El Numero Tres

Hosing can be the worst part of the Spoken Word experience. Your words, maybe more than the poets, are under a microscope all the time as you have the set the pace of the evening while making sure the spotlight remains on the performers.

My hosting at Baruch College was horrible and the only thing that saved my credibility was my performances. My last hosting duty at synonymUS was also sub-par. I co-hosted a night at 13 and almost had a heart attack as I felt that if I dropped this ball– I may never be able to show my face around these here parts again. The initial outings of Acentos have been fun and it has taken me a bit of time to get into the hosting groove but once I did everything was smooth. After both shows I have had a pretty serious post-mortem and really hit at the negatives of the evening.

Happy to report that this Acentos went smoothly, real smoothly and I have no negatives to report. Once again, the Open Mic has been a great eclectic mix of voices. My crowd (nice ring to it) is very new to the game and has some way to go in regard to serious content and engaging performance but they are getting there. Little by little, show by show, and that is so great.

Highlights of the evening included an older gentleman by the name of Caramba (stage name, of course) falling instantly in love with Acentos and gushing over what a great setting we have. This, in turn, led Victor, our resident senior poet, to declare himself the ‘grand-father’ of the series and tore the house down with an ode to a beer poster model and her handling of a longneck… too funny and it was great seeing him put his stake in the Acentos family. Moniqa also brought the noise to Acentos for the first time and brought the only female voice to the Open Mic which is a little tarnish on the night but I am working on having a variety of Latina’s dropping at the next Acentos.

Sabrina was a fantastic feature and displayed excellent range on the mic. An amazing roller coaster ride of images and experiences were delivered both with the dynamic aspects of her performance and the universality of her material. Her deft use of pacing out her pieces and how they bring out the different strengths in her delivery is a lesson that some future features in the crowd will have to note. Reflections on family, immersion in cultures both familiar and foreign, a duet with me (Sabrina’s part done entirely in Spanish!) and a sweet gospel serenade was part of a feature that had the Blue Ox transfixed throughout. …Thank you guys for sitting through what will be part of my Acentos report for the newsletter ;-)

Distinct advantage of hosting, you get to do three poems as a warm-up for next week’s slam. Yup, I started the night with ‘Ultimo Canto’ closed the first half of the Open Mic with ‘Ceviche’ and ended the night with ‘Capicú.’ Good performances throughout and I just need to nail down the transitions in ‘Canto’ and highlight a few moments in ‘Ceviche’ I worked ‘Capicú’ off page and felt pretty good about it but I have to commit it to memory. Roger was in the house and we went over a few things in my performance.

That’s that… a good show in the books and now, at last, I am looking forward to having another great one.