One great thing about technology today is how easy it is to tap into subjects you can’t imagine being exposed to otherwise. I like to think of this as ‘The Trail’. You read one thing that leads to another and then another…

A good example of this happened to me a couple of months ago. I’d watched the film Before Sunset where in the final scene one of the lead characters humourously impersonates Nina Simone. This set off a desire to start listening to some Simone albums on Spotify and as I was doing so I read reviews and background information through Wikipedia. This led to finding out that her poet friend Langston Hughes co-wrote the lyrics for the track ‘Backlash Blues’ on Nina Simone Sings the Blues. I then started reading more about Hughes and this lead to reading the poem ‘The Negro Speaks of Rivers’. It completely blew me away. Here it is in its entirety:

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
  flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
  went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
  bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

It is almost like a meditation, an incantation to the roots of Black history and how he carries that with him. Most remarkably, he wrote this poem while he crossed the Mississippi on a train journey when he was seventeen. SEVENTEEN!

I then bought a copy of Bonnie Greer’s biography of Hughes, The Value of Contradiction. This was a valuable read, touching partly upon his fascinating family history as an insight to his unwavering support and encouragement for the Black arts community.

The title of the biography stems from the criticism aimed at Hughes for not remaining steadfast to his communist affiliations when summoned to the HUAC during the McCarthy era. Although never a Communist Party member, many of the organisations that Hughes was involved with had ties or were subversively supported by the Communists who equated the Black struggle with their own. Some of his poetry also had strong Communist intimations and these were brought against him as evidence in front of the committee. That Hughes was willing to put forward arguments that refuted any of these claims painted him as a hypocrite and a traitor in the eyes of many in the Black community.

Greer does well to defend Hughes on this point; his interest is only ever Black progression. He owes nothing to the Communist struggle. If there is any connection or truth in the HUAC claims, they are now irrelevant to what matters – the current fight, the current issues for Black people. Everything else is history. We can’t spend our lives hamstrung by our past. If the cause moves on, we move on too in support of the cause. We are no longer any help if we remain stuck in a spider web of affiliations and indebtedness. With the prospect of jail and blacklisting, Langston Hughes would have ceased to have much of a voice or influence thereafter if he had done so.

I have great admiration for this commitment to a purpose which Hughes saw as much as an obligation to his people as he did to his ancestors and himself. It defined his very essence, his soul. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. Only by having such clarity, drive and connection can any of us achieve great things.

Those of us who don’t can find about those who do by ‘trailing’ around the internet…

This month's favourites:
   Jens Lekman, Life Will See You Now
   Bonnie Greer, Langston Hughes: The Value of Contradiction
   Breathless (1960)