvian author César Vallejo wrote this Easter pastoral poem and I translated it from his Spanish to create this song. Some may wonder why this is an autumn-set poem speaking of Easter. Peru is south of the equator, Easter comes in the fall.
This should be considered the first Parlando Project song, words by Keith Hill, music written by myself as teenager in The Sixties. As part of National Poetry Month, I've been going over how the Parlando Project came to be in blog posts, where you can find more about that, this song, and the archives of over 650 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music.
A Carl Sandburg courting poem for his life partner Lillian Steichen, full of love, yearning, and admiration. Performed with original music in a way that wouldn't be too foreign to Carl the musician and singer: acoustic guitar and vocal.
For more about this an over 650 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music visit our archives and blog at frankhudson.org
Robert Frost's version of a weird tale he borrowed from William Butler Yeats is performed today with a folk-rock arrangement.
For more this, and more than 650 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music, visit our archives and blog at frankhudson.org
Edward Thomas, the honest and observant nature poet, finds signs of Spring in, well, bird poop. It's things like this that make him a cut above for me. Here's a rock band setting performance of his poem.
For more than 650 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music in several styles, and comments on our experience of the poems, visit our archives and blog at frankhudson.org
Others have set Anna Akhmatova's poetry to music effectively, but I decided to create and perform my own setting for this poem about lost connections.
For more than 650 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music in various styles visit our archives at frankhudson.org
This is Frank O'Hara's love poem of separation -- separation from the beloved, separation of the lovers from the world. In this performance of it I supply a rich and strange musical piece to accompany it.
For more about this and more than 650 other combinations of various words, mostly poetry, with original music that also varies, visit our archives at frankhudson.org
Sara Teasdale's meditation on change and not-change in wartime performed.
For more about this and over 650 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music, visit our archives at frankhudson.org
Here's an outwardly simple yet mysterious poem by Langston Hughes, published among other young Afro-American poets in the 1926 issue of Fire!! For more about this and more than 650 other examples of various words (mostly poetry, combined with original music, see our archives at frankhudson.org
Another Waring Cuney lyric used on the Josh White record of the state of the Black American nation in 1941. I recently performed it with my own music as part of our February observance of US Black History Month.
For more about this and over 650 other combinations of various words with original music check out our archives at frankhudson.org
Waring Cuney was one of the lesser-known young contributors to the 1926 Fire!! magazine. Later he contributed lyrics to an anti-Jim Crow Josh White recording. I used one of them again with my own musical setting today.
For more than 650 other examples of various words (mostly poetry) combined with original music, visit our archives at frankhudson.org
Resuming our encounter with the 1926 Harlem Renaissance publication Fire!! I present my performance of Waring Cuney's poem "The Death Bed." This musical setting uses a sample from the poem's contemporary, Blues/Gospel guitarist Willie Johnson.
Here's another performance of my poem about old love. For more than 650 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music visit our archives at frankhudson.org
A rambunctious country-blues ditty celebrating geezer-age love and desire. If you can't laugh on Valentine's Day, you aren't in love.
For more about this and more than 650 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music try our archives at frankhudson.org
Harlem Renaissance figure Helene Johnson wrote this cold pastoral more than a decade before the more famous song lyric "Strange Fruit." I've set it to music and performed Johnson's poem for today's piece.
This sonnet by Countee Cullen begins our observance of Black History Month this year. Within my folk music setting I tried to sing this poem air of mournful hope.
Emily Dickinson's questioning meditation on living in a body performed in a new musical setting.
For more than 650 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) combined with original music, visit our archives at frankhudson.org
A beguiling song from Yeats' verse play The Land of Heart's Desire performed with acoustic guitar and voice.
For more about this and over 650 other combinations of various words with original music, visit our archives at frankhudson.org
This mythological folk song for Martin Luther King Day weaves a tale of a monumental iron statue of Vulcan (the Greek god Hephaestus) erected in Birmingham Alabama, some elements from King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail," and the infamous terror bombing of a church in that city.
Think of elegies as slow, somber tunes? Here's poet Dave Moore's rollicking but heart-felt elegy for poet-colleague Kevin FitzPatrick to bring down the end of our 2022.
Thomas Hardy's poem of wistful Christmas memories performed in this new song setting. For more about this and more than 650 other combinations of various words with original music, visit our archives at frankhudson.org
Thomas Campion's Winter Solstice song performed. For more this and over 650 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) combined with original music visit our archives at frankhudson.org
For Emily Dickinson's Birthday, I'll sing a poem of hers that seems resonate to me now. That's kind of what the Parlando Project does. You can find over 650 other examples of us combining various words (mostly poetry) with original music in different styles in our archives at frankhudson.org
This Emily Dickinson poem is a hymn to farm work. I've set it to music and performed it.
For more about this and over 650 other examples of various words (mostly poetry) combined with original music, visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org
Jean Toomer's nocturne, one with bees in it, is oddly beautiful. Thinking about it, it seems to be about alienation from the worth of one's labor, but one doesn't have to think all the time while hearing it either.
For more than 650 other combinations of various words, mostly poetry, with original music, visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org