Jazz and PoetryJazz and Poetry

Cross-FertilizationCross-Fertilization

Langston HughesLangston Hughes

Born in Kansas, 1902 Similar time frame to Ellington, Louis Armstrong High School in Cleveland Studied Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman

Influenced by Sandburg’s Jazz Fantasies, (1919) Fused poetry and the music of black “Americans as the prime

source and expression of their cultural truths” (Rampersand, Rossel, Collected Langston Hughes)

First collection of poetry: The Weary Blues Thought poetry is a source of social expression and

pragmatism

Born in Kansas, 1902 Similar time frame to Ellington, Louis Armstrong High School in Cleveland Studied Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman

Influenced by Sandburg’s Jazz Fantasies, (1919) Fused poetry and the music of black “Americans as the prime

source and expression of their cultural truths” (Rampersand, Rossel, Collected Langston Hughes)

First collection of poetry: The Weary Blues Thought poetry is a source of social expression and

pragmatism

Jazz Fantasia(Carl Sandburg -1919)

Jazz Fantasia(Carl Sandburg -1919)

Drum on your drums, batter on your banjoes,sob on the long cool winding saxophones.Go to it, O jazzmen.

Sling your knuckles on the bottoms of the happytin pans, let your trombones ooze, and go husha-husha-hush with the slippery sand-paper.

Moan like an autumn wind high in the lonesome treetops,moan soft like you wanted somebody terrible, cry like aracing car slipping away from a motorcycle cop, bang-bang!you jazzmen, bang altogether drums, traps, banjoes, horns,tin cans -- make two people fight on the top of a stairwayand scratch each other's eyes in a clinch tumbling downthe stairs.

Can the rough stuff . . . now a Mississippi steamboat pushesup the night river with a hoo-hoo-hoo-oo . . . and the greenlanterns calling to the high soft stars . . . a red moon rideson the humps of the low river hills . . . go to it, O jazzmen

Drum on your drums, batter on your banjoes,sob on the long cool winding saxophones.Go to it, O jazzmen.

Sling your knuckles on the bottoms of the happytin pans, let your trombones ooze, and go husha-husha-hush with the slippery sand-paper.

Moan like an autumn wind high in the lonesome treetops,moan soft like you wanted somebody terrible, cry like aracing car slipping away from a motorcycle cop, bang-bang!you jazzmen, bang altogether drums, traps, banjoes, horns,tin cans -- make two people fight on the top of a stairwayand scratch each other's eyes in a clinch tumbling downthe stairs.

Can the rough stuff . . . now a Mississippi steamboat pushesup the night river with a hoo-hoo-hoo-oo . . . and the greenlanterns calling to the high soft stars . . . a red moon rideson the humps of the low river hills . . . go to it, O jazzmen

My People (Hughes)My People (Hughes)

The night is beautiful,So the faces of my people.

The stars are beautiful,So the eyes of my people.

Beautiful, also, is the sun.Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.

The White Ones (Hughes)The White Ones (Hughes)

I do not hate you,For your faces are beautiful, too.I do not hate you,Your faces are whirling lights of loveliness and splendor too.Yet, why do you torture me,O, white strong ones,Why do you torture me?

Jazzonia (Hughes)Jazzonia (Hughes)Oh, silver tree!Oh, shining rivers of the soul!

In a Harlem cabaretSix long-headed jazzers play.A dancing girl whose eyes are boldLifts high a dress of silken gold.

Oh singing tree!Oh, shining rivers of the soul!

Were Eve’s eyesIn the first gardenJust a bit too bold??Was Cleopatra gorgeousIn a Gown of gold?

Oh, Shining tree!Oh, silver rivers of the soul!

In a whirling cabaretSix long-headed jazzers play.

Jam Session (Hughes)Jam Session (Hughes)

Letting midnightout on bail

pop-a-dahaving beendetained in jail

oop-pop-a-dafor sprinkling salton a dreamer’s tail

pop-a-da

Harlem [2] (Hughes)Harlem [2] (Hughes)

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry uplike a raisin in the sun?Or fester like a sore - And then run?Does it stink like rotten meat?Or crust and sugar over -like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sagslike a heavy load

Or does it explode?

Sonny Greer (Howard Hart)Sonny Greer (Howard Hart)I remember nights you carriedthe whole Duke Ellington orchestraon your back

across Jim Crow swampsI was amazed

a kid unable to believeThat your right hand could handle

all those drums those cymbalsWhile your left picked flowers out of the horns

of Ben Webster Rabbit Harry CarneyAnd each time Duke played

you put a ring on each fingerof his handand a bell on his toe.

Blues for John Cotrane, Deadat 41 (William Matthews)

Blues for John Cotrane, Deadat 41 (William Matthews)

Although my house floats on a lawnas plush as a starlet’s bodyand my sons sleep easily,I think of death’s salmon breathleaping back up the saxophonewith its wet kiss.

Hearing him dead,I feel it in my feetas if the house were rockedby waves from a soundless speedboatplaning by, full throttle.