Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes (1901-1967) was born in Joplin, Missouri, and died in New York. A leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance and an early innovator of jazz poetry, he published The Negro Speaks of Rivers in The Crisis in 1921 and his first collection, The Weary Blues, in 1926. He also wrote novels, plays, short stories and essays, and for twenty years a weekly column in the Chicago Defender. The Dream Keeper (Mode/Avant, 2017) sets his poems with Eric Mingus (voice), David Amram (piano) and Larry Simon (guitar, arrangements) with Groove Bacteria.