The Evolution of "Fi-Yer," Part Two

Langston Hughes published "Fire" in his first collection of poetry The Weary Blues.


Here is the poem in its entirety.


Fire, Fire, Lord! Fire gonna burn ma soul! I ain't been good, I ain't been clean — I been stinkin', low-down, mean. Fire, Fire, Lord! Fire gonna burn ma soul! Tell me, brother, Do you believe If you wanta go to heaben Got to moan an' grieve? Fire, Fire, Lord! Fire gonna burn ma soul! I been stealin', Been tellin' lies, Had more women Than Pharaoh had wives. Fire, Fire, Lord! Fire gonna burn ma soul! I means Fire, Lord! Fire gonna burn ma soul!


The speaker echoes the traditional Christian understanding that sinners will go to hell and burn forever. With radical honesty the man acknowledges his evil nature and that fire is his inevitable fate. But he asks a question, "Tell me brother, do you believe, if you wanna go to heaven (you) got to moan and grieve?" The implication is that perhaps the life of constricted virtue leading upwards is not worth the price of foregoing pleasure and sin. In any event, the man has made his choice and accepts his place in the Christian afterlife.


When Hall Johnson sets this text to music, he erases all doubt or ambivalence. He repeats the initial stanza again and again and replaces the glimmer of pleasure in the original poem ("Had more women/Than Pharaoh had wives.") with further confirmation of eternal damnation: "Tell me, brother, can't you see/Dem fiery flames wrapped all 'round me." The final extended high note on which the song ends can easily be sung as a wail of despair.


Nugent introduces "Fi-Yer" realistically towards the end of "Smoke, Lilies and Jade" when his autobiographical protagonist, Alex, attends a classical performance in a church with Beauty. "Fy-ah Lawd had been a success . . . Langston bowed . . . Langston had written the words . . . Hall bowed . . . Hall had written the music." But the obsessively repeated lyric, "fire's gonna bu'n ma soul," becomes a leitmotif that sounds throughout the scenes leading to the openly gay embrace. The fire of damnation has become the fire of passion.


Rusty Watson's powerful delivery nicely plays on this admixture of exaltation and despair. Hall's so-called modern spiritual can easily be flattened to a fatalistic acceptance of damnation. Nugent places it in positive context, transforming (perhaps) the Christian trope of fiery damnation into the ecstacy of physical passion. Rusty frees "Fi-Yer" from its art song origins and injects his mastery of gospel into his interpretation. His final soaring "s-o-o-o-u-u-l," the note that pushes Alex into a spontaneous manifestation of his love for Beauty, is overwhelming -- yet ultimately ambiguous.

Recent Posts

richard barthe is standing next to a statue of a man

The Queer Harlem Renaissance and the Visual Arts: Richmond Barthé

By Dr. Robert Philipson • 01 May, 2024
Of the many visual artists born at the turn of the last century who came of age during the Harlem Renaissance, only one has been pegged (no pun intended!) as unambiguously gay -- Richmond Barthé. Perhaps because of this odd underrepresentation (I mean, isn't any boy who dabbles in the arts under suspicion?), the visual arts haven't figured much, or at all, in any inventory of the Queer Harlem Renaissance. (Not that there's been such an inventory, but rest assured, it's coming!)
A black and white photo of a man speaking into a microphone

The Tortured Antisemitism of Amiri Baraka

By Dr. Robert Philipson • 03 Apr, 2024
We want poems like fists beating niggers out of Jocks or dagger poems in the slimy bellies of the owner-jews. These lines, published in a much-anthologized poem written in 1966, spurted from the pen of the most influential and widely known Black writer/poet in America, Amiri Baraka. The poem, “Black Art,” advocated a poetry of violence and revenge: “Poems that wrestle cops into alleys/and take their weapons/ leaving them dead/with tongues pulled out and sent to Ireland.” Other enemies of Black liberation get their meed of bile, but Jews are called out three times, including the invocation of “Another bad poem cracking/steel knuckles in a jewlady's mouth.”
two women are hugging each other in a black and white photo .

The Two Maids of Ethel Waters

By Dr. Robert Philipson • 06 Mar, 2024
In 1950, the superstar singer and actor Ethel Waters checked off another box in her list of African American firsts when she starred in a weekly television series, Beulah. As the name indicates, Beulah was a maid whose raison d'être was to serve her white employers, "Mr. and Mrs. Henderson," and act as a nanny to their son, "Donnie." Although Waters brought as much warmth and humor as she could to the stereotype, the other Black characters portrayed were even flatter and more offensive: "Bill," the unemployed beau who is a braggart and a screw-up; and "Oriole," a ditzy maid (played by Butterfly McQueen, no less!) who works for the family next door.
a man and a woman are sitting next to each other in a black and white photo .

What Do We Do About Carlo?

By Dr. Robert Philipson • 13 Feb, 2024
In 1931, James P. Johnson wrote and recorded a song, "Go Harlem," extolling the extraordinary life of New York's Black Mecca. Among the lyrics: "Like Van Vechten/Start inspection'./Go Harlem!/Go Harlem!/Go Harlem/ Startin' right now." Carl Van Vechten, a white writer, music critic, journalist, photographer, and tastemaker, was such an integral part of the Harlem Renaissance that within the artistic and intellectual circles of the movement he needed no introduction. Hence, the lyric penned by the incomparable Andy Razaf.
Share by: