Rhythm and Poetry: an evening of Hip Hop in the Purcell Room

Posted on July 22, 2011 by Alex Rowse

The wonderful Yemisi Blake  introduced me to the world of spoken word a couple of years ago, and some of the first poets to draw me in were Kate Tempest, Polarbear and Inua Ellams. Last Thursday they and a handful of incredibly talented poets came together under Inua’s curation to present a night of verse inspired by Hip Hop. Heading up the event was Charlie Dark, possibly the funniest man on the scene. He repeatedly expressed his excitement and disbelief that such an event was happening at the Southbank, a ‘nice venue with flushing toilets’, but its an accolade that it deserves- the sp0ken word is an art form valued as highly as the more traditional events of the Literature festival.

The format was simple: one poem by each poet and then two of their favourite Hip Hop tracks. It made for one of the most explosive evenings I’ve spent at the Southbank as an eclectic audience were united by humour, sorrow and a deep rooted love of music. Every single poet was top notch that night, but here are some of my old favourites.

Charlie Dark’s poem explored how his relationship with Hip Hop evolved when he became a father and found himself turning raps into bedtime stories and standing in the corner of the playground  covertly nodding to beats through headphones. A moment I found poignant was when he noted how the misogyny within the songs he’d always loved did not sit well with having a little daughter.

PolarBear is a Brummie poet who anchors his work in the every day to which we can all relate. As expected, his poem was funny and endearing whilst intensely reminiscent of those awkward teenage experiences that are tucked away under more pleasant memories. He talked about playing spin the bottle with ‘Gemma McBride- she smells like CK1 and flumps’ whilst Biggie Smalls talks in his head.

Kate Tempest came on stage to perform something she ‘just wrote’ that she hoped was ‘ok’ and within minutes the entire audience was on their feet. Her voice is like a storm that I urge you to experience; it gathers you up in its accelerating rhythms and earnest intensity. The perfect ending came with Inua Ellams. Velvet-soft tones balanced the humour that had permeated the event, reminding us of the pure power of words and how they can be manipulated.

Congrats to these guys and the other poets for a memorable night of beauty, fun and Hip Hop.

Roger Robinson

Jacob Sam La-Rose

Warsan Shire

Poetic Pilgrimage

Zena Edwards

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We observe and we are observed: A Portrait of the Ordinary Festival-goer

Posted on July 5, 2011 by Alex Rowse

A sunny, but slightly overcast Sunday afternoon and the Riverside Terrace is full of people drinking Pimms and enjoying the festive atmosphere. Amongst the unsuspecting crowd, around 20 people with headphones find a place to sit and watch Inspector Sands’ ’A Portrait of the Ordinary Festival-goer’ unfold. Jaunty, quintessentially  vintage British music plays through our headphones before the voice of ‘Tom Harrison’ played by Ben Lewis announces himself and the Mass Observation project.

Mass Observation was a project founded in 1937 by Tom Harrison which attempted to find out about the average every day Briton. Volunteer observers supplied the project with diaries, questionnaires and documents that now form a fascinating collection of material at the University of Sussex. Inspector Sands’ unique piece of theatre draws upon this idea of observing the masses in order to create an unforgettable experience. As Tom Harrison instructs us to study the people around us and imagine their potential identities, we few with the headphones cast covert smirks as the Riverside Terrace remains mostly oblivious to the drama unfolding. Planted amongst us is Martha, played by Lucinka Eisler, a talented observer who types everything she sees in order for it to be projected on the Royal Festival Hall.

After instructing us to ‘do something’, which saw a pirouette, a kiss and a jump in the air, Tom Harrison asks us to consider the potential of the moment he draws our attention to, amongst others, ‘the women in the green top, talking to a friend’ who emerges as a central character through the very possibilities she encompasses. Natalie, played by Giulia Innocenti, could dance, sing, throw water in the face of her companion or run frantically along the riverside. Who she is and what she could do is the excitement of observing ‘A Portrait of the Ordinary Festival-goer.’

I have no wish to spoil this production for others so I’ll leave it at that. Each performance can be different, according to time of day, weather, mood of the unsuspecting crowd, and that tailoring leaves you feeling like you’ve experienced something very special. Those with the headphones have the key to the wonders created by Inspector Sands, as buried amongst the masses we observe them and we in turn are observed.

Whilst there will be no more performances at Southbank Centre, the black and white beach hut with its ‘fact collecting machine’ remains until the end of the Literature Festival. I spoke to producer Lucy Moore and she explained that this small scale production is leading up to a larger one so if you’re interested, which you should be, I suggest you keep an eye on their website, inspectorsands.com and twitter @Inspector_Sands.

Sound design was by Elena Pena, George Tomlinson was the designer of the interior of the Mass Observation beach hut and costumes were by Yukiko Tsukamoto.

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Owen Jones: class is still an issue

Posted on July 5, 2011 by Alex Rowse

Owen Jones begins by jokingly noting how much younger than his years he appears. But in conversation with Kate Pickett on Saturday to discuss his new book ‘Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class’ he seemed old beyond his time: ‘class’ is now treated as an irrelevant or forbidden word and he’s on a crusade to bring it back into discussion. Jones talked us through the premise of his book, the issues it addresses and answered questions from the audience at the end. ‘Chavs’ is not a soft topic ‘broken Britain’ lament, but is a sustained investigation into the social and economical factors that have resulted in a society where the proud working class appears non existent.

Notable moments in the talk were some surprising examples that Jones gave to contradict the image of Modern Britain pervaded by politicians and the media. The working classes used to be the proud backbone of Britain, yet Jones points out that a recent study showed that people associate the working classes with binge drinking, benefit fraud and that label of ‘chav’. The truth is that the middle classes consume more alcohol, fraud exists in all financial systems, and a shocking percentage of people see Vicky Pollard as an accurate representation of the working class. He points out the cases of Shannon Matthews and Madeleine McCann as a prominent example of class divide in coverage by the media.

What can be done? According to Jones a key problem is the lack of working class MPs and journalists to represent the diversity of Britain. Jones notes that for change to occur we need journalists who will portray the reality of the situation, but in a time where unpaid internships and expensive degrees are necessary, how can this happen? Add this to recent government cuts where the places that provide a service to those who cannot afford to go elsewhere- libraries, Citizens Advice Bureaux, Connexions career advice etc, and it’s clear that Jones’ assertion that the poor are often blamed for their circumstances rings true.

Jones’s aim is ‘to get people talking about class again, especially in the recession’ and with this book he will certainly suceed. I’ll be picking up a copy to read more from a rightfully angry crusader who is attempting to change the representation of the working class in Britain today.

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Girl Fawkes: London Dreamtime

Posted on November 8, 2010 by Alex Rowse

Visitors to Southbank Centre’s regular Friday Tonic were welcomed last week by the smell of kerosene and a buzz of excitement as performers from Perfect Circle Poi spun arches of fire through the crisp November air in preparation for Girl Fawkes. Ladyfest Ten were taking over and it was a perfect taster for this coming weekend’s festival of music, spoken word, comedy and more.

That early evening, the Front Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall was filled with the absolutely beautiful sound of You Are Wolf, who layers her voice to create haunting landscapes of poetry and song. Catherine Brogan followed with performance poetry that was laugh out loud funny while bridging the personal and the political. The event was spectacularly ended by my new favourite folky-pop band Lulu and the Lampshades. The girls and boy have gorgeous voices, they use a type-writer as a legitimate instrument and their youtube video I’ve posted above is possibly the best thing I’ve seen in a long time (I account for quite a few of those 480,880+ views). They remind me of early Regina Spektor, The Magnetic Fields and (I’m sorry) a tiny bit of Tegan & Sara’s earlier songs, but have a great sound of their own that simply makes me happy. I won’t gush anymore but please do check them out.

The people who I really want to go on about were London Dreamtime featuring performer and songwriter Katy Carr. The trio opened Girl Fawkes with a story that painted a picture of a ghostly, old-time South London where a young girl is buried alive in a circus act, only to be consumed by the spirits that lay below. There is so much joy to be had in being told a story, and the perfect combination of Vanessa Woolf’s narrative, Nigel of Bermondsey’s music and Katy Carr’s vocals was hypnotic to the point where I was an eager as a child to hear what would happen next. Before the event, I’d had the pleasure of meeting Vanessa and Katy for a quick chat on storytelling and the inspiration behind the ghostly tale they were telling that night.

When the door of the dressing room opened, the first thing that struck me was the beautiful 1940s vintage looks of the two women in front of me. The second thing was their absolute friendliness as they ushered me into the room and settled down in order to discuss their work. Ladyfest is to Vanessa ‘a celebration of women in art’ and is generally known as an arts movement with a very DIY spirit. It’s a kind of feminism through creativity that Ladyfest supports in order to make sure that female artists are given a platform for their work, and Vanessa fits with the values of the festival as she retells stories in order to address the patriarchal stereotypes or cliched gender roles that are often so embedded within fairytales.

‘There are lots of traditional stories out there which I get very frustrated with because they’re good stories but they often hold very old-fashioned view points. They seem to have attitudes on things that not only are they encapsulating but as you tell the story you’re almost passing it on and I really feel strongly that as a storyteller I want to tell stories that reflect the world view that I care about and the things that I think are important. For example I would never tell the story of the Princess and the Pea because you know, how do they find out if she’s a real princess or not? Oh because she’s so delicate (laughs)…I love these stories because they’re fantastic stories, but I want to tell them differently. So quite often I will change the gender of the heroes, or I’ll have two women together or two men together…you want to change those aspects in a story so it’s not just the same old crap.’

Certainly nothing that London Dreamtime performed could be called ‘the same old crap’. The pairing of Vanessa and Nigel of Bermondsey works because of their use of spoken word and song to look at the same subject. ‘We’re inspired by the same sorts of mythology and bits of history of London, and so what will quite often happen is that I will write a story and he will write a song about the same thing.’ Katy Carr was the guest vocalist to Vanessa and Nigel of Bermondsey, or more complexly ‘ambient, sonic, sound additional person’ as Vanessa christened her. Not only did Katy use her voice to aid the spine-tinging atmosphere of Vanessa’s story, but followed that by joining Nigel in performing the song he’d written called ‘In the Garden, where she calls her part: ‘the voices of the Cross Bones Graveyard in Southwark.’

The Cross Bones Graveyard is the inspiration behind Vanessa’s story as well, and a place that the two ladies are incredibly concerned about the fate of. Since medieval times, this piece of unhallowed land has been a place for the burial of ‘single women’, or less politely, prostitutes. Says Vanessa, that prior to Cromwell ‘these prostitutes were actually licensed by the Church yet they weren’t considered good enough to be buried on consecrated ground.’ Her story was inspired by thinking what would be found if you dug down into a place ‘so overcharged with dead’. Katy tells me that a campaign is being run to turn this area of land  into an official memorial garden instead of the carpark that TFL are proposing, so that the souls of the prostitutes who were treated with such hypocrisy by the Church can finally be given some respect. It’s a cause that really deserves some attention and you can find more information on the graveyard and an upcoming fundraiser on the 2nd of December here.

As I said my goodbyes to Vanessa and Katy and went upstairs to take my seat amongst the crowd, a sense of optimism took hold of me and only grew as the event progressed. Girl Fawkes made me feel incredibly positive; positive to find people who boldly campaign for what they believe in and positive that at a great feminist arts event there can be no negativity whatsoever. Ladyfest Ten is taking place from the 12th until the 14th of November in various London venues and you can buy tickets here.

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Gary Younge asks ‘Who are we?’

Posted on July 21, 2010 by Alex Rowse

I have a confession to make. On Tuesday the 6th of July I had the opportunity to speak to the writer and journalist Gary Younge ahead of the discussion of his latest book, ‘Who Are We- And Should It Matter in the 21st Century?’, in the Purcell Room at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. And I’ve been sitting on this chat for far too long. The problem is that Gary is far too an intelligent and eloquent journalist for a sapling of a journalist like me to feel comfortable writing about, but it was an absolute pleasure to talk to a man who I admire for his writing, his liberalism and his humanity.

Bidisha, who chaired the event, blogged about it here as did Comfort here.

‘Who Are We?..’ discusses the problematic nature of the labels of race, religion and gender, when really it is our experiences as humans that shape who we really are. Gary draws on case studies from all over the globe to highlight the notion that what our individual ‘identities’ are too often depends on who is judging or asking- but we should find a common higher ground to overcome the issues that come hand in hand with identity. The numbers of people with mixed-race heritage are rising, Britain is in a quandary over the influx of immigrants to its shores and to top it all there is a test of ‘Britishness’ for those hoping to make the move to ‘our green and pleasant land’. We don’t know who we are, and there is no better time for this book.

As a black man of Barbadian heritage who grew up in England and now lives in New York, Gary Younge has personal experience of the difficulties involved in being asked where one is from, . Like him, when I’m asked where I’m from I struggle, as generally the asker is not satisfied with ‘West Sussex’ when they can see Chinese blood in me. What genuinely aggravates me is that pesky ‘equal opportunities’ form where I find myself reluctantly ticking the ‘Mixed-other’ box. But as Gary says ‘those boxes are not meant to make us feel good, but to give us a sense of what’s going on.’ He points out France as a country that does not track race within it’s census, as they say that everyone is French. But not everyone is treated as French, and Gary advocates the census as a way to ‘bring order to the chaos’.

‘Race is nonsense, but it’s a nonsense that has meaning unfortunately. There is only one race, and that’s the human race. It’s how we’re split up that has meaning.’

Universal experience is examined within ‘Who Are We?…’ and it’s Gary’s own experiences on his travels across America that provided a catalyst for the writing of this book. ‘What I had been thinking was made particularly acute by the responses to 9/11 where we were forced to choose between American Imperialism or Muslim Fundamentalism. It forced us to pick sides when there should have been more space, more human space.’ It is that idea of humanity as the higher common ground that threads throughout ‘Who Are We?’ and through merely talking to Gary. When he says such things as ‘I look forward to the day when race is as meaningless as height’, it does not sound idealistic but achievable, and that was the audible consensus of the audience after hearing him speak. Inspiration is contagious it seems.

I asked Gary how he would respond to the question of his own identity now, having solidified his ideas into a book. His honest answer was that becoming a father had changed how he perceives himself far more than writing ‘Who Are We?…’ did, but his response to others would depend upon who they were. At the event he told a story about his son at nursery who was told by three different children: ‘you’re black’. The mother of the one white child freaked out. It’s amusing but also telling about politics involved with identity. For instance (and I’m wary of racial categories now) a young white person asking Gary where he is from, could very well get a different response to an elder black person. But the simple question ‘who are you?’? For the author of an incredibly thought-provoking book, the answer would be ‘me? I’m Gary.’

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The Prince of Pop Culture

Posted on July 19, 2010 by Alex Rowse

Bret Easton Ellis’s stint of publicity in the UK for ‘Imperial Bedrooms’ includes a video interview with the Guardian in which he develops some of the topics that were up for discussion in last week’s reading and Q&A in the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

You can view the video here.

It’s interesting viewing for anyone who missed out on the LLF event as he’s such a dry, sarcastic character- really what you’d expect from reading his novels. Susie Feay, our chair for evening, got some great answers out of him including the information that ‘a novel comes from pain and chaos’, which really does nothing to dispel the myth that creative people are all manic depressives. My regret is not asking Ellis what he meant by stating in the audience’s Q&A that he didn’t see what was so wrong with misogyny. I hope he was joking, just as he pretended not to know who Baudrillard is, but Ellis pointing out that Hemingway was a misogynist in his time does in no way mean that it’s acceptable in ours.

The audience’s Q&A did descend into comedic chaos as one…two…three questions about Ellis’s fondness for reality television show ‘The Hills’ were asked, and the ‘American Psycho’ author had no qualms about rejecting questions about his philosophical influences that he didn’t want to answer. It was hilarious, but also a shame as for a person who has never been a huge fan of Ellis’s, I was looking forward to finding out more about the man who writes the most brutal sex scenes I’ve ever heard of. That’s why I find this video interview so compelling. At Southbank Centre he touched upon the violence within his work, drily saying that ‘I guess I should have known that people are emotional even though a book is made up with made up people’ and here  he goes a little deeper with the Guardian in his discussion of the link between love and sadism.

All credit for the title to Charlotte, my fellow Storyboxer.

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Storytelling

Posted on July 17, 2010 by Alex Rowse

I’m no storyteller but I do enjoy a good yarn, so ahead of the Storybox Live event tomorrow (which I’ve been part of organising) I thought I’d share a couple of stories I’ve collected from people over the London Literature Festival.

It’s a while back, but on the 5th of July I saw John Agard, Val Bloom, Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze and Grace Nichols in the Purcell Room at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Now last year, the most vibrant and fitting event to end the LLF came in the form of John Agard headlining a line up of young poets and musicians. That night I was so elated by the king of Caribbean poetry’s performance (of ‘Palm Tree King’ amongst others) that I merrily skipped through puddles and torrential rain on my way home. It’s a very cliche activity that you must try if you’re ever in that kind of mood. So of course, I was looking forward to seeing John Agard performing with his contemporaries, the people who share his rhythmic, musical, storytelling style of poetry. But before the performance began, I found myself sitting next to a lovely lady called Anne Keely, who happened to be a guest of John Agard’s and an old friend of his who was part of the literary scene in the 70s when John and Grace Nichols’ careers were just starting. She began to tell me about a vast, old humber keel barge that she used to own in Greenwich, near the Cutty Sark, which was a floating children’s bookshop- in fact the only specialist children’s bookshop in London at the time. The barge never sailed around but poets and authors, including John Agard, came to it to do workshops and readings. Anne also mentioned that she had ‘The Book Bus’, a red double decker that would tour London Schools, and this was going from the late 70s until about 1994 or 1995.

Aren’t these two bookshops the the most fantastic images? In my head I see a long, creaky old barge with shelves and shelves of wonderful books where you could sit and read whilst the Thames gently lapped against the flaking paint of the boat. I like to think of The Book Bus zooming around London with my favourite childhood characters all sitting aboard, waiting to be discovered- maybe Moonface from The Faraway Tree, Aslan and Prince Caspian, the sisters from Ballet Shoes, the Hungry Caterpillar, the March sisters, Matilda…I must stop before I get too nostalgic and abandon the end of the LLF for the dusty cardboard boxes of books in my mother’s attic.

So thank you Anne for sharing your memories with me, I hope I got the details correct and that you don’t mind me projecting my nostalgic ideals onto your bookshops!

The night before I had seen the wonderful Population- Lemn Sissay, Gary Crosby, Peter Edwards and Tomorrow’s Warriors Jazz Orchestra. I cannot even describe how atmospheric and hypnotic the combination of these people was, but Nkechi did here.

Afterwards I managed to grab a quick chat with Lemn and whilst we were talking his friend Nod Knowles joined us and the two began to have a conversation reminiscing on how Lemn and Gary Crosby had come to meet:

Nod: Long time ago, before the war, I first saw Lemn on stage in Exeter and Devon Arts Centre in the late 80s, with Jack Dee on a double bill! The moment I saw him I really clicked with his poetry, partly because my son is from Manchester and I recognised that voices. I was programing all of the jazz music for Bath International Music Festival and have done until very recently, for many years, so I brought Lemn along to do a little interlude with Andy Shepherd (jazz musician and composer), just to see how it would be to have a poet and some music together, and that worked well. Somehow we got you together with some other musicians….

Lemn-The David Murray Big Band Tour

Nod- Yes but Gary (Crosby) wasn’t on that tour. Then we had a small group with Kenrick Rowe and Alec Dankworth and then the British Council wanted to do some work overseas with him so Gary got the gig with you and Jonathan G was the piano player…and do you know what Gary just said to me? ‘I’ve been waiting years to get together with Lemn  again’.

Lemn- Yeah he said that to me!

Nod- Lemn, that was absolutely superb, Peter Edwards…the writing…extrodinary…everything about that was right and I don’t say that often, every single thing about that was right.

So a lovely little snippet of memories there, peppered with some very impressive names from the world of jazz. One more thing I’d like to share with you is something very interesting that Lemn said about his dilemma on whether or not to accept the MBE, and his acceptance of it. He said, ‘the queen’s head is on every note I use, so am I not going to use that money? This land is owned by the Duke of Westminister, the Queen’s the patron of the Southbank Centre…So if I’m going to turn it down on principle, there’s a whole lot of other things I’d have to do to match up to that.’ I don’t think this man ever says anything that isn’t eloquent enough to quote.

If you’d like to see some of the photographs, quotes and poetry that the Storybox team have collected and created in response to events over the festival, please come to our free event tomorrow in the Front Room of the Queen Elizabeth Hall between 1pm and 5pm. There will be performances at 1pm and 3pm, the twitter typewritter, a polaroid stall, some interactive art by Charlotte Emily and other exciting things including a soundscape of interviews and recordings, crafted by Will Munro. By the end of the afternoon we hope to have filled our ‘storybox’ with drawings, writings and photographs from us and our audience, and it’ll be opened out to reveal a collage of responses to the Literature Festival.

http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/find/literature-spoken-word/tickets/storybox-live-53709

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=140547589304926&index=1

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A little chat with Siobhan Dunne, director of Inferno 2010

Posted on July 5, 2010 by Alex Rowse

On Saturday in the scorching heat, the roof of the Queen Elizabeth Hall became the stage for a witty and powerful performance of Dante’s Inferno. Siobhan Dunne, the director, kindly gave me 10 minutes of her time to tell us a bit about street theatre, modern-day hell and the company’s trip to Poland

Dante and Virgil

If you could just describe who you and the performers are?

I’m the director and these are 13 of my students, predominantly first year, doing a foundation degree in Performing Arts at Barnet College, three second-years and four professional performers who also teach the students. So it’s nice to combine something of student work and professional work.

Now the brochure describes the classic stories series as ‘breathing new life into great literature’. How are you placing ‘Inferno’ in contemporary culture, and what were the origins of these ideas?

Firstly the origins of the performance is that the festival we’re going to in Poland has a theme of ‘fire’ this year, and I thought okay great, I’ve always wanted to look at Dante’s Inferno as a performance piece. Then later they said that another theme was ‘the city’. Now I’d already started setting the performance in London 2010 so it was perfect, we didn’t need to change anything. We’re looking at 2007, the idea of the Lehman Brothers, and the whole stock exchange crash. We have Dante working in the London Stock Exchange.

This piece of theatre is for the International Festival of Street Theatre in Krakow, Poland. How did you and your students come to be part of that?

The festival is every year and we got into that because I took a group of students there 6 years ago to look at Polish theatre. The Poles do physical theatre like no one else, and they’re fantastic at it. Street theatre is very popular there and it’s not here, it’s not part of our culture and we don’t quite get it. We’re quite fearful of things that happen in the street and walk away thinking they’re exhibitionists or beggars. So this is our 5th year. Last year we did a totally new piece, the year before it was the Bible, the year before that- Don Quixote. So the themes are always changing but it just fitted in perfectly with the Literature Festival.

For your students, as young people, is being involved in an international festival a big thing for them?

They’re all aged 19-20 with a couple of mature students so it’s a big deal, they have to audition and show the ability to use their bodies in a certain way because it’s performance without words so they’re having to try a whole new technique and style.

It must be exciting to do theatre that practices without the barrier of language.

Yes, it has to be an international piece, and the Poles are very well read. When we did Don Quixote there, people were coming up to us and saying ‘Oh you did this bit and that bit’ and I was thinking, if we’d done it here to an English audience would we have had that same level of understanding? I don’t know.

As a director of street theatre, the importance of the environment must make it extremely different to traditional theatre. Do you have a preference?

I don’t think that it’s a case of preference but it’s very different. I would encourage anyone who is non-traditional performance based, any artist, to think ‘what can I do with this?’ Mostly spaces lend themselves to dance but it’s harder to get theatre in there or performance based installation without making the audience anxious or nervous, thinking ‘what are they going to do?’.

So being part of a wider festival such as the London Literature Festival perhaps makes street theatre such as Inferno 2010 more accessible to an audience who aren’t used to this type of performance. Do you think that street theatre will eventually become more popular as part of modern theatre?

Ironically it might be a bonus that’s come out of global warming! We’ve got these hotter seasons that are less wet. There’s also the fact that our indigenous population is changing, and so cultural benefits come out of that.

Absolutely, the arts are becoming much more experimental. So to finish, what does it mean for you and your students to be part of Southbank’s London Literature Festival?

It’s a huge treat. The students initially thought the term Literature was not for them, as whilst they read a lot of texts and plays they don’t necessarily read a lot of novels. But I think what’s really good is that they’re thrown in at the deep end and it’s a different context for us. It’s very exciting and we’re very pleased that Tamsin asked us.

Hell

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The Science of Beatboxing

Posted on July 3, 2010 by Alex Rowse

Day one at the London Literature Festival for me, and I’ve already had that schoolgirl ‘wow’ moment where you get the uncontrollable urge to tell everyone what you’ve seen today. Thanks to Professor David M. Howard, a specialist in the human voice, and the UK’s finest beatboxers Gracious B and MC Zani, the audience of this week’s Friday Tonic were treated to a collaboration between science and the arts that showed just how exciting our vocal chords can be. Here I present you with some shaky, but interesting, flip footage of Gracious B and Zani performing together on stage, a brief interview with the three participants of the event and finally a little improv that the lovely beatboxers did for the Storybox team.

David M Howard

MC Zani

Gracious B

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Where To?

Posted on July 12, 2009 by Alex Rowse

It’s strange to think that seven weeks ago I was sitting in the Royal Festival Hall with a group of young people I’d never met before, being recruited as a young curator. Now it’s been two days since the show which Jamal, Jayga, Rosie and I have been working towards for so long. From the feedback I’ve received I think it went incredibly well; the Front Room was packed and there was a great buzz that lasted long after the show had ended.

Whilst I’m normally quite composed, there were moments in the lead up to the show that brought on mild hyperventilation and verbal vomiting of ‘Ohmygodohmygod’. At one point Yemisi, Jamal and I were adding up the times of all the acts when we realised, despite numerous previous checks, that we were 20 minutes over. After brutally cutting the interval, shaving minutes off sets and making Yemisi swear the keep the hosting short we squeezed our busy busy show into the allocated time with no room for mistakes or overrunning. Another of my panics came on when with great excitement we received our 2000 flyers…with Woe, the house band, wrongly named ‘Woe Live’, so my sincere apologies to them.

All of the artists were absolutely amazing on the day and despite the headlining grime artist No.Lay never turning up, it felt (I hope!) like a complete experience from start to finish. Personal highlights for me were the collaboration between Woe and poet Kaiz La Kazie, the beautiful Jasmine Cooray’s vivid stories, finally seeing my co-curators Jamal and Rosie perform, Malik Marland’s amazing poetry, soul singer Aruba Red, the exciting art being created throughout the show by Rachel Sale and Sophie Gate …basically everyone! It was lovely to see so many familiar faces that I’ve met during my time at the Southbank Centre in the crowd such as Rachel Holmes, Paul Blezard and Rosie Goldsmith.

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Jasmine Cooray

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Rosie Knight and her lovely dress

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Rachel Sale and Sophie Gate near the end of their painting

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Rachel Holmes and Paul Blezard

Unfortunately the rest of my photos aren’t the best as I still haven’t quite mastered my camera settings, but do take a look here.

A huge pat on the back to Jamal, Jayga, Rosie, Yemisi, Zenith, all the artists and everyone who came. Thanks heaps!

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