Sigh. Sometimes I AM the bad guy. I do my best to MAKE the best of bad situations, but sometimes you’ve just got to hold your breath, ignore the stink and get it over with. It’s like cauterizing a wound or amputation or ripping off a band aid. There’s no good way to do it.
I’m going to leave that as one big question mark as I don’t particularly want to get into it. I didn’t gather enough information and got into an uncomfortable position and had to extricate myself – no way to do it gracefully. It left me in a paranoid mood all day yesterday and I was REALLY worried that I’d made another bad call with my feature last night at Teavolve… but I couldn’t have been more wrong about THAT.
It was one of the best nights ever – largely because of that featured artist.
DPtheEMCEE was magnificent. I DO need to trust my instincts. I really have seen few spoken word artists that could hold their own in a room with him – and yet he brought perhaps 4 other artists that did just that. It was exactly what I wanted – importing a bit of slam into my Teavolve open mic. It was an incredible co-mingling of two very, very different open mic cultures and though I know it’s not a permanent mesh, I think there was a lot of respect and awe from both sides.
We sooooort of kept to the PG13 rating of the night with the exception of the word “nigger” (bear with me people, I just feel stupid saying “the n-word”) which was bandied about pretty frequently by the slam side of the night. It’s a cliché that a LOT of poets don’t seem to be able to express themselves without slinging around language that the Teavolve Café & Lounge wants to exclude from their events – but I’ve found the cliché often holds true. I won’t lie – I was nervous going into the night and found myself reiterating the “family-friendly” rule more often than usual – on and off the mic – but we managed to avoid everything but an occasional “I forgot my words shit” (which I tend to excuse) – and frequent use of (sigh) the “n-word”.
At first I was nervous – and then I got worried – and then I got over it. The context here makes this a word that encompasses the stigma that a lot of these artists are climbing away from – almost like you can’t have the rest of the equation without the zero. I haven’t decided about it, don’t quite know how to respond. It’s not an issue I often have, but a number of the artists last night asked about featuring and they were ALL really talented, spectacular performers. We’ll never be more slam than music, but I’d Love to invite that in – the more I can do to break the open mic clichés the better – which means I have to come to terms with some of the differences in culture there. Part of that being the idea that saying “fuck” or “shit” is unacceptable but in the right context “nigger” is.
I think I’ve got to chat with some of the poets last night AND the owner of the venue and have a frank conversation about that. I’ve got questions that I don’t know how to answer… Last night our audience was entirely there for the open mic… but if I’d have had a family in there with their 6 year-old kid I can imagine there having been issue and I DON’T know that the slam artists would curtail themselves.
I’ve got rules, but the art here is TOO important to be ignored – and my brain is a big question mark on the subject. Next Monday I figure we’re back to the regular rules – I’ll give people a warning and if they test me again I’ll cut them off. I’ve got a couple of artists that I know I’ll have to talk to in advance and take a hard line. Last week was a bad precedent, but in the context of a slam cross-over I think it can be explained (it doesn’t NEED to be “excused”) and potentially even repeated joyously.
But as in all things… communication, communication, communication.
