BY APOLLINE BERTY

In print | Published November 13, 2008

The Spoken Word event hosted by Class Awareness Month and the Swarthmore Asian Organization (SAO) revved up Swarthmore College’s Olde Club Friday night with prose, humor and activist zeal. The four-member band iLL-Literacy joined forces with the Hi-Lifes for their Natural Electricity tour, ending Nov. 15 at Syracuse. They were introduced by two Swarthmore performers, Tayarisha Poe ’12 and Eva McKend ’11, followed by Bryn Mawr’s trio, 3X.A.LADY.

Poe started off the event with “I’m writing you a request for some face time,” a provocative poem about Internet communication and addiction that elicited a spout of laughter from the audience. “I thought Tayarisha and Eva were amazing,” Xiaoxia Zhuang ’10, a member of SAO and one of the organizers for the event, said. “I really commend them for being brave enough to stand solo on a stage […] and for them both to be opening themselves up like that.”

Following Poe’s introduction, McKend took the stage and was immediately met with roaring applause from the Olde Club crowd. McKend performed two pieces — the first addressing the present financial aid issues assailing Swarthmore students and the second entitled “Gentrification,” a poem she had written for and performed at last semester’s New Orleans Rhythm N Motion concert.
Worried that her work was starting to lose quality and originality, McKend had decided that she would take a break from performing this semester but felt that this event was too important to miss. “I performed specifically for Class Awareness Month,” she said. “The first piece especially, that was my whole purpose. There is a real financial injustice that is going on at these top liberal arts colleges.”

Drawing from figures and personal experience, she presented what she believed to be the financial injustice currently occurring at Swarthmore, which prevented her friends and almost herself from coming back to school. Following McKend were Shayna Israel, Menda Franchise-Francois and Nikki Lopez, whose band names are SITY (Should I tell you), Fr@nchise and D.J. Nikk, respectively. Together, they are 3X.A.LADY.

“Very quickly I have to do this first, cause I was really excited,” D.J. Nikk said as she showed the crowd her Obama t-shirt and spoke of her excite-

ment at his election. She then performed a tribute to Luis Ramirez, a Mexican immigrant who was beaten to death by three boys aged 17 and 18 in Schuylkill County. The poem was received with awed silence and some tears as Lopez told Ramirez’s story in a voice quivering with emotion. The event lightened up, however, as the performance went on, and 3X.A.LADY moved on to hip-hop, engaging in conversation with the audience after playing the wrong track. They ended with their song “Womyn Heads High” before handing the stage off to iLL-Literacy and the Hi-Lifes.

“We’re a spoken word arts collective but we recently graduated to a full-on music set and there are a couple folks that say we don’t really do spoken word anymore, so tonight we thought we’d present some spoken word for that ass,” Dahlak said before parodying spoken word with band-member Adriel, who dramatically accompanied him on the drum. Olde Club shook with laughter as Dahlak dramatically flayed his arms while talking of the origins of the English language dictated by that old white man named God. When the piece came to the segment on words that were not recommended, Dahlak and Nico did an impressive coordinated bleeping of curse words.

The humor continued with a “fuck you list,” read from hand-made scrolls by Dahlak, Nico, Adriel and Ruby, the four iLL-Literacy members. The list said “fuck you” to issues such as racism, people like Carlos Mencia, people are who happy at 5 a.m. and those who made Vitamin Water. “And fuck myself for not having anything more constructive to say than ‘fuck everybody else,’” Nico said, ending the piece.

Ruby said she preferred the intimacy of Olde Club to venues at other colleges where the group had performed. “I just felt like I could feel everybody here and that’s what matters in a show, is really being able to feel the audience vibe with you,” she said after the show.

“I think they bring an awareness to issues that aren’t really represented and Class Awareness Month brings about the same issues,” Zhuang said of the night’s spoken word artists. “With Class Awareness Month, it’s not just about class, it’s about race, gender, sexuality. So, I think that iLL-Literacy really fits in perfect with that because these are the issues that they are very invested in.”

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