Thursday, April 21, 2011

Reminder: The Chants Resuming: Singing the First Chapter of Leaves ... @ Thu Apr 21 6:30pm - 7:30pm (Queer Things)

The Chants Resuming: Singing the First Chapter of Leaves of Grass at Main Library

The Chants Resuming: Singing the First Chapter of Leaves of Grass

A Performance by Daniel Redman

Tuesday, April 12, 2011, 6:30pm.

San Francisco Library, James C. Hormel Gay and Lesbian Center.

100 Larkin Street, San Francisco, 3rd Floor.

Taking his cue from the ancient sung narratives that carried a peoples being, history and identity from generation to generation, Daniel Redman has set the first chapter of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass to song as a great formative narrative of Queer People.

In every culture and community, there are those stories and songs that transmit the past, identify a common bond, and point to a shared vision of the future (e.g., the Quran, the Analects of Confucius, and The Bible, among many others). Leaves of Grass was Walt Whitman's attempt to create something similar for queer people.

Though books like The Iliad and The Analects were written in different times and places, they share something in common - all of them have been set to music. The entire Hebrew Bible, for instance, is punctuated with musical notations, with different song patterns for different sections. The Greek storytellers sung the Iliad and the Odyssey by heart. Setting a text to music helps to explain it, and it also helps the singer to remember the words. Over the last few years Daniel has worked to set Whitman's Queer epic Leaves of Grass to music.

The Chants Resuming: Singing the First Chapter of Leaves of Grass is presented in conjunction with the exhibit, In Paths Untrodden: Walt Whitman's Calamus Poems and the Radical Faeries, on display in the Hormel Center through May 19th.


Daniel Redman is an attorney in the Elder Law Project of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. His LGBT journalism has appeared in The Nation, Slate, The American Prospect, and The New Republic. In 2011 he was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award for magazine writing.

In Paths Untrodden:

Walt Whitman's Calamus Poems and the Radical Faeries

March 1 – May 19, 2011

San Francisco Main Library

James C. Hormel Gay & Lesbian Center, Main Library, Third Floor

2010 was the 150th anniversary of the first publication of Walt Whitman's homo-affectional-poem cluster Calamus. This exhibition, curated by Joey Cain, explores the influence Whitman and the Calamus poems had on the earliest GLBT freedom pioneers. It also traces out the social, spiritual and political roles that Whitman saw the "dear love of Comrades" playing in the ongoing creation of "America." Whitman and his poem's continuing influence on visionary Queer/Gay consciousness is explored through images and documents from the contemporary Gay men's political/spiritual movement The Radical Fairies.

When
Thu Apr 21 6:30pm – 7:30pm Pacific Time
Calendar
Queer Things
Who
Larry Bob Roberts - creator

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