Coming into the Langston Hughes project event, I had decent knowledge regarding the cultural importance and relevance of jazz within the African American community as well as American culture historically but did not know much of the modern jazz scene. Upon listening to both the performance the discussion following it, the sentimental and cultural meaning and importance became evermore clear in how it affects people of color, specifically African Americans, today. University of Southern California professor and trumpeter, Roy McCurdy (alongside his supporting musicians), gave the audience a look into jazz performance playing selections from Hughes’ Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz alongside some interactive audience sections and history lessons. This gave a very real look into how jazz was traditionally played in the 1920s as an improvisational and interactive genre that attempted to bridge the gap between people of color and white communities through uplifting and beautiful music.

Jazz ties back to the readings of Cudjo Lewis and class lessons of life in bondage as jazz originated as a mix of traditional African call-and-response, slave resistance and solidarity songs, religious hymns and anthems, and a cross cultural mix of other sounds and styles. It also happens to be one of the few African American genres that originated in the South and combatted racism, discrimination, and xenophobia in the age of Jim Crow and segregation in the Reconstruction Era. Jazz music carried on throughout the majority of the 20^th century and is still seen performed and produced today. McCurdy performed the musical poetry as it is referred to from the album written by Langston Hughes, a jazz performer and civil rights activist, that was released a few years before his death in 1967. As McCurdy referred to it, the poetry could have been written today and be just as relevant as it was roughly a half a century ago. In reference to the late Langston Hughes, Mr. McCurdy responded to a few questions referencing his similarity to modern day rappers (and hypothesizing that he might be one if he were alive today), and that Mr. Hughes was brilliant, a fantastic storyteller, and all around fabulous. It was apparent that it takes men like Langston Hughes to lead and unify subordinated groups to create morale and resistance against their oppressors as was needed to break the bonds of slavery, end Jim Crow, and is needed today towards issues such as mass incarceration, racial profiling, and so on.

On a more general basis, McCurdy led the audience through a journey of how these poems accompanied with jazz music promote diverse thought and merge words with instruments to create a meaningful message. Throughout the poetry, McCurdy listed the names and places that Hughes referenced to highlight and recognize leaders, advocates, and incidents that were crucial in the civil rights movement spanning outside of the commonly known 1960s movements but rather throughout the 20^th century starting in the late teens and twenties. Much of this stems out of the exchange of culture and knowledge that are presented by Langston Hughes on behalf of African Americans to present the credibility and significance of African American work, music, performance, and more throughout American history and the implications and effects of African American leadership within the community and to everyone else. Hughes drew mainly from personal experience as an artist and an advocate, but also plainly as an African American man growing up and living his adult life in the United States and the challenges, and what he might consider privileges, that were allotted to him. The main themes were cultural exchange and independence/freedom as the two most meaningful battles for African Americans. This has not much changed from the days of Cudjo Lewis when he references the lack of people who care about or listen to his story as a slave in this country and coming out of slavery to be a free man. His ability to express himself and his struggle are significant in his identity as they shape who knows the truth of what happened versus the version that is presented on a more educational basis by white people. Cudjo Lewis and Langston Hughes were two of many who felt silenced, discriminated against, and just plain angry because of their institutional and cultural exclusion and subordination in the United States, a country that prides itself on equality, independence, and freedom (while taking it away from vulnerable, minority groups).