Essentially, Notes of a Native Son is a rock show with a literary degree. Ini the words of Stew, the composer (with Heidi Rodewald), this 90-minute show is "not a musical nor a play with music. It's a song-cycle, a set, a concert, or put squarely, just a buncha songs with banter in between." And that about sums it up.

But what a description of the show itself can't convey is the sheer joy, the energy, the alive-ness of the music and feeling created by Stew and his band, the Negro Problem.