On Thursday night, Sept. 15, the nine-day annual Beat Festival featuring Brooklyn’s own contemporary talent kicked off at the Brooklyn Museum as part of its free Thursday night program, sponsored by Squarespace.
While the Brooklyn museum’s beautiful building has very traditional architecture, the opening night of the Beat Festival, however, was very untraditional. From 7-9 p.m., in different parts and floors of the museum, sometimes amidst museum collections, there were previews or tastes or mini-performances of all the performances that would follow in the rest of the festival. Most of them repeated themselves throughout the evening, in 15 minute intervals.
I began (and later ended), the evening’s adventure, with the musical group near the entrance. Interestingly, this group was comprised of different people who had never worked together prior to the festival. David Langlois, who is from France and has a reggae band, was asked by the Beat festival to join Ras Osagyefo, a Jamaican poet, whose work is Rustafarian influenced. A third musician, Diego Cebollero, only joined them on the night of the event and consequently, as David said, the music was completely improvised or as they say in Jamaica, they were ‘jamming.’
I had the opportunity to talk with them and heard about the famous Jamaican artist, Bob Marley, and about actress Ester Anderson’s explanation of the origin of the famous song, I Shot The Sheriff that speaks of a sheriff and a deputy. Her story is apparently available online. The musicians were very nice, and Ras ended up giving me a book of his poetry. The book is called: “Psalms of Osagyefo…chanting down babylon.”
On an upper floor, another pairing of different artists was the presentation by Beatboxer, Derick Cross and cyr wheel artist Jamilla Youngstedt. On the side of a very traditional and beautiful open area, Jamilla was dancing with what looked like a Hoolah hoop while I heard sounds from Derick in a strongly rhymic style that I had never before heard. It was definitely different to me.
There was also a performance by the Flex Dance Program. ‘Flexing’, or the ‘flex’ dance style started in Brooklyn in 1995, and was a way to keep young men out of trouble. Today, those that kept out of trouble back then are teaching another generation of youth in detention centers how to move in the ‘Flex’ style. Some participants are asking to be able to continue to have the opportunity to ‘flex’ when they are out of detention. Participants were dressed in casual street clothing. Wikipedia describes flexing as “characterized by rhythmic contortionist movement combined with waving, tutting, floor moves, and gliding.”
In a room that housed artwork, I also saw the solo story telling by Vickie Tanner, that was acted out, with movements. I heard her tell the story of trying to be an actress and ending up having to do all kinds of things that are not at all to her liking in order to pay rent and other bills.
The most unusual, unexpected, intimate and special experience of the evening for me was T’ai freedom’s poetry reading. In a room that was filled with many things, I saw a woman holding some written material. I approached, wondering if she was going to do the poetry reading. There was a chair right next to her and she invited me to have a seat. She then asked me if it was ok by me if she used certain non-polite curse words and ended up saying she would use substitutes. She then read her poem to me. It was about the suffering side of love and how in spite of that, she still desires love. It was like being treated as a personal friend, or a VIP, with a personal performance that was even slightly altered to suit me in accordance with my preference.
The following day, I attended the free outdoor Metrotech Lunchtime Mashup #1. There were 2 presentations.
The first group was music and featured two of the artists who had been near the entrance of the museum, Ras Osagyefo, and David Langlois, but this time David had his Reggae band with him. Some of the words were in a West African language and I heard the word: ‘Rastafarian’ in some of Ras’ words. Some of the singing sounded very harmonious.
The second group was from the Flex program. There were two male dancers, wearing, and sometimes dancing with, baseball caps, and dressed casually. One of the dancers had such ability to twist his arms that another onlooker remarked that he must have been double jointed.
For more information about the Beat Festival visit www.BeatBrooklyn.com. For more information about the Brooklyn Museum visit www.brooklynmuseum.org.
