Jennifer Brown

On Sunday, I went to Lawrence, KS for the Langston Hughes Birthday Party and Creative Writing Awards. My friend, Nancy Pistorius, won and was giving a reading of her most excellent novel, Peking Duck: The Portrait of a Marriage, and I figured an hour and a half was not too long to go see my great friend shine!

Plus, I'll admit to not knowing a whole lot about Langston Hughes, his ties to Kansas, his work, and I was curious and excited about learning about a writer, which, I know, makes me slightly geeky. But that's hardly news.

And I wanted Teen Goddess to check out the KU campus, but in that great MU/KU debate rivalry thing that seems to overtake we Kansans and Missourians, I'm afraid KU will never win over any of our kids. Why, I have no clue, since both Scott and I went to William Jewell... but that's for another time.

Anyway, so there was this band there. The Bopophonics. Simple. Funky. And totally channeling the whole Langston Hughes thing (in fact, I think they might actually have an album out called "Channeling Langston"). They did three songs: "Aunt Sue's Stories," "Let America Be America Again" (which Speed Demon liked the best, by the way, and which you can hear for free on their myspace page), and, my favorite, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers."

The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes

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.

So I'm loving these Bopophonics, right? Check it:

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Cool what you find right in your own back yard when you least expect it.