Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet

Parlando featuring Frank Hudson and Dave Moore, poets and musicians
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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. 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, Frank Zappa, Carl Sandburg, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart), William Blake, Alan Moore, Beat Poets (Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, and others), 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).

  1. 5d ago

    Sara Teasdale's "A Prayer"

    Here are Sara Teasdale's words, an American poet who wrote this prayer for her life and its relationship to the world. Her contemporary Robert Frost said that he had "A lover's quarrel with the world," and Teasdale expresses the same thought here. I set Teasdale's poem to music and sang it with my rough-hewn voice this week. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 900 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

    2 min

  2. Jun 29

    Gitanjali 58

    This Project presents a variety of poets work that I combine with original music, but Rabindranath Tagore wasn't merely a poet, he was more at a remarkable man, a significant spiritual, cultural, and political figure in his country – but I likely wouldn't have known of him if it wasn't for Bob Dylan winning a Nobel Prize for literature. That award provoked a measure of outrage: "It's for literature, and he's just a songwriter." Someone pointed out then that when Tagore was awarded that same prize in 1913 he was largely known outside of South Asia for his book Gitanjali which he himself had recently translated into English. Gitanjali means "song offering" and that book he translated contained English language versions of some of his Bengali song lyrics. Tagore was no dabbler in songwriting: in his lifetime he wrote 2.232 songs, and in his preface to the English language Gitanjali, William Butler Yeats noted that Tagore's audience was remarkable because his countrymen widely knew and sang his songs. I lightly revised Tagore's words for this performance with music.  Later this week I'll write about the modifications and about the music at the Parlando Project blog. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 900 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

    3 min

  3. Jun 16

    Frances Cornford's Dirge

    English poet Frances Cornford published this concise poem of jaunty dread when she was just 24 years old. I don't know if this is a "persona poem" or some kind of poetic exercise on her part. I can't assign any biographic info toward the losses quickly cataloged in it. The words' briefness and quick poetic movement pushed me toward the music I composed and performed for her poem. My performance is aimed at giving an impression of distress, yes, but also perseverance, for while it sings of the devil ransacking the singer, the singer is still singing. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 900 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

    2 min

  4. Jun 11

    Elinor Wylie's Escape

    Here's another early 20th century poet singing a faery song. Instead of Yeats, this time it's the American poet Elinor Wylie with a poem called "Escape."  When Wylie writes here of "a little house I'll build" in some magical natural setting, I can't help but think of  the Irish poet's "The Lake Isle of Innisfree." I'm sending this song version of Wylie's poem out today to anyone who needs to imagine for a few minutes an escape from the problems of life. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 900 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

    3 min

  5. Jun 8

    Claude McKay's "On the Road"

    Long-time followers of this Project will know I've proposed an illuminating test for substantial collections of poetry that I call "The Sandburg Test.*" This test is to ask "Within any substantial collection, does at least one poem deal with the world of ordinary work?" Early 20th century Claude McKay's poetry is wide-ranging, and here's one that lets one answer "Yes, certainly" to the Sandburg Test's question. Like much of McKay's poetry the word-music is beautiful, even when in "On the Road"  he's speaking of the grinding weariness of working in the dining car of that echt 20th century Modernist object, the train. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 900 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org   *Like the Bechtel Test my test is emulating, it doesn't mean that poetry collections that produce a no answer and have worth or must be cast out, it's only a tool to point out an important and substantial part of life that is being ignored.

    2 min

  6. May 27

    A Faery Song (We who are old)

    Here's William Butler Yeats with an early poem of his about age, and heritage; and youth, and wishes, as presented with some music I wrote and my rough-hewn voice. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 900 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

    3 min

  7. May 22

    To A Steamroller

    I had worked on setting this 1920 poem by Marianne Moore to music for a few weeks, but it wasn't until a couple of days ago that I had a shock of recognition: the words of this poem could be read as a comment on our own era's confrontation with Artificial Intelligence ("AI"). Listen and see what you think.  The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 900 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

    2 min

  8. May 15

    The Silver Penny

    Here's a strange and deadly little poem by Walter de la Mare that I recently set to music and performed. De la Mare was writing a literary ballad, but in this one he compresses the story's length considerably compared the double-digit stanza numbers of many a broadside or folk ballad telling a similar story. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 900 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

    3 min
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About

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. 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, Frank Zappa, Carl Sandburg, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart), William Blake, Alan Moore, Beat Poets (Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, and others), 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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