Want to discover new poetry with your ears? Here’s what we do: put a CD on and never take it out... Here the best poetry recordings we’ve chosen from 2002 to 2005 -- feed your ears with poetry!
(Mekko Productions, 2004) This is the work of a poet at the top of her powers, whether the driving force is voice spoken (crazy beats of “The Last World of Fire & Trash,” poetry of “Hold Up”), voice sung (the incredibly moving “Grace”) or saxophone (moving from the Native unisons to a HipHop beat in “Reality Show”). Tight band, full of funk & round dances. In a land where crickets are banned, it takes a poet like Joy Harjo to remind us that humans are a mistake –- somebody laughed & we came out.
(NOT, 2005) Janet Hamill, surrealist, can sample anything and then hold on! launch it into orbit, fly! Sometimes it seems the only thing that holds her on earth is the garage rock tenacity of her band, Moving Star. It was she that turned Patti Smith on to poetry, and this 2nd album is proof positive that Janet Hamill is an American original, her voice & words soaring, trembling upwards, floating meditatively under the lost ceiling of stars, echoing Kerouac’s ghost, mourning souls lost on 9.11.
(VIA International Artists, 2004) A national treasure, Sonia Sanchez gives a stellar studio portrait of poems old and new all set to a fusion jazz funk in this well-produced disc. A few a capella haiku give breathing room and a moment of spontaneity, clear the palette. Some fine back-up singing (“For Langston/I’ve Known Rivers” and the amazing crack poem/opera “Poem to Some Women/Leak in this Old Women”) shows some new groioives for spoken word as rhythm track.
(Dale Harris, 2004) Dale Harris is a wise woman poet of the desert Southwest, who has breathed in the dry winds of history & mythology, found truth in local totems & natural cycles, and given them back to us in these oracular poems. Her words are spare fables, accompanied by Native flute, drums & rattles, her voice steady & deliberate, ego absent, because the entire power of her spells is in the words themselves.
(Great Divide Records, 2005) Laura Moran is that rarity: an intense stage performer whose work is imagistic, writerly, compressed and modulated. Her new CD-with-book, Live Bait, is “Ten years of touring crystallized into forty minutes. Razor raw. Unswerving poetry over gritty blues, traditional roots, bits and pieces of found sound.”
(Little Records, 2003) Whitman McGowan is a one-of-a-kind sci-fi funnyman guru, master of all forms of oddity, humor & humanity. Caught in the Act selects the best of his live performances in collaboration with a variety of musical & electronic artists in Europe & the US -- it’s a 21st century party in a box.
(Engineous Productions, 2005) Jackie Sheeler loves the microphone & has perfected a kind of talk-singing that is not especially musical but militant -- her voice whispers & grates, howls & winks, stretches wide around a wail, percussively articulates deliberate shocks. Talk Engine, her band, backs her up with music ranging from propulsive surf-punk to classic garage-band rock’n’roll. When they performed at the Bowery Poetry Club, Bob Holman said, “Talk Engine live cooks, burns, and blisters.”
(Helmet CDs, 2004) For the last several years, Attila the Stockbroker has been performing his ranting verse & songs with a medieval punk ska (!) band called Barnstormer, and this is their latest -- still raging, as evidenced in the song titles... “Death of a Salesman,” “Baghdad Dub,” “Mohammed the Kabul Red,” “Blood for Oil”... and still hoping & mourning what’s been lost, as in “Commandante Joe,” his elegy for Joe Strummer. Keep on keepin’ on, Attila!
(Astralwerks, 2002) Mali Music is an astonishing soundscape poem of West Africa built out of Damon Albarn (of Blur)’s visit to Bamako. Great kora by Toumani Diabate and sparkly guitar from Afel Boucoum mix with Albarn’s melodica. There’s a dusty melancholy, deep thirst, longing, and beauty. Haunting melodies, and sharp-tongued jeli (griot) calls and shouts and songs and memories. Impossible to remove once heard. These are streets you visit by listening.
(Frikyiwa, 2003) The great French label Frikyiwa has stolen my heart again -– this time it’s the wet sour finger-pointing crackle of the Guinean griotte Diefadimia Kante in her album, Frankonodou. The kora/balafon/ngoni do walk, Kante’s vocals lay out a stillness that connects earth and language, lemons and salt. What is she saying? It’s the poem, and that’s the truth.
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