July 6, 2008 - SLAMicide at the Den Lounge

Baltimore’s SLAMicide hosted their first slam at their new venue, the Den Lounge. Located on St. Paul Street in Baltimore, right next door to Hopkin’s Bradford apartments and across the street from a Barnes and Noble, the Den is a rather trendy lounge with sheik furniture, enormous windows, and a great atmosphere. The room itself is dark, and I love the large open space.

The evening was divided into three portions: the open mic, the featured artist, and the slam. The open mic started at 7:30. I arrived a little late, but the artist that I heard were enjoyable and interesting. Megan followed the academic style of reading, standing very still yet making good eye contact with the audience as she read. Brian performed two keyboard pieces. Purely acoustic, they had a wonderful, jazzy feel. Finally, Callie Grove recited a stimulating piece that discussed economics and contemporary politics, for instance, she considered the wealth and power of Donald Trump in opposition to the patrons of soup kitchens. Her piece seemed a little hyperbolic, but it was interesting. She accompanied her work with vigorous hand gestures, and she made good eye contact with the audience.

The featured poet was Baltimore’s own Black Root. A man of many arts, not only writes poetry but also acts and writes music. Having studied Hip-hop culture, he is a fairly well known emcee and spoken word artist in the mid-Atlantic region, and he has competed in many Slam events, even winning a number. According to the write-up, “Black Root’s focus is to provide balance in the world of Hip Hop which has become highly commercialized, and as a result has seemingly lost sight of some of the important aspects such as quality of content and skill.”

Black Root had a great, casual and comfortable stage manner. He bantered and played with the audience as he presented his pieces. Most especially notable about his performances were his frequent calls for audience participation, having the crowd join him in chants and give responses when cued.

After the featured performer, there was a brief break before the slam itself started. During the break, judges were selected. I volunteered Mom. Once the crowd was reconvened, the host defined slam and gave the rules, speaking quickly to an audience that already seemed very familiar with the rules. The host said that “slam is competitive poetry”, and that the five judges were to evaluate the poems based on “the merit of the poem itself and the performance…and, you, the judges are the only once who get to decide.” He then followed this with an exhortation to the audience to get them to try to sway the judges. As per usual, the highest and the lowest score would be dropped, and the three middle scores would be used to rank the poets.

Black Root was offered as the “sacrificial goat,” or calibration poet. He was used to get a baseline score so that mechanical difficulties and scoring technique could be practiced by the judges. He received a 22.5 for a rapid piece about writing. He relied upon repetition and he had a refrain. However, he also had very minimal performance.

The ensuing competition consisted of two rounds. Each of the seven competitors performed twice, and the order of performances was reversed between the two rounds. In order, the competitors were Roscoe, Ryan Mergen, Chris W, Maria, Chris A., Innocence, and Kyle. The poems themselves were amazing. Performance styles ranged from standing and speaking to jumping around and fully mimicking spinning a playground carousel. Topics ranged from suicide and homophobia to the joy of childhood and the superhero “Virgin Man”. I’m only touching briefly on the works and performances here because I’m going to dedicate the entirety of a subsequent post to this topic.

Ultimately, Chris A. came in first with a score of 53.0, winning him three qualifying points for Nationals next year. Kyle came in second with a score of 52.1, and Chris W. came in third with the same score. Kyle’s higher first round score was used to break the tie.

Slam was named for the baseball notion of a grand slam, so, in honor of this heritage, I thought it’d be appropriate to do a little numerical evaluation. Curious about the phenomena of score creep, I’ve below listed the cumulative scores from the calibration poet and from each of the two rounds. I’ve also listed the individual scores given by my mother.

22.5 // 24, 24.2, 23.5, 25.3, 26.8, 25.4, 25.8 // 26.3, 25.4, 27.2, 25.0, 28.6, 26.5, 26.3

6.5 // 7.5, 8.5, 7.2, 8.5, 9.5, 8.2, 9.0 // 8.2, 8.7, 9.3, 8.5, 9.6, 8.9, 9.2

The calibration poet was, by far, the lowest of them all. In the first round, only four of the cumulative scores went above 25, and only five of the scores given by my mother was above an 8. The highest scores were 26.8 and 9.5 while the lowest were 23.5 and 7.2. In the second round, every score was a 25, or above and each of the scores given by my mother was above an 8. The highest scores were 28.6 and 9.6 while the lowest were 25.0 and 8.2. Though a small sampling, score creep was evident.