Line 5 - 5th and Mound in Cinci - Cincinnati- corner with several schools and universities
Line 5 - 63rd in Chi - Chi=Chicago - known for holding the World Columbian Expedition.
Line 6 - 23rd and Central - home of Wall Street. In the early 1900's, Wall Street experienced a small financial depression. The German Jews moved in and mortgaged the property, making it into a congregation and college.
Line 6 - 18th Street and Vine K.C. - Home of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and American Jazz Museum.
Line 18/19 - High balls, low balls, the 8 ball - In the game of pool, the black 8 ball is to go in last in order to win the game.
Line 20 - 7-11 Come 7 - This is the Song of Solomon.
Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field. Let us lodge in the villages.
Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; Let us lodge in the villages.
Come, my loved one, let us go out into the field; let us take rest among the cypress-trees.
Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the fields; Let us lodge in the villages.
Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; let us lodge in the villages.
Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; let us lodge in the villages.
Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; let us lodge in the villages.
Come, my beloved, we go forth to the field
Line 21 - Porgy and Bess - A famous folk opera written by George Gershwin. This uses several spirituals as well as blues, etc.
Line 29 - Fillmore out in Frisco - San Francisco - music theater - area is famous for the Digger Movement and Artist Liberation started in the '60's by the Beats and Hippies.
Line 29 - 7th across the bay - Brooklyn, NY. home of Stonewall Jackson and Tony Mauero. All of the mansions were torn down in the '40's. There is also a Revolutionary War Cemetery in this area.
Line 34 - Leola - ALso known as Leola and the HoneyBears - African-American re-telling of Goldilocks.
Line 37 - Lumimba Louis Armstong - Louis Armstrong was the legendary jazz singer. He went to the Congo during his travels, where he was greeted to his "home in the Congo" by Patricia Lumumba, a political leader in the Congo during the Civil War. She helped to chaperone him out of the airport.
Line 38 - Patricia and Patti Page - Patti Page was a well known singer in the early 1900's.
Line 40 - King Cole - pop/jazz singer in the 50's and 60's. Known for songs such as Mona Lisa, Route 66, Unforgettable, and one of the first black TV shows on NBC.
Line 44 - Fort de France - Northern Coast of the Carribean - This was built by the French Colonials in the 1600's. It was taken over by the Dutch in the 1700's, then by the English in the 1800's. The French reoccupied the territory in the 1850's. It was destroyed by natural disasters in 1902.
Line 45 - Place Picalle - Albania, by the Mediterranean Sea.
Line 47 - Bahia - place in South America
Line 47 - Lagos - place in Nigeria
Line 47 - Dakar - Senegal
Line 47 - Lenex - Massachussetts
LIne 48 - Kingston - New York, Also a 60's trio that took a large stand during the Civil Rights Movement.
Line 49 - Dome Vingt - ?
Line 49 - Rotonde - Fountain in Aix, France. Symbolic of entrance into the modern day.
Line 53 - Sorbonne - School in Paris.
Line 55, 58, 59 - Unicorn - Symbolic of man's hopes, fears, dreams, nightmares, inner consciousness. Also stands for purity, hope, love, and majesty. Most are waiting for the unicorn's return. In the Bible, it is said that the Unicorn died when it would not get on Noah's Ark, because it believed it could survive the flood on it's own.
Line 55,58,59 - Mules and Donkeys - The donkey is known for being half wild and half domesticated. It is known as a social misfit, has insatiable lust, and also stands for strong, blue-collar workers.
Mules, however, are easily managed, docile, sure-footed, and strong.
Line 60 - Sekou Toure Cap - Dictator of Guinea. Lived from 1958-1984. Caused a major collapse in the society of Guinea.
Line 64 - Azikiwe's son, Ameka - Nigeria, Biafra. Azikiwe was the President of Nigeria. Ameka took his place after his death. He formed a temporary government and helped Nigeria become a republic. He was also part of the military government with Nigeria's civil war in 1967. He founded the Nigerian People's Party.
Line 65 - Emmett Till - A teenager who was lynched in Mississippi right after Brown vs. Board of Education. He was first kidnapped, brutally beaten, shot in the head, then a metal fan used for ginning cotton was tied to his neck. Hew as thrown in the river and found 3 days later. The two killers were founded not guilty after one year of investigation. The blacks boycotted their business, eventually making them go bankrupt. Emmett Till was buried in Chicago, where thousands of spectators came to view his body. 100 days later, Rosa Parks refused to take her seat on the bus. Emmett Till is known as one event that led to the civil rights movement.
Line 74 - Quarter of the Negroes - In the 1864 Civil War, a massacre occurred, where the shouting began with "No Quarter! No Quarter! Kill the negroes". Also a cross-section of another Langston Hughes poem.
Cultural Exchange
In the Quarter of the Negroes
Where the doors are doors of paper
Dust of dingy atoms
Blows a scratchy sound.
Amorphous jack-o'-Lanterns caper
And the wind won't wait for midnight
For fun to blow doors down.
By the river and the railroad
With fluid far-off goind
Boundaries bind unbinding
A whirl of whisteles blowing.
No trains or steamboats going--
Yet Leontyne's unpacking.
In the Quarter of the Negroes
Where the doorknob lets in Lieder
More than German ever bore,
Her yesterday past grandpa--
Not of her own doing--
In a pot of collard greens
Is gently stewing.
Pushcarts fold and unfold
In a supermarket sea.
And we better find out, mama,
Where is the colored laundromat
Since we move dup to Mount Vernon.
In the pot begind the paper doors
on the old iron stove what's cooking?
What's smelling, Leontyne?
Lieder, lovely Lieder
And a leaf of collard green.
Lovely Lieder, Leontyne.
You know, right at Christmas
They asked me if my blackness,
Would it rub off?
I said, Ask your mama.
Dreams and nightmares!
Nightmares, dreams, oh!
Dreaming that the Negroes
Of the South have taken over--
Voted all the Dixiecrats
Right out of power--
Comes the COLORED HOUR:
Martin Luther King is Governor of Georgia,
Dr. Rufus Clement his Chief Adviser,
A. Philip Randolph the High Grand Worthy.
In white pillared mansions
Sitting on their wide verandas,
Wealthy Negroes have white servants,
White sharecroppers work the black plantations,
And colored children have white mammies:
Mammy Faubus
Mammy Eastland
Mammy Wallace
Dear, dear darling old white mammies--
Sometimes even buried with our family.
Dear old
Mammy Faubus!
Culture, they say, is a two-way street:
Hand me my mint julep, mammny.
Hurry up!
Make haste!
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A Reader's Guide
These annotations to Langston Hughes' long poem "Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz" are compiled and expanded each semester by students in Naropa University’s "Investigative Poetics" class, offered through the MFA Creative Writing low-residency program.
Annotations by Section
- Ask Your Mama (1)
- Bird in Orbit (1)
- Blues in Stereo (1)
- Cultural Exchange (1)
- Gospel of Cha-Cha (1)
- Horn of Plenty (1)
- Is It True (1)
- Jazztet Muted (1)
- Ode to Dinah (1)
- Ride Red Ride (1)
- Shades of Pigment (1)
- Show Fare Please (1)
10 comments:
SHOUTS ARE WHISPERS AND OTHER DICHOTOMIES ON A TWO-WAY STREET
By Melanie Miller
Throughout Langston Hughes’s last major poem(1), Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz, he imparts a juxtaposition between two polar sides, an inequality and equalization of forces, or, in his words, a “two-way street” (“CULTURE, THEY SAY, IS A TWO-WAY STREET” (p. 481)) that continuously moves back and forth and reverses on itself. The poem covers disparities within single lines, from stanza to stanza, and from section to section, including: black and white, shouts and whispers, suburbs and cities, rich and poor, mythic/fable and reality, present/past/future, dreams and nightmares, distance and proximity, travel and staying in place, and endlessness and pressing or stopped time.
In Ode to Dinah, we feel this polarity as time stops against its own nature, against the natural flow of water.
SINCE IT’S SNOWING ON THE TV
THIS LAST QUARTER OF CENTENNIAL
100-YEARS EMANCIPATION
MECHANICS NEED REPAIRING
FOR NIAGRA FALLS IS FROZEN
AS IS CUSTOM BELOW ZERO.
(Ode to Dinah, p. 489)
Niagara Falls majestically freezes. However, according to the Niagara Falls Web site, www.niagarafrontier.com, this freezing is not custom at all.
"The Niagara River handles 212,000 cubic feet of water per second. The average depth is approximately 16 feet with a flow rate of 4 to 8 miles per hour. The Niagara River does not freeze over. The Falls of Niagara and the river below the Falls does not freeze either. The volume of water going over the Falls, the depth and speed of the water below the Falls also precludes freezing. The water will not be stopped or frozen solid."
In fact, the Falls’ water flow has only been reduced or restricted three times in history: in March 1848 due to an ice jam, in 1953 due to construction of coffer dams near Horseshoe Falls, and in 1969 due to similar construction by the US Army Corps of Engineers near the American Falls.(2) So this single example thus fits into multiple dichotomous categories: rich and poor, mythic/fable and reality, dreams and nightmares, and endlessness and pressing or stopped time.
The two-way street of ideas extends itself into the wrapping and unraveling of words and repetitions that ultimately blend the form and the content through the music of language and the natural repetition of thought.
IN THE QUARTER OF THE NEGROES
ANSWER QUESTIONS ANSWER
AND ANSWERS WITH A QUESTION
AND THE TALMUD IS CORRECTED
(Shades of Pigment, p. 487)
“To highlight the affinities between music and poetry is to highlight the diachronic aspect of poetic form. Using music as a model enables Hughes to imagine the relation between poetry and politics as a specifically temporal one.(3)” In this stanza, the two-way street between questions and answers leads to the politics of religion, where answers are questions or questions are answers, or conversely, answers are questioned and questions are answered. The duality of poetry and music, of music and politics, and of vernacular and politics, and of politics and religion becomes circularin both its reasoning and correlational form. They intersect to become an abstract jungle of beliefs, rather than the concrete jungles we associate with paved city life.
In Cultural Exchange, as the title suggests, there is a constant exchange of both meaning and form. Dreams and nightmare are interchanged word after word.
DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES…
NIGHTMARES…DREAMS! OH!
DREAMING THAT THE NEGROES
OF THE SOUTH HAVE TAKEN OVER-
VOTED ALL THE DIXIECRATS
RIGHT OUT OF POWER-
(Cultural Exchange, p. 480)
Within the span of a few lines it becomes clear that Hughes is stating that one man’s dream is another’s nightmare. Language is exchanged for politics, just as dreams are exchanged for power.
Although there is a continuous reference of black and white-both in race and ideas, nothing is black and white in this poem for long, even when it seems to be so. In his 1935 essay, To Negro Writers, Hughes advises, “Negro writers can seek to unite blacks and whites in our country, not on the nebulous basis of an inter-racial meeting, or the shifting sands of religious brotherhood, but on the solid ground of the daily working-class struggle to wipe out, now and forever, all the old inequalities of the past.(4)” In this quote, as in Ask Your Mama, Hughes attempts to merge black and white inequalities, creating a timely gray matter of humanistic balance. Even when Hughes’s is overtly political, as when the speaker addresses Santa Claus in the following stanza,
SANTA CLAUS FORGIVE ME,
BUT YOUR GIFT BOOKS ARE SUBVERSIVE,
YOUR DOLLS ARE INTERRACIAL.
YOU’LL BE CALLED BY EASTLAND.
WHEN THEY ASK YOU IF YOU KNEW ME,
DON’T TAKE THE FIFTH AMENDEMENT
(Ride, Red, Ride, p. 484)
the poem moves forward like music(5), beyond its own opinion, to show Santa Claus, although aloof, with a sense of grace, “AND YOUR HAIR WAS BLOWING BACK/ IN THE WIND.” This image evokes ease and comfort, and Hughes counterbalances it with his musical notes to the right of the stanza, “Loud and live up-tempo Dixieland jazz for full chorus”. We see this minor obfuscation too in the previous example from Shades of Pigment on page 487, where questions and answers in relation to religion extend beyond a two-way street and could be interpreted to have a jungle-full of implications and meanings. It is in this duality, not its “incompletion” as Larry Scanlon argues in his essay, News from Heaven, that Hughes achieves “the syncretic power to appropriate and redefine other traditions, dominant or otherwise.(6)”
If Hughes doesn’t leap between stanzas with divergent sentiments, such as the black and white struggle of two races pitted inequitably against each other, he does so between the titled sections, as the title, 12 Moods for Jazz, suggests. Like this two-way, or twelve-way, street of mood, ideas, and politics, there is a two-way street in construction and deconstruction of form, both of which by definition are philosophically deconstructionist. Deconstruction, as coined in the 1960s by the Algerian-born French philosopher, Jacques Derrida, focuses on difference and lends itself to the “two-way street” reading of Hughes. “It is because of différance that the movement of signification is possible only if each so-called present element, each element appearing on the scene of presence, is related to something other than itself, thereby keeping within itself the mark of the past element, and already letting itself be vitiated by the mark of its relation to the future element.(7)” The deconstruction of language and form invites a two-way reading, where the eye wishes to travel both down and up the text, registering the evolution and devolution of language and subject, despite the illogical reversal of the eyes’ cognition. Hughes builds and breaks apart lines and words to emphasize the musicality of both sound and subject. In Shades of Pigment, he begins by deconstructing his line, like scaling down a ladder or falling down steps:
IN THE QUARTER OF THE NEGROES
WHERE NEGROES SING SO WELL
NEGROES SING SO WELL
SING SO WELL
SO WELL.
WELL?
(Shades of Pigment, p. 486)
One gets a sense that hope is falling, diminishing with each line. The assertion of talent is belittled to a “so what?” with one word, “well”, which is posed in its final deconstruction as a question. This deconstructed stanza is evidence of his constant play with reversal, where a word or a subject reverses on itself until it means something else entirely. It begins as dense (or black (or white, depending upon one’s perception)), “WHERE NEGROES SING SO WELL”; and moves through the gray tones (or the half notes), “SING SO WELL/ SO WELL”; and ends in a single, transparent moment (or white (or black)), “WELL?”.
In Horn of Plenty and Bird and Orbit, Hughes deconstructs the line, as in “SINGERS/ SINGERS LIKE O-/ SINGERS LIKE ODETTA AND THAT STATUE” (p. 498), which looks and feels like growth or hope or progression, or construction; the disenfranchised scaling a ladder to resist. The titles themselves are taking off or emergingthe image of the horn, which begins with a small pointed hole that grows outward and the sound that arises with it; the image of a bird taking flight and traveling beyond its parameters. “DE-/ DELIGHT-/ DELIGHTED” (p. 516) egresses like the horn or the bird. There is great pleasure, mythic hope, and an arc of endless time and unity that flies, like a bird in orbit.
I LOOK AT THE STARS,
AND THEY LOOK AT THE STARS,
AND THEY WONDER WHERE I BE.
AND I WONDER WHERE THEY BE.
STARS AT STARS STARS….
(Bird in Orbit, p. 518)
So, what about dichotomy? juxtaposition? shouts and whispers? What does this mean to this poem, to this writer, to this reader? Dichotomy invites understanding, as it inherently provides metaphors. It institutes a framework within which the mind can relate one thing to another, and ultimately oneself to another, in this case that other can be the writer, speaker, characters, era, or meaning. Dichotomies are realities of literature and life. “As the Negro Poet Laureate, speaking both to his community and for it, [Hughes] had to be innovative and conservative at once.(8)” Personal, worldly, aural, and linguistic dualities are the parts of life and the music of life that Hughes embraces and crafts throughout this work. It is within the juxtaposition of words, as he lays them out on the page, that the reader is instructed how to read and hear and speak the poem. Dichotomy is the life of the poem as much as it is an inescapable aspect of living. Just like music that propels the mind and body forward or outside of itself, mother nature and human nature shouts and whispers in storms and zephyrs, and in violence and in peace. And Hughes imparts these realistic dualities with realism, although discreetly magical, in black and white, as well as in their ambiguous, but not incomplete, gray tones.
1. Scanlon, Larry. News from Heaven: Vernacular Time in Langston Hughes’ss Ask Your Mama, 46.
2. www.niagarafrontier.com
3. Scanlon, Larry. News from Heaven: Vernacular Time in Langston Hughes’ss Ask Your Mama, 48.
4. Hughes, Langston. To Negro Writers. http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/hughes/negrowriters.htm.
5. In Scanlon’s essay, News from Heaven, he states that “music defines its formal elements precisely by their movement through time.”
6. Scanlon, Larry. News from Heaven: Vernacular Time in Langston Hughes’ss Ask Your Mama. 47.
7. Derrida, Jacques. Différance. (Trans. Alan Bass, Margins of Philosophy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1982).
8. Scanlon, Larry. News from Heaven: Vernacular Time in Langston Hughes’ss Ask Your Mama, 48.
I chose to explore in more depth the French references in “Ask Your Mama” (the mood by that title, not the whole poem) and specifically in lines 45-60, many of which were references I recognized from having visited Paris, but none of which I knew much detail about, and certainly nothing that directly connected them to this poem.
I quickly found that the references I researched also tied into references in “Bird in Orbit”, the mood that follows “Ask Your Mama”.
line 45: “Fort de France” - capital of Martinique in the Caribbean
When I was looking up details on Fort de France to see how it connects to this poem, I found the following information, which ties into the line “Alioune Aime Sedar sips his negritude” in “Bird in Orbit”.
(from http://www.zananas-martinique.com/en-fort-de-france-martinique/history.htm)
“Born at Basse-Pointe in 1913, Aimé Césaire leaves Martinique in 1931 in order to study in Paris. There, he meets Léopold Sédar Shengor. They both found the review called "The black Student" in which they develop the negritude concept. Back to the island in 1939, he teaches at the SCHOELCHER high school and publishes the « Tropics » review. Elected mayor of Fort-de-France in 1945, then communist deputy, he becomes rapporteur of the 1946's law about the devolution of the departments. He breaks with the communist party in 1956, then founds the progressive party from Martinique in 1958. Mayor of the town for over 40 years, he has been faced with urbanistic problems linked to the population doubling. Admired or controversial in his political action, the influence of his work upon the West Indian and French-speaking African literature is indisputable.”
In the line from “Bird in Orbit”, the name “Alioune” most likely refers to Alioune Diop. I found the following information (and more) on the UNESCO website, in a newsletter about the Slave Route Project (http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001510/151097e.pdf):
“On 19 September 1956, visionaries from across the black world convened the First International Congress of Black Writers and Artists in the Descartes Amphitheatre at the Sorbonne, Paris. By bringing together such prestigious delegates as Alioune Diop, Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor and Richard Wright, the first congress gave a global status to black intellectualism, thereby preparing the way for liberation movements and cultural innovation worldwide.”
line 45: “Place Pigalle”: the “Quartier Pigalle” (another use of the word “Quarter”!) is a red-light district in Paris, which also has a section known for music rather than prostitution.
From Wikipedia.com:
“Pigalle is an area in Paris around Place Pigalle, on the border between the 9th and the 18th arrondissements. It is named after the sculptor Jean-Baptiste Pigalle (1714–1785).
Pigalle is famous for being a touristic red-light district, with many sex shops on Place Pigalle and the main boulevards and prostitutes operating in the side streets. The neighborhood's raunchy reputation led to its World War II nickname of "Pig Alley" by Allied soldiers. The Divan du Monde and the Moulin Rouge, a world-famous cabaret, are both located in Pigalle.
Somewhat unexpectedly, the area to the south of Place Pigalle is not devoted to the sex trade, but to the retail of musical instruments and equipment, especially for popular music. A section of the rue de Douai solely consists of stores selling guitars, drums, and musical accessories.
Toulouse-Lautrec's studio was here. Artists such as Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, and Maurice Neumont also once lived here. The works of artist Salvador Dalí can be seen at the nearby Espace Dalí.
It was also the home of the Grand Guignol theatre, which closed in 1962. However, the theatre itself still stands. The Musée de l'érotisme (Museum of Eroticism) can also be found here.
Pigalle is a well known spot for tourists who want to experience "Paris by night". This neighborhood in Montmartre has long been notorious as a popular hotspot for the more risque crowd. It is home to some of Paris' most famous cabarets ("Moulin Rouge," for instance, was immortalized by artist Toulouse-Lautrec as well as Hollywood), or other topless and nude shows.”
line 50: “at the Dome vingt francs will do” - not sure which of the many domes in Paris this refers to; “vingt” = 20, so “twenty francs will do” at whatever the dome is (the most famous dome in Paris is probably that of Sacre Coeur--if this is what is referred to, it’s an interesting juxtaposition with the red-light district of Pigalle--and they are in the same “arrondissement” or municipal borough of Paris)
line 51: “Rotonde Select Dupont Flore” = these seem to be references to restaurants and hotels in Paris
Rotonde = La Rotonde, a famous Parisian restaurant
Select = could be the Select Hotel (Hotel Select) in Paris
Dupont = several things by this name in Paris
Flore = several things by this name in Paris, including a hotel and a cafe
lines 52-54: “tall black student/in horn-rim glasses/who at the Sorbonne has six classes” = I think this is Aime Cesaire, who attended the Sorbonne (Sorbonne University)
line 55: “in the shadow of the Cluny” = the Musee de Cluny in Paris, which is officially the Musee National du Moyen Age (National Museum of the Middle Ages), and is near the Sorbonne University.
line 56: “conjures unicorn” = There is a famous tapestry in the Musee de Cluny called “The Lady and the Unicorn”. It’s actually a set of six, representing the 5 senses and “Understanding”.
http://arthistory.heindorffhus.dk/frame-TapestryUnicornLady.htm
line 58: “mealie” = I found references to both mealie soup and mealie bread (both corn-based) as dishes from South African cuisine.
I think these references all add up to a movement from roots in Africa to a more “sophisticated” life in Paris, as illustrated by the lines “But why ride on mule or donkey/when there’s a unicorn?” at the end of that stanza.
Further information on Cesaire:
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/cesaire.htm
http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Cesaire.html
http://www.lipmagazine.org/articles/featkelley_116.shtml
Line 72 - Brickbrat: a piece of brick used to throw at a person as a weapon, or a term used as a criticism. (By Sarah Cooke)
Line 3- Post-bop: a term for small-combo jazz that began to evolve in the early- to mid-sixties. It combined hard bop, modal jazz, avant-garde and free jazz. John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Herbie Hancock were considered Post-bop musicians. (By Sarah Cooke)
“Ask Your Mama” in relation to “playing the dozens” and shooting craps.
THE DOZENS - ".a game of verbal jousting constructed on insults directed in large part toward the mother of one's opponent, was widespread in black culture by the early 20th century. Langston Hughes lyrically glorified the Dozens in the poem 'Ask Your Mama'." This reference lists six possible theories for the origin of "the Dozens" starting with: "Insulting rhymes that progressed from 1 to 12, describing the lewd acts that the opponent's mother enjoyed." Variations to "the Dozens" are "playing the Dozens," "putting someone in the Dozens" and "shooting the Dozens." From "Speaking Freely: A Guided Tour of American English from Plymouth Rock to Silicon Valley" by Stuart Berg Flexner and Anne H. Soukhanov (Oxford University Press, New York, 1997).
The Dozens was also played while shooting craps, the number 12 becoming significant in this setting as the twelve sides of the die. The game of craps being played outside against a wall with betting and bawdy language that have origins in playing the Dozens, or “shooting the Dozens” as it is also called, similar to “shooting craps.”
Jazz improvisation
Jazz improvisation has been misappropriated as ad hoc, unorganized, without preparation or consideration, inconsequential and without value to the organizational whole, and lacking methodology (Bailey, D. 1980, Improvisation, Moorland Publishing Co. Ltd). This misconception couldn’t be further from the truth. Improvisation requires a fluid, ingrained understanding of techniques, purpose and method, which can only then be altered to fit the moment’s need as a river might alter its course to fit a new terrain in the act of flooding. Paul Berliner’s book, THINKING IN JAZZ, written in 1944, inspired writers to use the concept of Jazz Improvisation as a metaphor for creativity, innovation and knowledge.
Bjorn Alterhaug’s essay, Improvisation on a Triple Theme: Creativity, Jazz Improvisation and Communication states, “In socialist countries, for the underground resistance jazz was regarded as a symbol and a metaphor for freedom and personal expression, therefore jazz was often suppressed by the authorities.” In “Ask Your Mama,” Langston Hughes uses jazz improvisation as a direct reference and illustration of that freedom of folk cultures. Alterhaug concludes with a statement concerning the inability of Euro-centric cultures to correctly asses the value of improvisation, and suggests that we refer instead to the wisdom and experience of folk cultures, the very folk cultures Hughes speaks of, really, and if you don’t believe me, just ask your mama.
Hesitation Blues
In the link below, the Langston Hughes Project performed the entire 12 part poem with the musical score that Hughes never heard as it was intended to be performed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzxff6Nejt0&feature=related
Reference to this blues rendition begin with “Hesitating Blues” which later became, “Hesitation Blues.” Wikipedia references the following historical information: “The three men were involved in the music publishing business in St. Louis, Missouri. About 1914 they joined a band and went to Los Angeles. They passed their traveling time making up verses to a traditional tune. When they returned to St. Louis the trio went their separate ways. Art Gillham remained in St. Louis, Billy Smythe went to Louisville, Smythe's brother-in-law Scott Middleton went to Chicago. In 1915 Billy Smythe published their musings as "Hesitation Blues" but not crediting Art Gillham.
A dispute over the credits was resolved a few years later when Art Gillham and Billy Smythe began writing other songs as a team with the sheet music stating "by the writers of Hesitation Blues".
The song was recorded for Edison Records in 1919 by Al Bernard and exists as a Blue Amberol cylinder recording and as an Edison Diamond Disc matrix recording. Audio files of this recording are preserved at the Cylinder Digitization and Preservation Project of the University of California Santa Barbara.[1]
Art Gillham performed the song on radio and in February, 1925 recorded it for Columbia Records as one of the first electrical recordings. The song was republished in 1926 giving credit to the three writers. The 1926 publication was a different arrangement with different lyrics added to the 1915 publication.
The 1964 version by the Holy Modal Rounders featured the first use of the term "psychedelic" in popular music in the verse "Got my psycho-delic feet, in my psycho-delic shoes, I believe lord and mama got the psycho-delic blues, tell me how long do I have tell to wait, or can I get you now, or must I hesitay-ay-ay-ate". The original sleeve notes (as reproduced in the CD notes) state "A Charlie Poole hit. Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers recorded an incredible number of songs that are personal favorites of mine."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesitation_Blues
“Shave and a haircut fifteen cents” (two bits?)
The Mexican version of the same tune is a “groseria” or a foul language statement. “Chinga tu madre, cabron” can be heard at times on the horns of cars as long distance cursing, but only when making a serious insult to another driver, tantamount to fighting words on the streets of Mexico, or a manifestation of Mexican road rage. Ironically, this “corruption” of the tune comes close to a notion of the Dozens, that of an insult to someone’s mother.
The following is a reference to the origins of the tune from: http://www.dataflo.net/~mpurintun/Tabs/OldTimeTabs/shave_and_a_haircut.htm “The first recorded occurrence of the tune (with no lyrics) is in an 1899 song by Charles Hale, called “At a Darktown Cakewalk.” In 1914, Jimmie Monaco and Joe McCarthy released a song called “Bum-Diddle-De-Um-Bum, That’s It!” in which that line was featured in the last two bars of the song. In 1939, the same musical phrase was used in a tune called “Shave and a Haircut - Shampoo” by Dan Shapiro, Lester Lee, and Milton Berle. Somewhere along the line the phrase permutated into “shave and a haircut, bay rum.”
“The six notes have remained the same, but over the years the phrase has become known as “shave and a haircut, two bits” (which would amount to 25 cents). Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim incorporated the tune into their “Gee, Officer Kropke” number from the musical West Side Story, and the refrain became a key plot element in the motion picture Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”
Hi! I'm trying to find a whole version of Langston's poem, but I just can't do so. Could you help me with that? I'm trying to do a Spanish translation of the text.
Thanks a lot for the attention!
Line 32 – 18th and Vine in K.C. – 18th and Vine is located in the Historic District of Kansas City and is widely considered one of the birth places of jazz. A distinctive style of jazz developed in the city and many jazz greats made their home in the district in the 30’s and 40’s. This includes Charlie Parker, whose music is included in the score of Ask Your Mama.
(Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/18th_and_Vine_Historic_District)
Entry by Lara Beaulieu
Line 42 – payola – an undercover or indirect payment (often to a disc jockey for promoting a song).
(Reference: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/payola?show=0&t=1328753962)
Entry by Lara Beaulieu
Line 46 to 52 – This section may include references to Hughes’ time as a crewman aboard the SS. Malone in 1923 and his time in Paris after he decided to leave the ship. While a crewman he traveled to Europe and Africa and did visit Dakar and Lagos (line 47) and possibly the other locations named. “Vingt francs” (line 46) is 20 francs. There is a possible reference to a number of well-known artist cafés and restaurants in Paris. Le Dome (line 50), Le Retonde and Le Select (line 51) are all restaurants in the Montparnasse district. Café de Flore (line 51) is associated with French intellectuals.
(References:
The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume I: 1902-1941, I, Too, Sing America—Arnold Rampersad — Google Books, p. 74.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montparnasse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caf%C3%A9_de_Flore)
Entry by Lara Beaulieu
Line 54 to 62—Sorbonne (line 54) University is located in Paris and was one of the first colleges in Europe. Cluny (line 55) could refer to a monestary in France or a location in Paris (for example, there is a modern day Hotel Cluny and a museum with “Cluny” in its name, both of which may or may not have existed when Hughes was in Paris). While in Paris he met a woman named Anne Coussey who had studied at the Sorbonne (line 54) and is perhaps the student in horn-rim glasses. Coussy gone to school in England but had spent her early years in various locations in Africa and therefore perhaps did speak Swahili (a widely spoken language in East Africa) (line 57), as well as English and French. Mealie (line 58) is an African corn, often made into a bread. If Coussey is being referenced she may have “almost forgotten Mealie” as she live a relatively privileged lifestyle in Europe. When Coussey and Hughes became close, her nickname for him was “Teddy” (line 62).
(References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbonne
The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume I: 1902-1941, I, Too, Sing America—Arnold Rampersad — Google Books, p. 85-86.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swahili_language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mealie
Entry by Lara Beaulieu
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