Your Revolution Was Televised

Okay Sarah Jones, let's talk. Your poem, Your Revolution, lifted my spirits this weekend. I was able to reminisce through your use of sampling to move the narrative forward in this piece. Loving the musicality of this poem, I read it over and over and over. This is clearly one function of having a poem appear on the page -- the reader gets to experience it more than once. However, I wanted to see you perform this piece -- so I used technology to give me the next best thing.

Your Revolution

So I watched the video and you used the songs you sampled just as I expected you to and I still found myself wonderfully surprised. So having both the page and the stage versions gave me more access points, more clarity of how the songs work as text and more reasons to read and experience the work again.

I could see/hear this piece on a stage before seeing you perform it. I cannot imagine this poem without movement. It feels like a song itself – the rhythm and the cadence of the lines are powerful AND for those of us from this generation of music, we know where to sing, hum, and bob. It’s wonderful in that way. A road map through my musical history.

Going from page to stage enhanced this piece. It is meant to be spoken/performed because there is too much music and energy from one line to the next for it to only live on the page. Ironically, it can live on the page, but without the performance to accompany it in the Universe, it would also die on the page. Both are necessary.

In this poem, you use lines from popular songs to make a point about the music industry:

Think I'm a put it in my mouth just cuz you made a few bucks?

Please brother please

Your revolution will not be me tossing my weave

And making me believe I'm some caviar-eating ghetto mafia clown

Or me giving up my behind, just so I can get signed

And maybe having somebody else write my rhymes

I'm Sarah Jones, not Foxy Brown

and I get what you are doing here, but wonder why you selected to omit this in the Def Poetry performance -- was it only about the 3 minute time limit or was there more? Was there some commentary you felt comfortable putting on the page, but not saying on the stage? That givees me great questions about audience and intent and how performance poetry interacts with both in a way that page poetry does not and vice versa.

You make some really political statements about male and female relationships too,

Your revolution will not happen between these thighs

The real revolution ain't about booty size

The Versaces you buys

Or the Lexus you drives

And though we've lost Biggie Smalls

Baby, your notorious revolution

Will never allow you to lace no lyrical douche in my bush

Your revolution will not be you killing me softly with Fugees

Your revolution ain't gonna knock me up without no ring

And produce little future emcees

Because that revolution will not happen between these thighs

and about sex:

Because that revolution will not happen between these thighs

Oh, my Jamaican brother, your revolution will not make you feel

Bombastic and really fantastic

And have you groping in the dark for that rubber wrapped in plastic

You will not be touching your lips to my triple dip of french

vanilla, butter pecan, chocolate deluxe

Or having Akinyele's dream, (mm hmm)

A 6-foot blowjob machine (mm hmm)

You want to subjugate your queen? (uh-huh)

Think I'm a put it in my mouth just cuz you made a few bucks?

Simply using the word "revolution" over and over again, you build up a call to action that unfortunately never plays out fully in the end of the poem,

Because the real revolution

That's right I said the real revolution

You know I'm talking about the revolution

When it comes, it's gonna be real

The funny thing is that this ending works in performance more than it works on the page. On the page I have more time with the ending and while it sounds great on stage, it has very little revolutionary quality. It does not play with language in a revolutionary way, nor does it revolutionize the poetic elements -- but I only get this because I sit with it on the page much longer than I do when you push it to me from the stage.

It makes me wonder if initially, you wrote this for the page or for the stage.
Let's talk...

peacelovelight
Kiala

Page and stage

For me whether or not a poem translates from page to stage or vice versa depends completely on the poet who is trying to make the transitions and I think that the work for this week exemplifies that. Each poet has an opportunity to make her work move able and it’s the effort that's important.

For instance Rock Me, Goong Hay! by Alvin Eng didn’t really translate into performance for me. I felt that hearing him sing/speak the poem/song that it lost a lot of the power of the words. He was just sort of yelling and we missed the words, which to me seemed so clever. I didn’t get to hear: “ Yellow fever was our lot in this country/ Now we’re the so-called ‘model minority’/ Which really don’t mean shit if you think about it/ ‘Cause plenty still despise our slanty eyes” (59) which I really wanted to come through in the performance. Maybe it was the quality of the video itself but I felt as though the performance was more about the music than the poem/lyrics and they just sort of threw something on top of the music. What stood out from the performance was that title line of “Rock Me, Goong Hay!” but it missed the verses, which were the more important and thought provoking parts.

On the other hand, Nigger-Reecan Blues by Willie Perdomo had all the elements of a good page to stage poem. The content is interesting and funny while still thought provoking. The voices used are each distinct and speak for themselves:
“—Tu no eres Puerto Riqueno, brother.
--Maybe Indian like Gandhi Indian.
--I thought you was a Black man
--Is one of your parents white?
--You sure you ain’t a mix of something like
--Portuguese and Chinese?
--Naaaaahhhh… You ain’t no Porta Reecan
--I keep telling you: The boy is a Black man with an accent.” (Aloud, 112)

With out hearing it performed I could hear the different tones and inflections of the voices. Then when I watched the YouTube video the poem was completely enhanced by Perdomo’s charming personality and theatrical presentation. The voices that he used enhanced his already captivating language.

There was also the work that seemed like it was purely created for the stage such as with the Aya de Leon piece. It was interesting and innovative but I imagine that if I could see it on the page it wouldn’t have the same bite. A lot of the importance of the piece was based in timing and in being able to see the movement that the performer was making around the stage. I think that there isn’t a way to communicate the movement

Sarah Jones & Aya de Leon

There is a visual element to performance—the effect of which cannot truly be replicated on the page. Of course, timing, beat, intonation & other elements also change from page to stage, but I am thinking mainly of movement, expression and costuming—specifically in comparing Sarah Jones’ “Your Revolution” and Aya de Leon’s “Hoe Supastar.” I found both to be pretty incredible. They are going after a similar problematic element of the African American hip hop industry—the exploitation of women in the interest of self-representation. Both are edgy and cut-throat; one is straight-up declarations through rhyme, the other is satire & musical performance.

I read the Jones first—I picked up on the musical references & was singing the lines of the songs in my head that were inserted into the poem; I didn’t need a performance there. I also immediately fell into the rhythm of the lines, picked up the beat and the rhyme scheme, and was experiencing the piece as a musical critique of a music industry. The last three lines read as a bit of a letdown for me. I was grooving with the repetition and the rhyme, expecting the climax (what IS the real revolution?) but then it just.. ended. Although I could see it working in terms of content, it left me wanting a more satisfying wrap-up of the pulsing rhythm. I’d like to hear how Jones would read this, I’m think she had a plan with those last lines, as everything in the piece seems so carefully chosen. Maybe her pause, her intonation & her positioning would have made it all come together better for me.

Now, when I watched Aya de Leon’s piece (at least as much as I could because the sound cut out of the youtube video early in the second half…), I have to admit, my ears were burning. I felt shy and excited about the way she presented herself. For a moment, I wondered if I should be offended, particularly because of the intro to the piece, played with no visuals against a darkened screen:

Next up is one of the most controversial artists of our day. Also on the Mighty Ignant label. She has been called one of the 10 most negative women in the U.S. by Ms. Magazine, and her world tour was picketed by angry women in Europe and Japan. Give it up y’all for Lady XXX-Rated.

I wondered if the correct link was sent out, and braced myself for what I was going to see. Then I thought of the Performance Group—Meg, Naamen, Micah & Jennifer—and told myself: Cool it, and trust these folks. Lady XXX-Rated struts onto the stage, displaying her body in her skimpy outfit to a cheering crowd. Once she started speaking, I understood that all this—the clothes, the wig, the announcer—was part of the image she was creating. She was in character—a character in the unique position of being a participant in a misogynistic element of the hip hop industry, but also an outspoken proponent of her placement within that industry (or at least the benefits that could be reaped from it).

This was taking Patricia Smith’s skinhead poem to another level—de Leon’s character is so fluid that we are forced to wonder whether there is some truth to her, and question how we fall in relation to her. de Leon further implicates the viewer in this manner when Lady XXX-Rated calls out the feminists of the Ivory Tower for critiquing her. So we are unable to write this character off as a subjugated woman who doesn’t even realize she is creating more problems for other women because then we are those finger-pointing, disconnected critics. And everybody seemed to freaking love Lady XXX-Rated (not sure if she is a parody of an actual person..). As soon as she started singing & dancing my cheeks burned even more. I loved the beat even though the lyrics made me angry. I loved the confidence of this woman, how assured she was in her body—even though I know this was supposed to represent a false confidence and problematic representations of the body.

So we are wooed by this character while at once aware of how she is knocking “herself” down. de Leon creates a fabulously complex image with this piece: she triggers our love for a good beat & an engaging character, and uses it to break down the entrapping misogyny of the mainstream (corporate) hip hop machine. She is using her body to display the misdirected way women have used they bodies to gain a lucrative position in a classist/racist nation. The costuming & movement she incorporates are absolutely critical to the success of this piece—making me wonder what effect it could have had on the page. But de Leon doesn’t give us the easy out, either, of being disgusted by or critical of this representative character. Because this character has a voice. The final message, if there can be one in so few words, is that we need to come down not on the women in this industry, but on those who put them in these positions; and, we need to reclaim this art from, as women, for our own self-representation & direct financial gain.

And, just a minute… could that be the “real revolution?”

Performance

The page and the stage have a complex relationship. Reading poetry on the page is one activity, reading it aloud yourself is another, and having the poet recite/read/perform it is yet another.

I can read it on the page, and with the guidance of language, form, arrangement, and punctuation, I can get some of the intonations and meanings the poet designed in the poem. If I read it aloud, I both see it on the page and hear it outside of my head, and it increases the sensory experience. In forming the words in my own mouth and ears, I’m actively re-creating the poem. If the poet is performing the piece, I’ve got the image of the poet as well as the images the poet has created in the poem, along with the aural experience of listening to the words, the tones, and the focus of the poet – both in the moment and when the poem was written. Presumably, the poet communicates his or her intention in the reading and the performance of his or her own poem, and I get some information that I might not have by reading the poem myself. My impressions and my interpretations of the poem are different because of the emotion, the expression, the life the poem is given by the performance. One drawback of watching the performance is that I can’t have it repeated as many times as I want as I can with reading the poem myself. I get so much depth reading a poem again and again that I miss that experience with the performance. Sometimes the beauty of a word cluster or choice of language fades into the performance of the piece. If I’m watching the performance on video, I can watch it over and over again, but I may miss something anyway if the words go by too fast or if two performers talk over each other or if there’s music and it’s distracting in some way.

The poem on the page is the same words and form every time, but my reading might change depending on where I am, what mood I’m in, or for what purpose I’m reading it. The poet has done what he or she could to present his or her message, but now that I’m reading it, it’s all about me. With the poem on the stage, the poet is center-stage – in the moment – to present the poem. The poem can change with each performance. My listening may change depending on the same factors as with reading it, but there are fewer filters for the form because the poet is performing it, and the breaths, the stopping, the continuing are done for me. The poet controls how I hear it and has the freedom to add, delete, pause, use facial expressions, and use body language to contribute to the meaning of the poem. I am no longer responsible for approaching the poem with just what I bring to the poem; I have visual and auditory clues to assist me in my understanding.

Willie Perdomo, in “Nigger-Reecan Blues,” adds to the piece and changes it in his performance. He brings the conversation to life and creates the dialogue. There’s more humor – there’s different voices. It’s more of a one-man show – a play where he’s doing all the parts. He goes faster than I could read it and, although I couldn’t get every word in the performance, the expression and emotion is clearly better than I could do myself either in my head or aloud.

In Alvin Eng’s, “Rock me Goong Hay,” the performance is so much more about the music than the words. It was livelier and happier than reading it on the page. Where there was anger on the page, there was joy in the music. I had read the poem first and did not expect this performance for this poem. Everyone is smiling and bopping to the music, each musician is introduced and has a solo, there’s community and individuality. The concert atmosphere overshadowed the message in this poem for me. The caps on the page transferred to his shouting at the end, but the repetition of “Rock Me, Goong Hay” was the refrain that stayed in my head after the performance was over. There was confusion between the presentation on stage and the words in the anthology. When I read the poem, I felt the twist of the Chinese New Year’s greeting, but when I watched the performance, it was just a snappy entry into the rhythm and beat of the music. I found myself rocking along, but I lost the words and, therefore, the point of the piece as I understood it from the writing on the page.

“Tito Puente” was a performance for which we did not have the words on the page, and I think that helped. I took it for a performance, did my best at hearing and understanding the words, and appreciated this different entry point. The two performers, Meyda Del Valle and Lemon, talked over each other in parts, but the musical effects they produced were very cool, and I could actually see the homage – the reasons for the admiration and adoration – in their interaction. I don’t know how this would be done on the page.

Sarah Jones’ “Your Revolution,” for which we did not have the video, leapt off the page for me. I went looking for the video after I read it because I knew I needed the poet. I needed her voice, not my own, to say these words, to give it the full visual sound. The version I found varied a little from the words we had, but the tone, the attitude, the posture was there in the performance. I had read and re-read the piece on the page and looked up the referentials I did not know, but seeing Jones perform the piece did much more for my understanding.

I’m going to still read poems on the page, but if there are performances available, I’m going to look for them because the “vivid imagery” of poetry is made that much more vivid and visible by hearing it and seeing it performed by the person who created it.

Sheila Joseph