The Other Monday Open Mic
The BLU House
Oakland
March 25, 2024
A laminated sign on the gate had graphics of hanging plants. It read, “The BLU House,” with the caption “A Creative Space,” and in the smallest font size towards the bottom, “Powered by BRP and Key Essentials.” I’d arrived at this West Oakland home for the Other Monday open mic.
I don’t feel fully comfortable walking straight into the home of someone whom I’ve never met, so I lingered outside awkwardly until artist Kylah Symone walked out and greeted me. In addition to being one of the night’s performers, she is a barber and a loctician, a rare combination in the Black hair care community.
She suggested I take my shoes off and head up the stairs, which I did, halfway ignoring the laminated sign on the door “Renaissance Room” at the bottom of the stairs leading down to the garage. I emerged onto a sunny floor with a living room filled with bright green flourishing plants and Black art on the walls. A cat lingered while I took in a gripping, close-up black-and-white photograph of Malcolm X.
Goldbeams founder and event producer Tayleur Brown-Crenshaw welcomed me with a smile. I’ve seen Brown-Crenshaw host Goldbeams’ bigger, rowdier, more well-attended, and utterly joyful open mic, Second Mondays, plenty of times; she does it with confidence and ease, while also providing encouragement and support. Here, she took a backseat and left hip hop and soul-inclined cousins Lovey and Jamel Griot to serve as our hosts for the evening.
I settled into the comfy couch facing the living room stage as Griot and Lovey playfully chided each other back and forth. The event began with about 20 people, most of whom had signed up to perform. Griot, in his army-green hoodie and beanie, kicked it off with some deep and vulnerable poetry. I noticed how the group full of dapper and diverse Black poets, rappers, and singers responded: the level of embrace was strong.
Whether it was funny or deep, lyrical or spiritual, that embrace only grew stronger throughout the night with a few late stragglers. In a conversation with poet Ziggy before the event started, she shared that she had gone to Goldbeams’ Second Mondays to perform her poetry but when they called out her name as the next performer, she stayed quiet. This time, she was third on the list. She shared her poetry, dropping hard bars on the state of the world in her soft voice and when she finished her poems, the small crowd roared.
Just because it was “the other,” intimate open mic didn’t mean it was low energy. When Brown-Crenshaw stepped to the carpeted stage, she spit her West Coast-style poetry with battle rap energy in her cold New York accent:
50 Cent is many men, n***as on the block and we baggin like ten of em /
Steppin on the necks of these men /
Then we get the neck from these men /
Now you catchin chest from these men
She was reading off her phone, didn’t use the mic, and still had the crowd goin, “Mmmm,” “Okayyy!” “Gurrrl!”
It was a church service, a therapy session, an artistic jam full of emotion from highs to lows. Towards the end, Lovey told us about her endeavor, the Black Renaissance Project, “it’s a private studio I built,” and I realized that the space I had sort of registered when I first entered the home was the studio to which she referred.
Kiana (Ki) Bryels, whose house it was, sauntered up and informed us of her event management company, Key Essentials, and her plan to connect and amplify the voices and the community groups who were doing positive and uplifting things in Oakland by way of a magazine.
I had stumbled upon a pot of gold. It was a wealth of ideas, community, brilliant and imaginative Black minds with the physical space to make things happen. A lot of behind-the-scenes work had been done in order to grow roots for these spaces to thrive, I thought, imagining all the emails, funding, and organizational hustle Brown-Crenshaw and Bryels do on a consistent basis to keep up with their mission of uplifting Black communities.
I’m already looking forward to attending the next one.
Gold Beams hosts this open mic monthly. Get your ticket for next month here.
