Reviewed by William Ashanti Hobbs
The weekly Poetry Jam at the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge, Massachusetts, under the guidance of producer actor/saxophonist and Poetry Jam Collective founder Jeff Robinson, is celebrating its tenth anniversary through a rousing poetic and musical debut. The best performances from a ten-year-old tradition of poets moving the crowds at the Lizard Lounge are compiled in this well-rounded CD, Next On The Mic: The Lizard Lounge Poetry Jam. The collection offers an array of lyrical talent in fellowship with live, improvisational music.
Next On The Mic features poignant work from poetry slam champions such as Regie Gibson whose “When They Speak of Our Time: They Will Say” is certain to be a stand-out in his already impressive career. Regie’s work was featured in the film Love Jones, based largely on events in his life. The poem entitled “Brother to the Night (A Blues for Nina),” performed in the movie by Larenz Tate, is actually from Gibson’s pen.
Renowned Patricia Smith gives James Brown a eulogy too funky for funerals with “Sex Machine Part 2.” The extensively published author is the only poet featured twice in the Next On The Mic compilation (she also performs “Deltateach,” her ode to the south). It is easy to see why Smith is a mainstay in groundbreaking anthologies such as The Spoken Word Revolution, The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry and Short Fuse: The Global Anthology of New Fusion Poetry and Gathering Ground. She has also received a Pushcart Prize for her poem “The Way Pilots Walk.”
Nigerian-American poet/singer Iyeoka Okoawo’s smoky voice bathes the senses with “Third Degree Burns.” The winner of “Slam Poet of the Year” and “Performance Poet of the Year” for the 2003 Cambridge Poetry Awards has a delivery that creates a regal, timeless air throughout such lines as, “If I could spare you, I’d rather it be me inside the fire that fills and manifests a hundred times around me… somehow war was the choice that was supposed to unite us.”
Celebrated poetic force Quincy Troupe makes an appearance and works irresistible swagger with “Diva,” creating an unrivalled chemistry with the Jeff Robinson Trio. Askia Toure, former member of the historic Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee’s Atlanta Project, flows with the spirit of his pioneering days during the Black Arts/Black Aesthetics movement in a tribute to the genius of Miles Davis in “Miles Beyond 2000: A Final Elegy.” He recites:
“Driving through America’s neon graffiti/one remembers Miles’ furious quest/a master disciplined, fiery, determined zealous, powerful, elegant/ forging a creative epiphany in deaths few quote squares could imagine/This man’s fierce genius immersed in the fluidity of grace…”
Decorated vets aren’t the only ones who get down on Next on the Mic. Cave Canem and the Writer’s Room fellowship recipient Nicole Perez goes beyond her Cleveland, Ohio roots to conjure up an unhurried, sweltering concupiscence in “From the Road: Louisiana.” Wrongfully imprisoned by New York’s finest during his second year at Harvard Law, poet Bryonn Bain spits truth on the compilation that, according to Cornel West packs “a power we desperately need to hear.” Bain brings it in “Ignorance” with word association and trademark exuberance.
Jeff Robinson and his band invoke the lyrical focus of Gil Scott Heron and the phrasings of Coltrane with “Amen.” The result justifies his band’s claiming of the title, the “best poetry band in the land.” The Boston Globe’s Steve Morse hails the band as the “glue at the Lizard on Sunday, weaving sinuous riffs that meld uncannily with the rhythm of the poetry.” Listeners are in for a treat at every level with Next On The Mic: The Lizard Lounge Poetry Jam.