Have you ever heard anyone say, “There isn’t anything to do in Scotland County?”
The Scotland County Arts Council begs to differ.
The arrival of fall means art and cultural opportunities are abundant in our area. As an arts organization, we are constantly striving to bring both unique and quality programming to our community. Local arts events are an incredible way of bringing people from all different backgrounds together and Scotland County boasts an entire month of local events – how lucky are we? We aren’t often given the opportunity to experience world class entertainment in our own backyard, but the Arts Council wants to change that. We were eager to welcome the Ron McCurdy Quartet as we, at the Arts Council, presented Langston Hughes’ “Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz.” This celebration of the spoken and written word, poetry, music, and visual arts took place on Sept. 24 at the Downtown Arts Center.
Based out of Los Angeles, this program was recently awarded the winner of the “Best Live Experience” Award at the Jazz FM Awards and has been honored around the world as an “inspired revival that would make Langston Hughes proud.”
Hughes originally created “Ask Your Mama” in the aftermath of his participation as an official for the five-day Newport Jazz Festival of July 1960. The musical scoring was designed to not serve only as background but to forge a conversation and a commentary with the music. Though Hughes originally intended to collaborate with many other artists on this, it remained only in the planning stages when Langston Hughes dies in 1967. Its recovery now in word, music and imagery provides a stimulating experience for audiences.
The Langston Hughes Project is a multimedia concert performance brought to life by the talents of the Ron McCurdy Quartet. “Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz” is Hughes’ tribute, in verse and music, to the struggle for artistic and social freedom at home and abroad at the beginning of the 1960s. Together the words, sounds and images recreate moments in cultural history, which, according to founder Dr. Ron McCurdy, “bridges the Harlem renaissance, the post-World War II beat writers’ coffeehouse jazz poetry world and the looming black arts performance explosion of the 1960’s.”
Nationally, regionally, and locally there has been a lot of chatter about community connection and the role the arts could and do play in positively impacting our changing community over the next several years. Organizations all over the country are discussing the importance of the arts and how to link the transformative power of them to local communities. We, as a country, and as a community are at a junction of social change. Together we can choose to share with each other, learn about each other and move forward together. Our community’s future depends on our relationships and connection and the promise of increased understanding between people who maybe have little in common on the surface. Artists and arts organizations are an important resource in our path to building stronger connections. Making the arts a bigger part of our lives enhances us, and engaging in the arts brings us together. Art and artists aren’t only in studios and performance venues — they are all around us. We all have the ability to create and to imagine a way to make our community healthier and stronger.
Diversity is something that is at the heart of our organization and we truly believe that innovative and diverse programming can reach out to, enrich and transform our audiences and our community. We are thankful for our partners in the endeavor including the Scotland County Memorial Library, and the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Cultural Resources.
We look forward to seeing at all the upcoming Scotland County events.
Come out and enjoy all of the arts experiences the Scotland County Arts Council and others in our community have to offer. You will be wonderfully entertained and delighted at the experience.