Check out photos from the performance in this slideshow.
The sounds of the piano, bass and trumpet partnered with the smooth narration of ASU alumna Fatimah Halim and the multimedia visuals brought to life the words of the Langston Hughes poem “Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz,” and set the tone for Project Humanities in Old Main Tuesday night.The Langston Hughes Project was the kick-off event of Project Humanities, a University-wide initiative across all four campuses intending to show the different human perspectives directed by Neal Lester, dean of Humanities at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Project Humanities originally started as a lecture series, but performance elements were added to the lectures in fall 2011 to mix it up, Lester said.
Originally, performances by the band Estun Bah and world champion hoop dancer Tony Duncan were also to be featured as an outdoor kickoff event on the Downtown campus Tuesday evening. However, rain prevented their performances.
The stormy skies and flashing lightning added to the performance of Hughes’ work.
This was the second time Lester invited Ron McCurdy, a music professor at University of Southern California and founder of the Langston Hughes Project, to participate.
“When you throw in the fact that Langston Hughes was one of the first to match his writing style with the music of the period, it’s actually quite a remarkable interplay between music and jazz and the history of what was going on in the country in the 1960s,” Lester said.
The Langston Hughes Project matches “12 Moods” of the poem with visuals and sound.
“It’s a very pleasurably overwhelming sensory experience just because there is so many things that are going on,” Langston Hughes Project pianist Nikos Syropoulos said.
McCurdy originally started the Langston Hughes Project in 1995 at the University of Minnesota.
“I think people are educated and entertained at the same time because this is Langston (Hughes’) most epic contribution,” McCurdy said.
Music performance freshman Jazzly Ramirez enjoyed the different elements of the performance.
“I do like music but I like how the poetry complemented each other as well,” Ramirez said. “If it would have been the other way around then people would have lost interest.”
McCurdy uses elements such as music, spoken word and multimedia to bring life to Hughes’ work.
“This is a lot of text and sometimes if you just listen to the text you can be a little drugged by the text without the music and the images,” McCurdy said.
Music was also provided by economics and jazz senior John Sims playing stand-up bass.
“There is so much culture and history in this poem that I kind of get something out of it every time,” Sims said.
The Langston Hughes Project travels throughout the country and does not always have the same performers. This was Halim’s first performance alongside McCurdy as the storyteller.
The audience was surprised by McCurdy’s and Halim’s synchronization.
“It felt like I’ve done it many, many times before so I absolutely loved it,” Halim said.
Reach the reporter at shurst2@asu.edu
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