The Prodigal Son

Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet

Pioneering Black Chicago Poet Fenton Johnson termed this poem a literary spiritual in his 1915 collection Visions of the Dark. I read it as predecessor to later Gospel songwriting, and so set it to music for this spare solo performance with just acoustic guitar and voice.

This is one example of what the Parlando Project does. We explore various words (mostly literary poetry) and combine them with original music for these performances. You can find over 700 examples of this at our archives and blog frankhudson.org