Viewing page 13 of 17

00:34:10
00:38:17
00:34:10
Playback Speed: 100%

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

Transcription: [00:34:10]
Poet: It gives me great pleasure to do so.
[00:34:13]
Poet: At that time, when we have outings or little house parties and it gives me a great pleasure to recite them because I write them.
[00:34:24]
Poet: And because I think it has a lot to--I just feel like if people would listen to them, sometimes they might get a message out of 'em.
[00:34:34]
Poet: And like oh, like the lady said, I would like very much man, there's one more poem I would like to say.
[00:34:46]
Host: The uh, the poems are traditionally performed in community settings.
[00:34:52]
Host: Spoons, until approximately two and a half years ago, had never really performed any of these poems on a stage. That's something - that's something rather recent.
[00:35:04]
Poet: Okay. Well, thank you ladies and gentlemen, for being concerned enough to come out and hear.
[00:35:12]
Poet: And uh I would like you all to give yourself a round of applause because you are a beautiful audience. Thank you. [[clapping]]
[00:35:23]
Host: From here in just a few minutes, we'll be doing a workshop with uh the DJs for the Scanner Boys and Grandmast--with Grandmaster Nell of Grand Master Nell and the Punk Funk Nation,
[00:35:36]
Host: trying to break down some of the artistry of these wizards of the wheels of steel by bringing the DJs and their equipment onto the stage and letting you un
[00:35:48]
{SPEAKER name="Host"}

--letting them explain and hopefully helping you all to understand what exactly goes into the art of mixology, of blending and broadcasting.
[00:35:57]
{SPEAKER name="Host"}

So if you'll bear with us a few minutes as we get the turntables up on the stage, we'll have uh approximately a thirty-minute workshop in the art of mixing.
[00:36:09]
Host: [inaudible] workshop, here at the narrative stage of the Black Expressive Culture from Philadelphia section of the Smithsonian's Festival of American Folklife.
[00:36:19]
Host: Now, on this stage, this year we're doing something a little different. We're making a little departure from the traditions of past festivals here at the Smithsonian.
[00:36:28]
Host: Rather than focusing only upon traditions which have clearly been passed on from generation to generation and defining folklore in terms of that passage over time and through space,
[00:36:42]
Host: what we're doing is looking at folklore in a new way: looking at it as forms of vernacular artistry.
[00:36:50]
Host: Artistry that is found in the communities and is recognized by the community as being part of an aesthetic, part of a broader artistic whole.
[00:37:00]
Host: When we change our definition of folklore to look at it this way and begin to think of folklore not only as something old and something of the past
[00:37:10]
Host: but rather as something which can be current and vital and vibrant, in an artistic sense, in an ongoing way in the community, then it opens up the entire field.
[00:37:20]
Host: It broadens our lens, if you can put it that way.
[00:37:24]
Host: Because of that new focus, because of our now--because of the way we're now looking at folklore in a different way,
[00:37:31]
Host: we're able to look at other artistic forms and artistic forms which have developed with time and which incorporate contemporary technology.
[00:37:40]
Host: For that reason we have at the festival this year breakdancers, rappers, and here on the stage with us now, the vital third part of that combination:
[00:37:53]
Host: DJs, who will be working with the double turntables and the mixers to create the sounds that dancers use to dance by on the floor and the rappers use to do their vocal raps.
[00:38:05]
Host: We have with us today on the stage two different DJs, the DJ with the breakdance group from Philadelphia, the Scanner Boys, over on my right Grand Wizard Slide.
[00:38:15]
Host: Let's have a hand for Grand Wizard Slide, please


Transcription Notes:
Reopened to remove "uh" and also break text into smaller chunks.