Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
IT WAS fitting that Charisma ended the night's performances with 'On a Good Day' at the Weekenz Bistro and Bar, Constant Spring Road, on Tuesday night.
It was not, of course, a daylight affair, but the poem, which explored in its latter and longer part the poet's prowess when everything is clicking (I trigger thoughts of intellectual bliss/Einstein woulda want piece a dis), was appropriate for an evening on which relatively new voices soared on stanza and in song.
The Per Verse theme for the fourth Tuesday of the month is 'Unearthing Vibrant Voices' and, with Nadia Styles hosting, the voices of poets Devon Thompson, Brian Brown, Simon Brown and Charisma, as well as singers Rudi (from South Africa) and Jhamiela Smith resonated to varying degrees, with an overall excellent effect.
It was also a noteworthy occasion in that, as the night's hostess said, Jhamiela Smith was performing with her father, guitarist Earl 'Chinna' Smith, in public for the first time.
COMMENDABLE DISCIPLINE
The night's performers showed commendable discipline, staying within the time limits. Included in Thompson's poems were Only In Your Dreams, If and Walk With Me, as he opened the night's poetic fare. Rudi sounded remarkably 'yard' on her reggae tracks, moving well on high heels as she opened with the lover's lament seems every time I want to go astray/It gives me reason to stay. There was strong applause. She went for a dub rhythm on the second song, asking have you ever seen a grown man cry?, ending with the refrain 'everything will be alright'.
Brian Brown picked up the poetic baton with Apology and moved on to an exploration of his new job, VP of Exposing Bullst, which included the notion that 'a car without rims isn't really a car'.
He ended with Be Real, which explored true self-expression and cautioned Oh, now you want to fight?/Don't shoot, it's only a mic!.
Jhamiela Smith stood front and centre, Earl Smith sat to her left almost at the corner of the stage and jazz was served up to an audience that silently savoured her voice, which verged on being husky.
VIBRANT POETRY
Simon Brown and Charisma ended the night with vibrant poetry. Brown, who was first, started with Another Day, continuing with This Woman .
He ended with a poem he had written just that day, utilising the rhythm to Ini Kamoze's Worl' a Reggae Music in commenting MJ swarms the media/while children starve in Ethiopia.
Earl Smith also played for Charisma, who started with an untitled piece about the writer waiting for the poem to come, then utilised the rhythm to Tanya Stephens' It's A Pity to do Forbidden, her imaginative take on the attraction of a woman who is involved with a man who also has a partner.
