and I am somewhere worlds away (2024)

A Dramatic Song Cycle Based Upon Poetry by Countee Cullen

For Baritone and Piano

Songs:

I. From "Heritage" (When The Rain Begins to Fall)

II. Fruit of the Flower

III. Yet Do I Marvel

IV. She of the Dancing Feet Sings 

V. The Wise

VI. Singing in the Rain

VII. For Myself

Duration ca. 25’ 

PROGRAM NOTE:

And I Am Somewhere Worlds Away is a dramatic song cycle for baritone voice and piano inspired by the deeply personal world of the poems of Countee Cullen. The selected poems suggest a dramatic arc that begins with the poet lying awake at night, in the dark, listening to the unceasing rain and contemplating his life. The “autobiography in song” follows a voyage of discovery starting with his growing into adulthood, his calling as a poet, his reflections on life and coming to terms with being a black poet in the America of the 1920s, and ultimately his own epitaph, speaking to us from eternity.

Countee Cullen [1903 – 1946] rose to fame as a leading poet of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s with the ground-breaking collection of poems Color published in 1925 when he was only 22 years old. Color has been described as expressing “the intimate emotional experience of race”[1]and it remains one of the essential artistic achievements of American poetry.  Cullen’s role as a key figure in the culture of 1920s Harlem  also arose from his marriage to Yolande Du Bois, the daughter of the renowned writer and leader of the African American community W.E.B. Du Bois. The marriage was reported as the social event of the decade in Harlem, with thousands clamoring to attend, though the union proved to be short-lived. The period of success included a sojourn in Paris, a Guggenheim fellowship, studies at leading universities, and the publication of lauded poetry collections including Copper Sun (1927) and Black Christ (1929). 

Cullen was renowned and written about, but in the 1930s experienced a gradual falling off of his poetic output as he turned his attention to works for the theatre, a novel and other writings. He remarried, and taught at Frederick Douglass Junior High School in New York City, and died too soon at the age of 43 in 1946. 

Cullen’s life and poetry were wrapped up with the conflicts he experienced and put into poems, a life lived from “behind the veil” as Du Bois might have described it: as a black man in America, a black poet deeply concerned with himself and his peers being the “other” in society, and a man whose own bisexual leanings demanded a hidden “double life” that found veiled expression in his poems. Throughout his poetry, music and song are strongly recurring themes, taking the reader beyond words into an imagined place where “no sound except the song” is adequate. It is this extraordinary life arc that And I Am Somewhere Worlds Away is based upon, a drama narrated by Cullen himself, in his own words, through his beloved art of music and song.

In many of Cullen’s poems, there is also a recurring theme of rain. Rain as symbolic of fate, sometimes “beating down” in unstopping rhythmic patterns, for example “I can never rest at all when the rain begins to fall” and “rain works on me night and day” from Heritage; and in Singing in the Rain “the rain beats time and gives the willows tears” and “my soul’s high song beats back the rains;” and the “gusty rain winds beat” in She of the Dancing Feet Sings. Rain, as a force of nature, also unleashes Cullen’s deep urges to “break away” from societal constraints, for example in Heritage, where rain’s “primal measures drip through my body, crying, ‘Strip! Doff this new exuberance. Come and dance the Lover’s Dance!’” For Cullen, these metaphors for the power of primal nature unleashed by rain are gateways to ponder the opposing forces of life and the inner soul, if not in search of an ultimate spiritual peace then at least in search of a meaningful path between opposing worlds. 

Thus the song cycle begins with the remarkable, dramatic, and visual “opening scene” of Heritage: Cullen is lying in bed, in the dark, listening to the “beating of the rain” which is the metaphor for his contemplation of the contradictions and burdens of being a black man in America (the full poem reproduced in the Appendix asks “What is Africa to me?”). In the full poem Cullen alternates between an epic vision of an African Eden and the poet’s modern life presumably in a Harlem apartment, centuries removed from his origins, attempting to come to terms with who he is and what he has become. 

The technique jars the reader back and forth between “modern” life and an imagined far away origin in the womb of Africa by repeatedly returning to the incantation “So I Lie” as Cullen returns to his place of deep contemplation with ever deeper questions (the double meaning of the word “lie” is emphasized by its repetition as the poet contemplates the changes in his deepest values and assumptions resulting from his forced separation from his origins). In the full poem, Cullen opens his innermost mind to the reader as he is lying in his bed, as if sunk into the earth itself, receiving the rain as a natural force that is symbolic of the forces acting upon us all, rain, the relentless sound of which frees his mind into deep contemplation.

For the purposes of the dramatic arc of this song cycle which attempts to present a “biography in song and poetry,” this recurring image of the poet lying in bed at night is excerpted from Heritage as a dramatic device, to bring the listener inside Cullen’s mind and very soul. While only a few lines from Heritage are used for this dramatic “scene-setting” purpose, a full understanding of Cullen’s genius requires that listeners read Heritage in full, thus the entire poem is included in the Appendix to this music score.

This dramatic arc continues with Fruit of the Flower which here serves as a “first chapter” of Cullen’s life, describing his parents, their own internal conflicts, and the ways in which they may not understand that their son, the fruit of the flower of their union, finds himself called to express himself and his life in unconventional ways. Cullen reacts to the “veil” of his parents’ life with his hidden desires unleashed by the sound of rain, evoking a world in which the son “is fain to do a naked tribal dance, each time he hears the rain.” Here, the rain metaphor is liberating and unleashes a connection with the poet’s journey of self-discovery and innermost desired freedoms.

Yet Do I Marvel  is a celebration of his creative gifts, couched within musings on the contradictions within God’s imponderable “plan,” revealing in just a few masterful words the challenges of being a black poet in the America of the 1920s. This is perhaps Cullen’s most well-known poem, which ends with the irony stemming from the divine plan and gifts bestowed upon Cullen in the famous lines: “Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: To make a poet black, and bid him sing!”

She of the Dancing Feet Sings is a vibrant tour de force portrait of a dancer whose body ecstatically sways in glorious enjoyment of life, swirling as a force of nature with “limbs like apple boughs,” despite that the  “gusty rain winds beat.” As is so often the case in Cullen’s poetry, she is inspired to sing as the highest expression of her joy. This dance-song of intoxicating love concludes that if in heaven dancing should be considered a sin, then “The wistful angels down in hell, will smile to see my face, and understand, because they fell from that all-perfect place.” The lilting paean to life in She of the Dancing Feet Sings is also defiant in its rejection of the notion that delirious happiness could ever be “sinful.”

Cullen’s poems can pivot quickly in mood and tone and meaning. In the song cycle, the air-borne ecstasy of the dancer’s song is followed by its dramatic opposite: a pondering of mortality in The Wise, considering what “dead men” know, and what the living must acknowledge as well, that a full life requires also the contemplation of death: “Dead men are wisest, for they know, how far the roots of flowers go, how long a seed must rot to grow.” As we have seen in Heritage and will see again in For Myself, Cullen returns to the image of lying down in darkness, in meditative solitude beyond space and time where deep truths are revealed.

Singing in the Rain is a metaphor for perseverance of the soul through song (the title predates the famous motion picture by decades). In this poem, Cullen explores the darkness symbolized by rain, yet there is a resolve that song and love endure and are the path towards light and joy as expressed in “Oh heart, there’s hope while song can hush the rain” and resolving in the high point of the song cycle that the “soul’s high song” will “beat back the rains.”

Among Cullen’s short poems are several epitaphs, including one titled For Myself. Speaking from and beyond the grave, and while remembering his life as expressed in disembodied musical quotes from prior songs, Cullen returns to the inner contemplation of the first song’s intoning of solitary revelation, now speaking to us from the vantage point of eternity: “Folly and Pride and Love lie here, buried alive with me.”

While several of the poems have been abridged to facilitate the musical settings and dramatic arc, such edits have been done in homage to Cullen, to bring the deep lyric poetry of his story, life, and work into an artistic context in the nature of a biographical portrait in song. For a complete understanding and enjoyment of all of these poems, the three abridged poems are included in this music score in the Appendix, unedited. Experiencing the poems will aid the performer, and listener, in discovering a great poet whose words illuminate the contradictions, burdens and joys of what it means to be alive.

Footnote:

[1] Alain Locke, “Color: A Review,” Opportunity, January 1926, p. 14, quoted in “My Soul’s High Song – The Collected Writings of Countee Cullen, Voice of the Harlem Renaissance” Edited and with an Introduction by Gerald Early, Anchor Books, New York 1991. Early’s essay on Cullen’s life and work is a compelling introduction to the complete writings contained in this essential publication.

Score available for purchase from Subito Music Corp:

https://www.subitomusic.com/product/field-and-i-am-somewhere-worlds-away/

RECORDING:

Mark Edward Smith, Baritone

Aron Kallay, Piano

First Leaf Music Records

Available on all streaming services including:

Spotify: 

https://open.spotify.com/album/3AXYlkCE861ibFB42D3vDi?si=qf0Ez0QEQmWisDKABrksag

Apple Music:

https://music.apple.com/us/album/and-i-am-somewhere-worlds-away/1760175038

YouTube (with scrolling score):  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tP-PwCr61w