Spoken word poetry to make you think
It has been my pleasure to write about more genres of music than most people are aware exist. Granted, I haven’t done a piece on Bulgarian choral music (although I do have a copy of Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares which I HIGHLY recommend) but suffice it to say, there ain’t much that hasn’t been covered in the pages of our beloved Pulse.
And then there’s today.
The album du jour this time around is a spoken word project, the first such I’ve reviewed. It is the culmination of a lengthy collaboration between Chattanooga’s poet laureate Michael Crumb and the always effervescent Jack Kirton.
Jack, along with Mark Crider on bass, Shaun west on drums, and Michael Kirton and Christian Williams on additional guitars, provide a haunting, ethereal soundtrack over which Crumb delivers the thought-provoking and enigmatic poetry for which he is known.
There is a strong element of classical beat poetry with underlying jazz themes, but there’s quite a bit more here to unpack.
Stream of consciousness and socio-political commentary are evident, as well as a wry sense of humor at times, but the magnum opus of the album has to be the six track cycle, “Blues in the Bardo”.
Michael’s poetry has always had the legs to stand on its own, but the marriage of music and poetry on the album, and in the “Blues in the Bardo” series, is masterful.
For that reason, it is very difficult when evaluating the pieces, to entirely separate one from the other, and comparisons to various artists have as much to do with the musical score as the poetry itself.
“Bardo 1” is a dreamy affair, a shoe-in for Music from the Hearts of Space, in which words and music start in a quiet and comfortable place, inexorably building to a crescendo that leaves you someplace different from where you started without the listener ever realizing that they were on a journey in the first place.
“Bardo 2” is the most purely spoken word entry in my opinion. There is a musical backing, but the words, a meditation on technology, philosophy and the nature of reality, is so engrossing that you have to listen to the track twice to really key in to the music at all, at least until the pieces reaches its finale.
“Blues in the Bardo 3 (blues for William Burroughs)” is hands-down my favorite track, musically and verbally. Crumb captures the flavor of Burroughs without being derivative, while Kirton and company create a tapestry of sound that mirrors the poetry perfectly with Knoplferesque guitar work.
“Bardo 4” shifts gears in to harder edged material musically, a la Henry Rollins, although Crumb is Crumb through and through. At times, Michael’s words evoke the spirit of Jim Morrison more than Rollins, albeit with significant more substance than Morrison ever had.
“Bardo 5” immediately brings to mind the spoken word of Tom Waits, minus Waits’ cigarette-and-whiskey voice which is for some, all that they take away from his work.
That is unfortunate as Waits and Crumb both have a knack for painting pictures with words so it could be said that “Bardo 5”, the sole province of Crumb and his backing band, is a look in to what you may be missing in Tom’s work if all you can hear is that trademark voice.
“Bardo 6” is the proper conclusion of the series and the album, coming full circle to the quiet dreaminess of the earlier tracks.
For fans of spoken word and experimental music, this is a solid, meaningful album. For everyone else, this may very well be the best introduction to a world of artistic expression that has otherwise remained inaccessible.
In either case, it’s a grand production and the first release of Kirton’s own “Oh Ruby” record label.
The album is currently available on Bandcamp or, as Kirton so eloquently puts it, from Jack’s car.