Poetry & Music Smash-Up
Living Arts of Tulsa
March 13, 2024
Apparently Zhenya Yevtushenko, our emcee for last Friday’s Poetry & Music Smash-Up, had been dreaming of this “one-night-only” event for some time. The rules: 10 poets are randomly paired with 10 musicians. Each pair gets 10 minutes to rehearse, then they perform. This was a rare chance to celebrate both local poetry and local music, two of Tulsa’s vibrant arts scenes, in one.
Yevtushenko was a charming and encouraging host, joking that the lineup was made up of his friends — and that he orchestrated the duo of the most “handsome guys” going first for his own ego. He pointed out that while the smash-up was an experiment, poetry and music both depend on meter, rhythm, tempo, melody, and harmony and that rap in particular blends the two beautifully. He also expressed an awareness that things could get pretty messy onstage, but he shared this without a note of worry or concern.
While the first set rehearsed, April Gahagan warmed us up with two soulful songs, one of which was Dorothy Moore’s “Misty Blue.” Then Cordney “MAC Woods” McClain and Johnny Murrell (keyboard) kicked it off. Murrell consistently kept up with the moods, pacing, and tone of McClain’s well-rehearsed and weighty spoken word (who’re you gonna call when the cops are the ones doing the drive-bys?). It was a solid start.
Up next: Quinn Carver Johnson, author of The Perfect Bastard, and Tyler Sexton (guitar), who’s also part of dance-music duo The Links. “Y’all fuck with capitalism? Me neither,” Johnson said. Cue their poem “Dinosaurs” on that theme, suggesting that in the future our scientists and poets “will find the bones of bankers and landlords in long-lost landfills.”
Lyssie Brown followed, alongside Eric Noble on trumpet. She prefaced one poem by praising the word “fuck,” and she delivered — as did Noble. With each “fuck,” the trumpet pumped. He sped up as needed, heightening the fraught atmosphere of Brown’s feminist verse. Poet Gabby Kolencik, a lawyer and recent transplant from Pennsylvania, took the stage next, with Mike Cameron on saxophone. First impression: Her glasses and earrings matched his sax, which seemed like a good sign. All of her work was raw and vulnerable, but one of her poems was particularly fierce, and Cameron’s improvisation accented it with befitting angry flourishes.
I didn’t know how those last two pairings would go. Could a trumpet and saxophone parlay with a poet without a bassline? The experimental nature of the night had us expecting the unexpected. I think it worked — the horns matched the poets in volume, focus, and feel.
A more familiar pairing arrived with Shay Lampkin and Harvey Crowder (upright bass). I think many of us are accustomed to hearing spoken word alongside a bass, but both artists worked to make it a true dialogue. Lampkin was formidable in claiming her beauty, her worth, despite not looking like “the girls you see in porn”: “Even the moon is full of craters.”
DJ Silky Smooth played intermission, keeping the vibe afloat before the next set. My only complaint about the night was that the room was so bright, but maybe they wanted to keep us from dancing mid-event. It’d be hard to break it up for set two.
Enter John Paul Ratliff and Carl Antonowicz (handmade washtub-noise-sound thing). It was so fun to watch a merging of narrative lyricism (Ratliff is also a musician) and noise music. Antonowicz’s manipulating of screws, nails, and chains lent tension and a sense of place — a delightful surprise. Then Sean Phariss joined the Tulsa Review Crew’s own Zack Reeves on snare and cymbals. Both are musicians and writers and felt pretty locked in from the get-go. Reeves mentioned his first love was rhythm, which checks out. I caught myself smiling even during a particular somber moment in the poem because I was so impressed by how Reeves caught the beats and the shivers and the slaps of the verse. Phariss is also a comedian, a performer; he encouraged the audience “to be seen and heard” as much as the artists.
Romel Poetry and Eric Ryan-Johnson were next. Ryan-Johnson’s folky, bright mandolin and fiddle were an unexpected counterpart to Romel’s spoken word, but there was a magic to the musician’s looping tactics and pensive tone mixed with the poet’s introspective reading. Chardonnay, originally from Cleveland, and Avery Marshall, singer/songwriter, were the last announced performers. Marshall’s guitar was mellow and well paced and sang a full song beside Chardonnay’s “wet ink,” a brand-new piece that felt more complete than the writer suspected. It felt like both artists were leads.
The night wrapped up with a surprise performance from cellist Matt Magerkurth and poet Phetote Mshairi. Mshairi’s subject matter was tough (incest, pedophilia) but tempered by distance (the speaker wasn’t victim or perpetrator). These two artists are pros, and their performance was like an effortless conversation.
It’s gutsy to put on this kind of event. Yevtushenko and the talent were prepared for chaos, but the messes were minimal. Before Brown read her work, she mentioned she loved doing improv — when no one was around (same). But maybe all artists are doomed to be uncomfortable. Fortunately, discomfort breeds discoveries. Not only do we need more artistic experimentation in Tulsa, but we need more cross-genre collaboration. This night opened my eyes to even more young artists creating in our city today, and it showed a shared willingness to collaborate, sweat, and grow — to lean on each other for support rather than competing for the exposure, success, accolades, whatever the goal might be. I’m hoping this wasn’t just a one-night thing.
Next at Living Arts: Story Slam: Rebellion, April 12
