" Chanje Kunda & Cultureword present Speakfreely."
It was good after a long time away to step back and catch this event. The bar was crowded. I came late and missed a few poets (sorry to them!). The blend of musicians and poets was throwing up interesting performances. I sipped my orange juice and stayed. What did I think of the performances? Chanje was a charming, generous host, there were some superb poets doing their stuff, too many to mention. And there was something else...
To detour slightly, I worked in a bookies (bookmakers) taking bets when I was 18. It was a great job. The crazy gamblers. The great hubbub on Grand National Day and The Derby. It was a fever unlike any other. Ever since , I’ve loved guessing the odds on events. If you told me that Laura Sinclair was going to deliver an accomplished performance blending poetry to Anita Wamuyu’s backing track, plus live xylophone, drums; that she would show no nerves, deliver her words completely in harmony to that music and make the two poems+ music work together, well, I’d have given you 40 to 1. Or if you’d told me Daniella Edwards would land on that Iguana stage with exuberance, grace, charisma and a steely smart set of words, I would have given you even longer odds. Both Laura and Daniella were too new to pull that off, I’d have thought. Yet they did, at Iguana. They were brilliant.
Yes, it was a greta night yet it was the music-poetry hook-ups that delivered best. And it got me to thinking why is that? Here’s some thoughts. When a poet takes the stage sometimes, occasionally, they can come across as a little too comfortable. They are good, and they know they are good. They know their poem inside out. Sometimes they have almost forgotten the poem, they know it so well.
When a musician accompanies them live, poets are made uncertain once again. They cannot go at the poem in their usual manner. They come alive, keen to nuance again. We see them reflecting and reworking the phrasing of the poem to balance how the musician is interpreting it. They have to jazz the poem instead of just deliver it. The musicians (at least the speakeasy musicians) in turn are intelligent artists. They pick up and riff from the poet’s words, suggest alternative or supplementary meanings and rhythms. The poets listen and learn from them, even as they are performing in front of fifty complete and not entirely sober strangers. And that brings me to speakeasy – the collective of musicians who accompanied some of the poets this night. This is where they excel. Improvising music around a poet with a minimum of rehearsal. Yes Speakeasy can do shows, rehearse and create longer works or poetry-music. The musicians are all supremely talented. But the improv sessions with poets are where sometimes something amazing happens, something unrepeatable. In that lovely cliché, ‘you had to be there’. Roll on the next one!