Diga Me! Spoken Word Performances Bring Lively Chicana Chicano Stories to Fowler Museum
Michael Sedano
If you've ever sat near a vocalist unleashing an aria or some lieder, you've enjoyed not only the music but likely sat amazed at the capacity of the body as an instrument rivaling an orchestra for aural force and power. If you've sat in a hushed auditorium while a cello maestra maestro sits on stage alone playing Bach suites, you've grown entranced at the virtuoso's control of that instrument as well as captivated by that composer's notes on paper.
Most author readings are not virtuoso performances, but any writer's performance would change in that direction after experiencing the kind of virtuosic readings shared by gente in the intimate setting of the open-air central courtyard of UCLA's Fowler Museum on Saturday afternoon, October 29. It was un bel di for Diga Me! The program featured readings written by Alejandro Murguía, Vibiana Aparicio-Chamberlin, and Ron Arias. The three are veterans of the first floricanto in 1973 and the historic reunion floricanto last year, at USC.
Three mic'd actors reading chicana chicano literature, sitting on a stool behind a lectern that held the words. The elegant simplicity not only was absorbing, such a presentation is a way of honoring the words honoring the story honoring the audience. Those values live at the heart of the oldest spoken word series in Los Angeles, The New Short Fiction Series, in its 15th year in Los Angeles.
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By: Beth Kephart ,
on 3/20/2011
Blog: Beth Kephart Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Sarah Kay, If I Should Have Daughter, spoken word, Hiroshima, Add a tag
Late last week, Rachel (a student full of fire, zest, talent; a student unafraid to call another student's writing perfect) sent this along to her classmates and to me, saying: I thought this was beautiful.
It is. It's Sarah Kay, a spoken word artist, performing and talking about what performing and talking (and teaching performing and talking) can mean. A Sunday afternoon treasure, should you have the time. The full link to this TED presentation is here.
By: msedano,
on 12/30/2008
Blog: La Bloga (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: reading aloud, spoken word, Calaca Press, festival de flor y canto, oral history, Add a tag
Michael Sedano
Ancient Latinos subscribed to an educational system based upon what they termed the trivium. Fundamental schooling subjects included rhetoric, grammar, and logic. On the principle that nothing’s as practical as a good theory, I've adapted the ancient trivium into my view that communication competence in our modern society should pursue a trivium of Oracy, Literacy, Numeracy.
Numeracy includes skill with mathematics and electronic devices. Computer operating systems and software, like spreadsheets and multimedia, give the artist-writer, or job holder in post-industrial economies, essential competencies that enhance or determine their productivity and competitiveness.
Ditto the rest of the modern-ancient trivium.
Literacy includes reading and writing. La Bloga and similar places exist because we endorse, support, create things to read. The internet illustrates how numeracy and literacy intertwine. Writers must manage technology to create physical representations of their ideas.
Oracy includes varieties of speaking and listening, such as conversation, storytelling, reading aloud, and performance. Here is the sine qua non of the well-rounded, fully competent modern communicator. I think of speech as thinking made loud. Look back to Aristotle's day, when it was unthinkable a person would be unable to defend oneself in a swordfight. It became equally unthinkable the civilized person would be unable to defend oneself with speech. Is it only ironic, or causal, that the warmongering outgoing U.S. president has an unparalleled reputation for execrable speech and thoughtless wars?
In yet another irony, speaking or reading before an audience creates fearsome obstacles for many an otherwise competent communicator, like a writer reading her or his own stuff. Así es. Yet, a formalized oral presentation requires only a little extra effort--plus confidence and poise--to become suitable for an audience. Fortunately, skillful oral presentations can actually be easily produced: just sit in conversation with friends, hang a microphone around your neck, and share your stories. A public reading is much like that, simply an enlarged conversation. I look forward to the upcoming National Latino Writers Conference where I’ll be conducting a workshop on reading your own stuff. I love Oracy and look forward to seeing literate gente develop an equal regard for the spoken word, both as consumers and producers.
Spoken word consumers find numerous resources. Conversation--the good and the desultory, purposive and phatic--permeates our every waking moment. Too bad we cannot recycle wasted words and hot air. Ni modo. More worthwhile resources abound. Book release parties featuring writers reading their own stuff give opportunities to acquire a warm memory as well as a signed volume. Wondrous recorded resources come to one who seeks them. Calaca Press, for example, is a champion of spoken word performance, offering such precious resources as Raza Spoken Here, parts I & II, or When Skin Peels, among a library of eight spoken word titles. 
A unique aural resource—it comes with a book—is Poetry Speaks, edited by Elise Paschen and Rebekah Presson Mosby. It includes three CDs with in-their-own-voice poets from Tennyson and Yeats to Langston Hughes and Sylvia Plath. But at fifty bucks, the volume might be out of range of many, unlike a Calaca CD, whose prices run in the $15.00 range. I don't enthusiastically recommend the Poetry Speaks to Children series because parents and friends, not some record player, should be reading aloud to kids. But such a book is a model of what you can do on your own.
Aside from stagefright in public performance, producing spoken word recordings for public uses is relatively easy for someone with access to the internet and a good computer. Such technology may be available free, at a public library.
I used to lament how the internet has become increasingly like television, instead of the text-heavy screens of yesteryear. But there’s a lot of good that comes with this ill wind. In fact, the internet may be today's last bastion of Oracy, provided gente have the skills to produce files that work on PC, Mac, and other devices, and website owners do not take down their sites.
Such a site is Joseph Puentes’ Nuestrafamiliaunida.com. Puentes started the site with high hopes of attracting large numbers of people who would record oral history, cuentos, lectures, any variety of audio material, to make available, free, via the internet. Puentes includes tutorial material on making your own Podcasts, and makes the site freely available to anyone with a voice.
Sadly, the site is not easily perused. Some links go to a text screen where links to Podcasts lie somewhere on the page; other links suffer from lack of bookmarks that force the user to search the screen for the desired result. In every case, navigating the resource would be more convenient with a single mouseclick linked directly to the aural target file.
Such shortcomings are not great, but people, I suspect, desire something that works more efficiently. Owing, perhaps, to these technology deterrents, and despite Puentes’ vision of a public access resource, relatively few contributors emerged to populate the site.
Turnout has been so limited, in fact, that Puentes has turned his energies to environmental causes and has let the Nuestra Familia Unida site go dormant. Via email, I asked if there had been a specific day or event that led to his decision. Puentes responded, “there was a lack of interest and my conviction grew about doing something for the environment. I shifted my energies to what I determined to be a more important project. No critical incident or day. I had been beating my head against the wall to get folks to participate and decided that I wasn't interested in trying to talk folks into doing something that I felt should be something they would jump at the opportunity to do.”
I hope people will jump at the opportunity to browse through Nuestra Familia Unida, and make the added effort of recording Podcasts and depositing them to the site. Every voice has something of value to add, if not a visit with an abuelo, an interview with a three year old about her favorite books, if not a winning contest speech then a collection of poems read at sleepytime to one's child. Think of the memories ten years hence!
One exception to the limited public use of Nuestra Familia Unida has been Frank Sifuentes. One of the organizers of the 1973 Festival de Flor Y Canto (pictured here is Sifuentes greeting poet Juan Felipe Herrera), Sifuentes is producing an extensive collection of cuentos and oral history recordings. A number of other recordings add value to the site; Sifuentes’ is one of several who will provide hours of listening enjoyment.
To find Sifuentes’ work, navigate first to Oral History, where the titles include, “Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation,” “Cuentos De Kiko - Frank Moreno Sifuentes,” “Chicken Soup for the Latino Soul (http://www.latinosoul.com),” “Chamuscando & Abuelita Virginia,” and “1953 Boronda Family History: Francesca Abby & Emma Ambrosia.” Sifuentes is Kiko.
Puentes introduces Sifuentes, noting, “I'm so happy to introduce Frank Moreno Sifuentes to the Nuestra Familia Unida podcast community. In this series of Oral History Cuentos expect to hear about one family, but the experiences are those of an immigrant nation.” Sifuentes adds a biographical note, “Frank Moreno Sifuentes, 74. Born in Austin, Texas when its population was only 38,000 (now around 1,000,000!) In 1950 joined the U.S. Navy during the Korean War. After getting out fell in love with Sarah Diaz; and married in Compton, CA. We had three daughters and three sons; and now have 11 grandchildren and two great grandchildren.”
Frank Sifuentes read his story, “The Bean Contest,” at the 1973 Festival de Flor Y Canto, which I append below for an audiovisual sample whose updated, extended version you can enjoy--ears only--at Nuestrafamiliaunida.com. (Video ©2008 University of Southern California. All rights reserved.)
So goes the final Tuesday of the year 2008. ¡Increíble! Here comes 2009, and right around the corner, will be 2010 and the year of El Festival de Flor Y Canto 2010. This year ends with me still searching for those original artists from 1973. Frank Sifuentes, I found. Juan Felipe Herrera, I found. They weren't hard to locate. Last week, I think I located Enrique La Madrid, at UNM (if he'd answer his email). But you / those others? Nothing on the horizon, as far as I can see, even on a clear Califas winter day.
Have a happy new year! Celebrate sensibly and cerebrate with unrestrained abandon!
By: Lisa Alvarado,
on 5/15/2008
Blog: La Bloga (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: poetry, spoken word, Palabra Pura, Santeria, Add a tag
Adrian CastroTime: Doors open at 8:00 PM, Reading begins at 8:30 PM Cost: Free admission. 21 and over show. Location: California Clipper, 1002 N. California, Chicago
Adrian Castro is a poet, performer, and interdisciplinary artist. Born in Miami, a place which has provided fertile ground for the rhythmic Afro-Latino style in which he writes and performs. Articulating the search for a cohesive Afro-Caribbean-American identity, Castro honors myth on one hand and history on the other. He addresses the migratory experience from Africa to the Caribbean to North America, and the eventual clash of cultures.
Castro creates a circular motion of theme, tone, subject matter, style, and cultural history, giving rise to a fresh illuminating archetypal poetry. These themes reach their climax in their declamacion – the call-and-response rhythm of performance with a whole lot of tun-tun ka-ka pulse. He is the author of Cantos to Blood & Honey, (Coffee House Press, 1997), Wise Fish: Tales in 6/8 Time, ( Coffee House Press, 2005), and has been published in many literary anthologies. He is the recipient of the State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship, NewForms Florida, the Eric Mathieu King award from the Academy of American Poets, NALAC Arts Fellowship, and several commissions from Miami Light Project and the Miami Art Museum.
He has performed with many dancers and actors including Chuck Davis and African American Dance Ensemble, Heidi Duckler and Collage Dance, and Keith Antar Mason and the Hittite Empire. The New York Times Book Review recently selected Wise Fish as an editor’s choice saying, “Sinuous, syncopated verses about the Caribbean melting pot.” And “…even a cursory glance suggests his poems—which seem to be trying to dance off the page…would truly come alive on the stage. “Wise Fish is a serious and seriously enjoyable contribution to our flourishing Latino literature.” Adrian Castro is also a Babalawo and herbalist.
Febronio Zataraín was born in Sinaloa, Mexico, and studied sociology at the University of Guadalajara. In 1989 he emigrated to Chicago. Since 1992 he has been involved in launching and collaborating on a number of literary workshops and cultural magazines including , Fe de erratas. These various efforts finally crystallized in Contratiempo, a literary magazine that first appeared in May, 2003, and today is one of the prominent Spanish-language magazines in the U.S. Febronio has published the following books: Faltas a la moral, Editorial Moción, 1991 (stories and scripts). Desesperada intencón y otros escritos, Editorial Universidad de Guadalajara, 1994 (poems). Y nos vinimos de mojados (in collaboration with Raúl Dorantes), 2007, Editorial UACM (essays and chronicles).
His work has been included in the following anthologies: Voces en el viento, edited by John Barry, Editorial Esperante, 1999. En el ojo del viento, John Barry, 2004. Poesía viva de Jalisco, edited by Raúl Bañuelos, Dante Medina, and Jorge Souza, 2004, Secretaría de Cultura de Jalisco.
Columbia Explorer Elementary
DeLaTorre will be creating a mural that will be 168” X 288” and will have three layers and images relating to hope and the ability to rise above faceless crowds and imagine the endless possibilities through the arts and education. Unveiling TBA.
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Lisa Alvarado
By: Lisa Alvarado,
on 2/20/2008
Blog: La Bloga (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Movimiento, Juan Felipe Herrera, social change, peformance, Movimiento, spoken word, Juan Felipe Herrera, poetry, social commentary, Chicano, social change, peformance, spoken word, Add a tag
From City Lights Publishers:
187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross the Border:
Undocuments 1971-2007
by Juan Felipe Herrera
February 15, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-87286-462-7 $16.95
1. This newest book, 187 Reasons Why Mexicans Can't Cross the Border is a collection of a life's work in many ways. Some reviewers have described you as a moviemento elder statesman. What's your thoughts on that description?
Elder statesman...ha! Well, if the movimiento was still alive...Things have changed, the Chicano Movimiento probably started when Cesar Chavez went on strike in McFarland, Ca., with the rose workers in 1964 and it ended about ten years later when Luis Valdez's Teatro Campesino gave its last debut in Mexico City at the TENAZ International Teatro Festival, the same year Gary Soto inaugurated his first book, The Elements of San Joaquín, which signaled a new trajectory in our poetics.Rather than a movimiento, since '74, we have streams, fugues, variations, implosions, counter-currents all at the same time.
The upside/downside?
There's no up or downside to it.
Given that, what's the importance for you in mentoring younger voices?
Mentoring is most important aspect for me. teaching and learning at the same time, expanding our thinking, and our action, our sense of community and self.
2. What do you think is the poet's responsibility to make social commentary, particularly in the current anti-immigrant (read Mexican) climate?
As a Chicano and person of color, it is part of my poetics to respond to and transform and transcend the negative, narrow and easy explanations, summations and projections of who we are. Oddly, we are perhaps the most misunderstood ethnic group in the U.S. To begin with, we are not immigrants. To end with, a Mexican is always connected to the indigenous history of the Americas.
And given your perspective, do you have a particular spin on what constitutes 'Mejicano/Chicano (a) themes?
There are no themes...they are all in flux... perhaps a most pertinent theme today is that of going beyond ethnicity and history without foregoing an activist perspective. Something is askew if only the military, corporate trade systems and the internet are global and the rest of us, in particular ethnic enclaves operate in closed communities and political segments.
3. There's been a critique swirling around concerning spoken word for a while -- that many times it ends up limiting and ghettoizing poets, particularly younger poets, who do not develop a critical grasp on other genres. Can you comment?
Spoken word has its own cultural systems, canons, genres, institutions, actors and audiences which generate its values. Academic poetry, although related, is another cultural arena and another class sector. The less borders between these is best.
Another way to put is that Spoken Word by its very nature is public, oral, interactive, spontaneous, experimental and subversive. Because of these transgressive and explosive qualities, Spoken Word thrives at the margins. Otherwise, it would be more like its fair-haired cousin, text-centered academic poetry, which lives closer to the center of the literary capitalist paradigm, more or less. The problem arises when poets begin to quote themselves and cease to speak and also, as you say, loose touch with the larger world of conversations and silences.
4. What are your ongoing sources of inspiration?
I don’t rely on specific inspiration sources. All is inspiration – twigs, people, clouds, shapes, names, words, sounds, colors and forms. Nature and culture are just two of thousands of possible channels of and for inspiration. Deep inspiration probably comes from the unnamable. That is why we want to write it, even though it is impossible.
Something like love.
5. How does your relationship to family feed your creative and personal life?
My familia provides contrast, balance and a natural and organic play of feedback to my life as a whole. This is more significant and meaningful than providing thinking-talk-feedback to my writing. Deep and sincere relationships are at the core of creative life. Without these, we are just fooling ourselves and others.
6. Where would you like to see your work evolve over the next ten years?
I just finished a writing a musical for young audiences, Salsalandia, for the La Jolla Playhouse.It is touring – with a beautiful cast and production crew – throughout the schools and communities of my hometown, San Diego. I am thrilled by this.
The play is about a White & Mexicano “blended” family and it is about loss and painful border realities. Yet, it is funny, serious -- there are songs and dances and deep journeys all in the mix. Cristian Amigo composed the music – we had worked together in Upside Down Boy, the first Latino musical for children in New York. I want to write more theatre, and also, for dance and possibly opera. Pavarotti is one of my heroes. So is Lanza – whom my mother loved. Imagine, my campesina mamá? And all the great Italian composers.
Musicals, children’s animation and opera – here I come!
7. Who are some of your favorite poets and why does their work resonate for you?
The Post War Poets of Poland and Middle Eastern Europe move me – Rózevicz, Szymborska, Herbert, Celan, Rodnoti, to name a few. Because they speak of brutality with clear boldness, wet hearts, and razor-sharp precision. We are in such a time. Our words must not get over-excited or too under-stated. We must navigate between archipelagoes of world kaos, natural beauty, suffering lives and global military order. To do this, we must be daring, tender, unyielding and precise as rain.
8. Tell us something not in the official bio.
I have always been a clown. I love solitude. The most simple things in the world move me to tears -- like clouds, mountains, an elder woman crossing the street, the voice of sincerity.
I have been a cartoonist since 8th grade. Water is my favorite drink with fresh-squeezed lime juice. I have five Sharpei dogs – Rocko, Tai, Pei-Pei, Lotus and Duddy Li.
Lisa Alvarado
Blog: Bit by Bit (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Flowers, BotanicalArt, cards, Daily Sketches, Drawings, cards, Daily Sketches, BotanicalArt, Add a tag
Lily of the Valley card at Zazzle
My first drawing for 2008! The Lily of the Valley is such a sweet flower and it's particularly special here as I'm dedicating this to my god-daughter, Lily-Rose as the first half of a belated birthday present :)
I hope everyone had a wonderful New Year and that this coming year will be fruitful for us all! Happy 2008!
Blog: Bit by Bit (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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Botanical Art: trees' seeds/nits/pods
Does a pine cone fit the description of seed, nut or pod? I'm not sure, but here it is. I picked it up while taking my dogs for their walk. Not too happy with the drawing itself, I think it's too 'formal' ... oh and my eyes are very squinty now!
Blog: Bit by Bit (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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Botanical Art: trees' seeds/nuts/pods
Does a pine cone fit the description of seed, nut or pod? I'm not sure, but here it is. I picked it up while taking my dogs for their walk. Not too happy with the drawing itself, I think it's too 'formal' ... oh and my eyes are very squinty now!
Add a CommentBlog: Bit by Bit (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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I love cyclamens, they have colours that just cry out to be drawn or painted. And as I haven't the ability with paint, I drew them instead. My quick sketch for tonight!
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Wow. I love her. Thanks, Beth.