Langston Hughes (in song)

SOLEDAD
A Cuban Portrait

The shadows  
Of too many nights of love  
Have fallen beneath your eyes.  
Your eyes, 
So full of pain and passion, 
So full of lies.  
So full of pain and passion,  
Soledad,  
So deeply scarred,  
So still with silent cries.

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My melody to Hughes' words
LHp59 stujul28 5-8cl
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soledad
Soledad means solitude in Spanish, also loneliness and desolation; it is the name of persons and places and of many songs. 

It is also a name for the ‘Chalon people or Soledad, a Native American people and language of Salinas Valley, California’. Tato Laviera says ‘there is no English translation’.


Soledad-A Cuban Portrait - Langston Hughes (in song)

God having a hemorrhage,
 Blood coughed across the sky, 
Staining the dark sea red,  
That is sunset in the Caribbean.

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My melody to Hughes’ words 
LH Bpk 15-23ed2
Painting by Julian Bakkenpaint


Caribbean Sunset - Langston Hughes (in song)

She stands  In the quiet darkness, 
This troubled woman, 
Bowed by 
Weariness and pain, 
 Like an Autumn flower
 In the frozen rain. 
 Like a  Wind-blown autumn flower 
That never lifts its head  
Again. 
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My melody to Hughes’ words
stumay31 x10

Troubled Woman - Langston Hughes (in song)

She
Who searched for lovers
In the night
Has gone the quiet way
Into the still,
Dark land of death
Beyond the rim of day.

Now like a little lonely waif
She walks
An endless street
And gives her kiss to 
nothingness.
Would God his lips were sweet!

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My melody to Hughes’ words
LH p11 x14

To A Little Lover-Lass, Dead - Langston Hughes (in song)

Hey! Hey!
That’s what the
Blues singers say.
Singing minor melodies
They laugh,
Hey! Hey!

My man’s done left me,
Chile, he’s gone away.
My good man’s left me,
Babe, he’s gone away.
Now the cryin’ blues
Haunts me night and day.

Hey! . . . Hey!

Weary,
Weary,
Trouble, pain.
Sun’s gonna shine
Somewhere
Again.

I got a railroad ticket,
Pack my trunk and ride.

Sing ’em, sister!

Got a railroad ticket,
Pack my trunk and ride.
And when I get on the train
I’ll cast my blues aside.

Laughing,
Hey! . . . Hey!
Laugh a loud,
Hey! Hey!

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My melody to Hughes’ words

Blues Fantasy - Langston Hughes (in song)

I loved my friend. 
He went away from me. 
There’s nothing more to say. 
The poem ends, 
Soft as it began,—
I loved my friend. 

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https://frankhudson.org/2022/02/23/langston-hughes-poem/

….It may be me and my current situation, but when I read “Poem”  I immediately thought it was a memorial poem, a five-line-with-one-refrained-line statement of the essence of loss intended to put itself up against something like the book-length “In Memoriam A.H.H.”  by Alfred Tennyson. I still find nothing in the text that forbids that reading.

But death isn’t the only loss in life. Some, particularly those looking for obscured clues to Langston Hughes’ erotic orientation see this a coded statement of a romantic or erotic breakup with a “He.” Like Shakespeare’s sonnet sequence and Tennyson’s long poem, the poem has a dedication to a set of initials: “F. S.” in “Poem’s”  case. Some articles one can find in a web search identify this dedicatee as Ferdinand Smith, who was in the merchant marine — as was young Hughes before he published The Weary Blues.  Hughes did know Smith, but I haven’t seen a full explanation of how this putative identification was made. Oddly, if this poem of complete separation was written about Smith, Hughes and Smith kept in touch until Smith’s death in 1961. In Real Life there was no utter break between the two — but that’s biographical information, nothing in the text forbids the abandoned love reading either….

And then too the poet Hughes of The Weary Blues  and elsewhere is very broad in his use of the pronoun I. Not only does Hughes not identify F. S. and what exactly was the nature of the love relationship, Hughes is fully capable of using “I” as a collective or representational singular. Think of Hughes most famous early poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”  — its litany of I’s is not a Quantum Leap  confession that this certain 20th century poet worked on the Pyramids or rafted the Mississippi with Abe Lincoln.

But “Poem” does feel like a personal expression, even if Hughes may frustrate us if we prefer poems as memoir filled with explicit self-expression. Yet maybe this is of little importance to the essence the poem wants to express. Grief from loss of a lover who leaves and lives, or loss of a friend who has died — does the heart assay any difference?

Musically today I demonstrated fidelity of a different kind, playing a cheap 40-year-old 12-string guitar that I bought shortly after coming to Minnesota, and a bass that once belonged to Dean Seal, who played in the LYL Band in the early 80s. I have newer better* instruments, but it seemed like a good way to reset and get back to making some new Parlando Project musical pieces after February presented other matters that needed to be done.

You can hear my performance of Langston Hughes’ “Poem”  with the player gadget below — or if you don’t see that, with this highlighted link.

Poem To FS - Langston Hughes (in song)

For the best experience, 
-  Click on the song's picture for words and notes.
-  in Album/Playlist/Spotlight, first click on the big picture to the left, then on the new page click the track title. Really, it's worth the effort :) 

With Blake you will see his painting too. Each picture is in dialogue with the words (not just illustrating them).

Bards have combined music & poetry from earliest times. Many poets continue the connection, not least William Blake. But often their melodies are lost or neglected.

Poem To FS - Langston Hughes (in song)

Ian