A Dream Deferred

Performance? Art? Both?


All fair questions within the context of what we did last Friday night. My wife is a CPA by training and really knows her way around a set of books. That is more then I know about anything. Anyway... she helps people out who need it now again sometimes getting paid and sometimes as a favor but either way... it is kind of cool. As I have documented several times this diner has two crazy dogs and my wife is a “crazy dog lady”. She hangs out at the park when she can with crazy dog people (I have visited once) and one of them is a booking agent for local talent.
All of that is well and good but the local talent pool similar to my gene pool is just not that deep. So that is all good. But in return for doing the books for the booking agent... (does that make sense even to me?) the booking agent (a very nice crazy dog lady) gave her tickets to go see one of her clients in a performance. the client is a professional storyteller and I met this opportunity with a little incredulous response but... I have been married for 24 and 1/2 years and this does not happen for an accident. If my wife says I should go it means I SHOULD go. And it is the least I can do but jeeez... this was a Friday night.

Worse... my son Patrick is a talented 17 year old who loves to stay in our basement and do... well, God only knows what all he does down there. My wife had determined that we had not exposed. So we truck on down to this rehabbed church on Tennessee and Shanendoah a little east of Grand. It was a nice space which would probably seat 150 people or so but there were about 30 people there to see the talent. There was a screen for one of the actors to change behind and then they got introduced and Blake Thomas came out and laid the background for this two man tribute to Langston Hughes.

According to Wikipedia:
“Hughes' life and work were enormously influential during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s alongside those of his contemporaries, Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Richard Bruce Nugent, and Aaron Douglas, who, collectively, (with the exception of McKay), created the short-lived magazine Fire!! Devoted to Younger Negro Artists.... Of primary conflict were the depictions of the "low-life", that is, the real lives of blacks in the lower social-economic strata and the superficial divisions and prejudices based on skin color within the black community.[27] Hughes wrote what would be considered the manifesto for himself and his contemporaries published in The Nation in 1926, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”.

Blake and Norfolk sat with a little table and a pitcher of beer and a few mugs as Blake took the roll of a narrator Langston Hughes and Norfolk was Jesse Simple, Langstons iconic character. The pace of the performance was good and encompassed several different “pieces” on feet, landladies, the last whipping and a toast to Harlem. the vignettes were punctuated with Thomas and Norfolk singing and percussing with hand claps and thigh slaps. But they sang well. The final piece of the evening which made it all worthwhile when Norfolk performed Hughes’ poem regarding all the Jazz artists who passed through Harlem... not just in the renaissance but through all time. It was impressive and bordered on brilliant and I could not help but think it would make a great You Tube video.

The whole thing was only about an hour and was very engaging. Simple/Norfolk’s wordplay and characters seemed spot on. The Simple character reminded me prominently of Lamont who works down at the chili parlor where I have breakfast and I often hear him leaning over the counter and riffing with his friends about life, women... and life. My son Patrick is watching all this but finds it hard to connect and looking around he is 25 years younger then anyone in the place. The audience seems made up primarily of arty people but they are there to watch and learn. Norfolk and Blake seem very comfortable with one another but it is clearly Norfolks show and he shines. I understand he is an awesome storyteller and we will have to go check that out sometime.

Here is a link to his booking agents site where they have information on Norfolk:
http://www.folktale.com/

The great thing about attending a performance like this is that I did not know anything about Hughes before this. What I knew of the harlem Renaissance could be summed up by what I had seen in the movie “Cotton Club” which is at best a limited view of the scene through a white film maker’s eyes. there is something about a black man interpreting a black man’s view of those times which paints a more telling picture. University of Missouri Press has come up with the complete works of Hughes and I will need to check out some that going forward.
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
-Langston Hughes


***


Dream Boogie
Langston Hughes
Good morning, daddy!
Ain't you heard
The boogie-woogie rumble
Of a dream deferred?
Listen closely:
You'll hear their feet
Beating out and beating out a --
You think
It's a happy beat?
Listen to it closely:
Ain't you heard
something underneath
like a --
What did I say?
Sure,
I'm happy!
Take it away!

Hey, pop!
Re-bop!
Mop!
Y-e-a-h!