Five plays representing Hughes' dramatic writing over a period of forty years.

Finally available in trade paperback, Langston Hughes’s breezy parable of good and evil, friendship and betrayal, is an unforgettable portrait of 1950s Harlem and two women called to the pulpit for very different reasons. For every bustling jazz joint that opened in Korean War–era Harlem, a new church seemed to spring up. Tambourines to Glory introduces you to an unlikely team behind a church whose rock was the curb at 126th and Lenox. Essie Belle Johnson and Laura Reed live in adjoining tenement flats, adrift on public relief. Essie wants to somehow earn enough money to reunite with her daughter and provide her with a nice home; Laura loves young men, mink coats, and fine Scotch. On a day of inspiration, the friends decide to use a thrift-store tambourine and a layaway Bible to start a church. Their sidewalk services are a hit: Laura’s a natural street performer who loves the limelight, while Essie is a charismatic singer with a quiet spirituality. Before long they move to a thousand-seat theatre called the Tambourine Temple. The two women are joined in their ministering by Birdie Lee, the little-old-lady trap drummer who can work the congregation to a feverish pitch, and Deacon Crow-For-Day, an impassioned confessor. But then Laura falls for Buddy, a scam artist who suggests selling to the faithful lucky numbers from Scripture and bottles of tap water as “Holy Water from the Jordan.” Even with a Cadillac and piles of money from Laura, Buddy won’t stay faithful, igniting a crime of passion and betrayal. Harlem Moon Classics is proud to reintroduce readers of all generations to this sparkling gem from the canon of Langston Hughes.

In The Development of Black Theater in America, Leslie Sanders examines the work of the American black theater’s five most productive playwrights: Willis Richardson, Randolph Edmonds, Langston Hughes, LeRoi Jones, and Ed Bullins. Sanders sees the history of black theater as the process of creating a “black stage reality” while at the same time transforming conventions borrowed from white European culture into forms appropriate to black artists and audiences. The author argues that only when these things were accomplished could the aim of black playwrights, often articulated as “the realistic portrayal of the Negro,” be fully realized. This study also examines the changing nature of the dialogue black playwrights have held with the dominant tradition and how that dialogue has shaped their imaginations. Sanders’ discussion of Richardson, Edmonds, Hughes, Jones, and Bullins provides a context for approaching the work of other black playwrights, such as James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, and Owen Dodson. And her argument provides a concrete way of understanding how the context of a dominant culture influences the artistic imagination of writers not of that culture, who must come to terms with its influences and transform it into a vehicle of their own.

Presenting an innovative approach to performance studies and literary history, Soyica Colbert argues for the centrality of black performance traditions to African American literature, including preaching, dancing, blues and gospel, and theatre itself, showing how these performance traditions create the 'performative ground' of African American literary texts. Across a century of literary production using the physical space of the theatre and the discursive space of the page, W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, August Wilson and others deploy performances to re-situate black people in time and space. The study examines African American plays past and present, including A Raisin in the Sun, Blues for Mister Charlie and Joe Turner's Come and Gone, demonstrating how African American dramatists stage black performances in their plays as acts of recuperation and restoration, creating sites that have the potential to repair the damage caused by slavery and its aftermath.

First published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This is a five-volume series on major contemporary composers and their works for wind band. Included in this initial volume are rare, behind-the-notes perspectives acquired from personal interviews with each composer. An excellent resource for conductors, composers or enthusiasts interested in acquiring a richer musical understanding of the composers' training, compositional approach, musical influences and interpretative ideas. Features the music of: Timothy Broege, Michael Colgrass, Michael Daugherty, David Gillingham, John Harbison, Karel Husa, Alfred Reed and others.