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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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Now displaying: June, 2025
Jun 24, 2025

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. 

Jun 13, 2025

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

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