Lyrik am Lech Festival Diary
Jerry Quickley
I just got back from a few days in Southern Germany, doing readings in Munich and Landsberg, and the Germans have got a crazy vibrant scene going on over there. Their hip hop scene is ridiculous and their MC's can freestyle for miles. There was a great festival called Lyrik am Lech in Landsberg that ran for three days, June 30 - July 2. All the heavyweight and most well known writers in Germany were there.
Taylor Mali, Beth Lisick and I were the American contingent and we all had a blast. It was an extremely well run and well organized event. It kind of felt like your money was no good in the town of Landsberg. It's a beautiful old walled city on the River Lech. When you picture German towns and cobblestone streets and old buildings, you are definitely picturing Landsberg. (Speaking of picturing, images from the festival are at the Sonderbar Web site.)
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a beautiful old walled city on the River Lech |
In addition to providing housing at the historic Goggl Hotel (it's one of the newer buildings in town, only 500 years old), they bent over backwards to take care of even the smallest thing we might need. Taylor asked where he could take his dress shirt to have it laundered, and was told to take it to a dry cleaners across the street and be sure to give the receipt to the festival organizers so he could be properly reimbursed.
We were all given Poet Passes that got us into all the events, fed us at a converted carriage house that'd been set up just for the festival catering, and perhaps the best part, got us free liquor everywhere we went. Especially at the SonderBar. Yes, it was very nearly heaven on earth.
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we were all given Poet Passes |
There was a freestyle session held on the Hellmair Plaitz that I participated in with several local MC's. It was really fun. They've got mad skills on the mike. Especially big shout outs to my German crew, Toby from Stuttgart, and Florence from Landsberg (who freestyled about how the adjacent church should have their mass outside on the Plaitz with us rather than make us shut down the session). The crowd was really feeling it. Several people involved with the festival said they thought it was the highlight of the festival -- there was so much great energy. Most of the young people attending the festival were there giving much love. I was surprised at how many of the young people knew about the Unbound Project, Volume I, a CD to raise awareness of the criminal injustice system and money for the defense of Mumia Abu Jamal. I'm on the CD along with Pharaoh Monche, Chuck D, Saul Williams, Reflection Eternal, Blackalicious, Aceyalone, Zach De La Rocha and others. I was really surprised and happy so many kids there were into the record and knowledgeable about Mumia.
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there was no dropping of the high and low |
The poetry was amazing. For the last several years Germany has been organizing its own National Slam series with people competing from cities all over the country. We met many of the German SuperStar Slammers. There was a slam with a prize of 1500 dm (about $750). It was a great slam. Even though most of it was in German you still got a very strong sense of what they were talking about and you could clearly see their performance skills (and a couple of the slammers rocked their work in English). It was a 2 round slam with 17 people in the first round, and 5 people in the second round. There were 5 judges, just like here in the states, but all 5 scores were added together. There was no dropping of the high and the low. The final round had Tracy Splinter (current National Champ from Hamburg), Florence (freestyler from Landsberg), Webwald (from Dusseldorf), Bastien (from Berlin), and ....? (I forgot the name of the other finalist). In the end the 17-year-old hiphop freestyler won with the only perfect 50 of the night. But talk about love -- he thanked everyone and insisted that all the poets were great, and then proceeded to share his 1500dm prize among all the finalists!! It was great. There was such beauty and spirit in the room at the StadtTheater that night.
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then we all went to SonderBar to party until the wee hours |
Then we all went to SonderBar to party until the wee hours, but it was full to bursting. So Toby and Florence and I started a cypher in the plaza next door. It was ridiculous. Talk about hiphop breaking boundaries. We freestyled for about 10 minutes and then I spit 32 bars about cruising to the festival up the Autobahn and getting my German hiphop swerve on, and yes, I crushed the verse righteously, and all of a sudden there was this roar that went up. I looked around and we were surrounded by a couple of hundred people. All the people that couldn't fit into the bar were there and a lot of people had come streaming out of the bar to hear the cypher. For me, it was the highlight of the festival. The session ran almost 2 hours. It was sillyphathotteridiculous.
Read on for the Americans' StadtTheater performance, the prison where Hitler was kept, favorite moments. . . .
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