Ron McCurdy talks about the performance, "Ask Your Mama." He's bringing the multi-media Langston Hughes Project to the University of South Dakota for an 8 pm performance tonight at Farber Hall inside Old Main. The performance, "Ask Your Mama: Twelve Moods for Jazz," is Hughes' homage in verse and music to the struggle for artistic and social freedom at home and abroad at the beginning of the 1960s. A 12-part poem, "Ask Your Mama" is scored with musical cues drawn from blues and Dixieland, gospel songs, boogie woogie, bebop, progressive jazz, Latin "cha-cha," Afro-Cuban mambo music, German lieder, Jewish liturgy, West Indian calypso, and African drumming. This unique musical experience, which is free and open to the public, also utilizes engaging videography during the performance to link the words and music of Hughes' poetry with topical images of "Ask Your Mama's" people, places, events, showcasing the visual artists Hughes admired and collaborated with over the course of his distinguished career. The words, images and music recreate a magical moment in cultural history, bridging Harlem renaissance, the post-World War II beat writers' coffeehouse poetry world and the looming Black Arts performance explosion of the 1960s.
Trumpeter And Jazz Educator Ron McCurdy
