| HOOFER'S LOG - ARTICLE 3 |
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Folks, I’m telling you,
birthing is hard
and dying is mean –
so get yourself
a little loving
in between
You’ll hear these words from the poem Advice as well as many more by Langston Hughes (1902–67) interwoven with the music, song, and dance of Magnetic Consequences.
How does poetry fit in to a dance show? As explained by DJD Artistic Director and choreographer of Magnetic Consequences, Vicki Adams Willis, jazz is essentially a collaborative effort. “When you listen to jazz music, you are experiencing the result of a group effort,” says Willis in her program notes for Magnetic Consequences. “For decades that essential collaborative spirit has been missing in the world of jazz dance, and one of our main objectives at DJD has always been to reintroduce that spirit to the form.” When it comes to this particular show the spirit of collaboration is alive and well and although Vicki has never had the privilege or pleasure of really “collaborating” with Langston Hughes, the inclusion of spoken word fits the show and celebrates the spirit of collaboration between many – musicians, dancers, a vocalist, and designers, as well as the words of a poet.
But not just any poet. The writer in question is Langston Hughes, known to many as the Shakespeare of Harlem, a leading light of the Harlem Renaissance movement, and one of the most important and influential writers of the twentieth century. Although he was best known as a poet he also wrote novels, history, plays, children’s books, and two memoirs.
His poetic talents were discovered at a young age when he was appointed class poet in grammar school, but according to Hughes his designation had more to do with his race than his talent. “I was a victim of a stereotype. There were only two of us Negro kids in the whole class and our English teacher was always stressing the importance of rhythm in poetry. Well, everyone knows – except us – that all Negroes have rhythm so they elected me as class poet.”
MOTTO
I play it cool
And dig all jive.
That’s the reason
I stay alive.
My motto, As I live and learn,
Is:
Dig, And Be Dug
In Return.
Hughes continued to develop his poetic skills even while studying to engineering at Columbia – a compromise he made in order to get his father to fund his university education. He left Columbia in 1922, after only a year of study, due to racial prejudice, with full knowledge that his interests revolved more around Harlem than Columbia University.
He managed to get to Paris in the early 1920s where he became part of the black expatriate community before returning to the US in 1924 to live with his mother in Washington, DC. Hughes furthered his University education receiving a number of degrees and went on to become one of the most important poets of his time. After his death in 1967, his ashes were interred beneath a floor medallion in the middle of the foyer leading to the auditorium named for him in the Arthur Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. There is also a Library named in his honour – the Langston Hughes Memorial Library on the campus of Lincoln University.
Langston Hughes was a role model and called for black racial pride instead of assimilation. Through his work he emphasized folk and jazz rhythms as the basis of his poetry of racial pride. Much of his writing was inspired by the rhythms and language of the black church, and, the blues and jazz of that era, the music he believed to be the true expression of the black spirit
HOMECOMING
I went back into the alley
And I opened up my door.
All her clothes was gone:
She wasn’t home no more.
I pulled back the covers,
I made down the bed.
A whole lot of room
Was the only thing I had.
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