Duration - 28 minutes.
One of the many things that attracts me to Carl Sandburg’s collection of Chicago Poems is how relatable they are today, a century after they were first published. The city of Chicago of Sandburg’s day is still recognizable –the Hungarians of “Happiness” are now perhaps Ethiopians or Mexicans and the street cars have been replaced by the El, but the city and its duality are unchanged.
At once, Chicago is a city both vibrant and unsettling – a city of “wagons and people going” by day, and “voices of dollars and drops of blood” by night. It’s a city of high culture and incredible divides between north and south, rich and poor. Most of all, it’s a city of people and fellow citizens, from warehouse workers and commuters to corner-store owners and billionaires. That’s what Carl Sandburg wrote about, and that’s what these songs are about.
“Clear pools of understatement and reserve, Malmquist’s meditative ‘Masses’ (heard for the first time on Sunday) and selections from his ‘Chicago Songs’ cycle let Sandburg’s verses land the emotional blows, rather than frilling them up with episodic shifts and excessive word-painting.”
-Chicago Tribune
