Springing Forward
It was another totally awesome weekend. Friday at Julius Cafe was off da hook, Saturday was smooth on the job (minus the usual antics of ET Boy), Sunday was an even tastier piece of cake and I made it out the door in time for the Meet and Greet at Baobab, prior to the 6-hour Spring Forward in Conciousness gala.It's okay now to admit I had a bad case of jitters, but it wasn't nervousness of self. I had been called upon to produce a quintet of "hot" poets to perform, and contacted seven individuals I thought merited that description. Would they come through? It would reflect on me either way and I was nervous about that. I don't like relying on others any more than I have to.
I had varying degrees of agreement from 6 of the 7, although one of those bowed out at the last minute. Four of the remaining five answered the bell, and yours truly comprised the point and fulcrum for the quintet. Javonte Adams. Carol Owens. Justice Peace. Imani Wagstaff. Jahaka Mindstorm. It easily could be argued that Rochester's best poets were on that stage yesterday. Easily.
(That's Javonte to the left, on his one of his CDs - I have both of the CDs he's produced to this date. They ROCK!)
The success was undeniable, difficult to measure, but I think SWORD (Spoken Word Organization for the Rochester District) was really born yesterday.
We were supposed to be interim entertainment between African and Modern Dance acts. Event Hostess Neima Neteri turned the mic over to me right after the introduction. I did Paul Lawrence Dunbar's We Wear the Mask, and told the audience that would be the last poem they would hear which was not composed by the poet doing the spitting. After performing There I Was, I turned the mic over to Imani for his Can a Poet Get Some? Then to Carol for The Truth About Cotton, Justice for Gound Zero, and Javonte for Mandatory Minimums.
Reception was incredibly warm, Javante sold all the CDs he brought with him (he should have brought more!) and I unloaded nine SeptaVerse booklets. We were supposed to be interim entertainment between dance routines - and the dance routines were awesome. But when all was said and done, the dance routines were interim entertainment to three rounds of poetry that ranged from socially intense, to romantically intense to politically intense; but was always intense.
A warm moment came for me when a gentlemen named Mr. Townsend was attracted to the EROS book because it matched the exact shade of pink as a band in his wife's shirt. Mr. townsend is an engineering supervisor at Kodak and the picture to the right is straight from his business card.
Nice! But is that also a new kind of Homeland Security thing? I mean, if your picture is floating everywhere your business card lands, your privacy must lose a little integrity. I know this might sound cryptic, but it certainly has me going Hmmmmmm...
Capping the entertainment features, after the excellent storytelling of Djed Snead, came the psycholdelic sound of Rochester's premier local band, Black August, and the driving and incredibly on-time 'riddims' of Giant Panda.
Yours truly had a blast and next week, we start doubling up on Open Mic night at Julius.
WHOOPIE!
posted by JahStorm @ 9:59 AM
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