Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet

About Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet

Poetry has been defined as "words that want to break into song." Musicians who make music seek to "say something". Parlando will put spoken words (often, but not always, poetry) and music (different kinds, limited only by the abilities of the performing participants) together. The resulting performances will be short, 2 to 10 minutes in length. The podcast will present them un-adorned. How much variety can we find in this combination? Listen to a few episodes and see. At least at first, the two readers will be a pair of Minnesota poets and musicians: Frank Hudson and Dave Moore who have performed as The LYL Band since the late 70s. Influences include: Patti Smith, Frank Zappa, Carl Sandburg, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart), William Blake, Alan Moore, Beat Poets (Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, and others), The Fugs (Ed Sanders, Tuli Kupferberg), Leo Kottke, Ken Nordine (Word Jazz), Bob Dylan, Steve Reich, and most of the Velvet Underground (Lou Reed, John Cale, Nico).

Publisher

Parlando featuring Frank Hudson and Dave Moore, poets and musicians

Category

arts · music

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

23 Oct 2022

Latest episode

5 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

287 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   5 Oct 2026

   The Human Seasons

   Here's a poem by John Keats, his notices about the theater of the seasons. I performed it with my "voice of subjective quality," the one I have handy, accompanied by cello and acoustic guitar. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 900 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

2. 

   30 Sept 2026

   a song made from Fenton Johnson's "Revery"

   Longtime followers of this Project will know that I'm a proponent of early 20th century Chicago Afro-American poet Fenton Johnson. The "elevator pitch" for Johnson is that he slots in between Paul Laurence Dunbar and the slightly later Harlem Renaissance. Back then, prominent contemporary Black critics such as the remarkable polymath James Weldon Johnson categorized Fenton Johnson's work as altogether "radical" and "full of despair," enough so that they were of mixed feelings about the value of his verse. Fenton Johnson's poetry does speak at times of hardship, even hopelessness, but he also wrote of persevering through adversity, and I think some of his poetry shares elements with the Black Gospel music tradition which was forming up in Chicago while he was actively publishing just before WWI. His poem "Revery"  may have a little of that latter: it might even be a hymn to the Creator. Or one could read it as a recounting of the "oversoul" that passes in an out of human lives, which is how I cast it when I revised Johnson's literary poem for my sung performance. My version could even be performed at a funeral or memorial service. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 900 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

3. 

   26 Sept 2026

   Tell me where is Fancy Bred: Shakespeare the Songbird Poet

   In writing about Sara Teasdale last time over at the Parlando Project blog I mentioned that she has been grouped with a set of 20th century female poets as a "Songbird Poet." The implied charge here is that these poets are less concerned with the deep meaning of poetry and are content to just make pleasant word-music. Upholding up the deeper meaning school I'd have an opening to report that the songs of birds are not all pleasant and meaningless. They sing for desire, for companionship, and for defense, among other things; though as a person in this Project I have to say that making a song, something one appreciates uttering, might be a worthwhile thing. Here's another minor poet who I'm sure we've kept in a parlor cage as a songbird, one William Shakespeare. This tidy little song from his play The Merchant of Venice  talks about idle, surface-deep, love ("Fancy"). But wait, like is often the case with the Songbird Poets, there's a more complex message inside it. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 900 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

Podcast Authority Score: 57 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

89

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

60

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