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Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet

Poetry has been defined as “words that want to break into song.” Musicians who make music seek to “say something”. Parlando will put spoken words (often, but not always, poetry) and music (different kinds, limited only by the abilities of the performing participants) together. The resulting performances will be short, 2 to 10 minutes in length. The podcast will present them un-adorned. How much variety can we find in this combination? Listen to a few episodes and see. Hear the sound and sense convey other people's stories here at Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet At least at first, the two readers will be a pair of Minnesota poets and musicians: Frank Hudson and Dave Moore who have performed as The LYL Band since the late 70s. Influences include: Patti Smith, Jack Kerouac (and many other “beat poets”), Frank Zappa, Carl Sandburg, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart), William Blake, Alan Moore, The Fugs (Ed Sanders, Tuli Kupferberg), Leo Kottke, Ken Nordine (Word Jazz), Bob Dylan, Steve Reich, and most of the Velvet Underground (Lou Reed, John Cale, Nico).
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Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet
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Archives
Now displaying: Page 6
May 25, 2022

Avant gardener Dickinson wants us to appreciate the effort it takes to flower, and so I perform her poem today with acoustic guitar. For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music, visit frankhudson.org

May 19, 2022

I adapted this poem by Tang Dynasty Chinese poet Du Fu and performed it with my original music. For more about this and more than 600 other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music, visit frankhudson.org

May 17, 2022

English poet William Blake's mystical tiger is a highlight of his book Songs of Experience.  Here's a solo acoustic guitar and vocal performance using my own musical setting from the last Year of the Tiger (2010) for the current one.

May 9, 2022

I gave this lesser-known Edward Thomas short poem a folk setting so that I, and now you, could hear it. For more about this and other combinations of various words and original music visit frankhudson.org

May 6, 2022

A primitive LYL Band cassette tape recording from the middle 80's celebrates the great baseball player. For more about this and other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music visit frankhudson.org

May 4, 2022

A performance of Walt Whitman's de profundis poem. Published in 1867, Whitman's expression of the questions of despair and the answer he finds still resonate today.

For more about this and other Parlando combinations of various words and original music, visit frankhudson.org

Apr 30, 2022

Carl Sandburg didn't just do Chicago poems. An example: this lovely farmland poem performed with my best approximations of Jazz in the mode of Bill Frisell for today's International Jazz Day. 

This piece concludes our daily re-releases this April of some of my favorite early Parlando Project performances. The Project combines various words (mostly poetry) with original music. We've done over 600 of them, and if you'd like to hear more you can find all of them in our archives at frankhudson.org

Apr 29, 2022

Charlotte Mew's poetry has some unusual qualities, like in this poem which starts out like she's a more reserved Frank O'Hara and then ends more like Rilke. It's also the only Arbor Day poem you'll hear today that has a dead rat in it.

Mew is not the only one who's unusual--our listeners are too. The Parlando Project has done over 600 combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music. You can find those performances and more at frankhudson.org

Apr 28, 2022

I sometimes see a psychedelic aspect to Dickinson's poetry, and this performance manifests that as her spring poem is re-woven into something that you'd hear on a Sixties vinyl LP. Surely something different for Poem in your Pocket Day today.

For more about this, or more Parlando, visit frankhudson.org. There are over 600 other examples of how we combine words (mostly poetry) with original music we compose and perform in our archives there.

 

Apr 27, 2022

Warning: this 1919 poem by too-little-known Chicago Afro-American poet is disturbing. "Tired" was controversial from the start for it's bleak view, but there's internal evidence that Johnson was intending to present a "persona poem" portraying only one outlook on America's situation.

Apr 26, 2022

From his landmark 1916 Chicago Poems, here's Sandburg writing about summer nights and the immigrant experience then. I perform it in a way that I hope comes unstuck and drifts in time. 

The Parlando Project has done over 600 of these things: combinations of various words and original music. You can find this, and others like and unlike it, in our archives at frankhudson.org

 

Apr 25, 2022

Here's a performance of Dickinson's gothic aubade re-released as part of our National Poetry Moth celebration this April. 

The Parlando Project has been combining words (mostly poetry) with original music (as varied as we can make it) for six years now. and has over 600 of the results available in our archives at our blog https://frankhudson.org

 

Apr 24, 2022

In 1911 Hilda Doolittle visited her old school flame Ezra Pound in London and came out “HD, imagiste.”  Branding!

H.D. never liked her last name for literary reasons anyway. And her short mysterious early poems were pioneering works of what became known as Imagism. Here's my performance and original music setting of one of her revolutionary early works as part of our celebration of National Poetry Month.

More about this, and over 600 other pieces in various styles are available in our blog archives at frankhudson.org

Apr 23, 2022

Here's a performance of an overlooked masterpiece of early Imagist poetry written by Irish poet Joseph Campbell (Seosamh MacCathmhaoil) in 1909. In just a few well-written words he portrays a situation from rural Irish life.

For more about this and other combinations of various words with original music, visit frankhudson.org

Apr 22, 2022

Celebrating Shakespeare's birthday and National Poetry Month with this performance with original music.

The Parlando Project has lot like (and unlike this) in our archives, more than 600 pieces combining words (mostly poetry) with original music. To find those, or read more about this and the other pieces go to frankhudson.org

Apr 21, 2022

Black Ohioan Raymond G. Dandridge was a little-known link between Paul Dunbar and Langston Hughes, and this short poem about an alienated dancer who has taken on an exotic persona might be seen as a "danced near-nude" pair with Dunbar's "We Wear the Mask." 

We have over 600 other performances of various words (mostly poetry) combined with original music in our archives at frankhudosn.org

Apr 20, 2022

Our performance of Jean Toomer's incandescent Afro-American love poem is re-released today as part of our celebration of National Poetry Month.

Wand more Parlando? Our archives have over 600 other combinations of various words with original music available at our blog: frankhudson.org

Apr 19, 2022

e. e. cummings rapturous poem is performed with original acoustic music in this re-released version as part of celebration of National Poetry Month. 

Apr 19, 2022

My own extended English translation of Du Fu's poem performed by The LYL Band. Du Fu (also spelled Tu Fu) is one the masters of classical Chinese poetry, and this is one my favorites of his works re-released now as part of our celebration of National Poetry Month. More about this or more Parlando? Go to frankhudson.org

Apr 17, 2022

Eleanor Farjeon and Robert Frost both wrote elegies for their mutual friend and poet Edward Thomas killed on Easter Monday during WWI. Which one is the more effective poem? The one I perform today by Farjeon. 

Since it's National Poetry Month you may be interested in more about Thomas and this poem, or in the more than 600 other performances with we have in our archive at frankhudson.org

Apr 16, 2022

British poet Edward Thomas' meditation on war's absences performed with an original setting using acoustic guitar and orchestra instruments. This poem sometimes goes by the title "The Blenheim Oranges"

We're re-releasing performances like this from this Project first couple of years to celebrate National Poetry Month.  If you like this, there are more than 600 other combinations of words (mostly poetry) with original music at frankhudson.org

Apr 15, 2022

You'll sometimes find Edward Thomas' filed under "War Poets," but his best-known poem "Adlestrop" is an unique peace poem written a few days before war broke out in Europe. In it, "nothing" happens -- the sweetest nothing. This re-release of our performance of the poem with a rock band is part of our celebration of National Poetry Month 2022. 

Apr 14, 2022

We continue our celebration of National Poetry Month with the re-release of this beautiful short love poem by William Butler Yeats, performed with our original music.

The Parlando Project has over 600 other examples of this, available in our archives at frankhudson.org

 

Apr 13, 2022

Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem of love and respect lost performed to original music by an acoustic band. For more about this and other combinations of various words (mostly poetry) with original music go to frankhudson.org

Apr 12, 2022

Just suppose that back in the 1920s someone wanted to record a Blues song based on Emily Dickinson's "A Soul selects her own Society," and so they waxed a 78 rpm platter. Well, it might sound a little like this. And if you're unusual enough to listen to that, you might enjoy some of the more than 600 other performances we have in our archives at frankhudson.org

 

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