Exercise 30 - A Review

Exercise 30 

Attend a music or dance performance.
Take notes as it takes place (beware of scratchy pens!). Do not use a digital recording; be present. Write a review of the event. 

How does your note-taking affect your description? How does your experience reflect on the quality of the event and its ability to communicate? 

Review

On the 18th of July I visited the event “poetry meets soul” which took place at Haus der Kulturen der Welt as part of the series 21 Sunsets. The event took place at the roof terrace which actually lend the sunset it’s moment. With a mild breeze from the leaves in the trees to everybody’s ankles the evening was indeed about poetry. Poetry and power – Black Power. 

Around eight artists, namely Wayne Snow, Jumoke Adeyanju, Baloji ,Ana Lucao and Melanelle, Anja Saleh and Amira Zarari recited their poems and played their music, Black Power shining through all of them. The event carried a sense of community, empowerment and speaking one’s truth. May it be Anja Saleh, waking up the pain in everybody’s chest of not belonging and desperately trying to engage and connect, also within one’s smallest circle – the family, the bond between mother and daughter. Or was it Baloji, confronting stuck ideas of what means re-connecting with family or spending free time when moving from continent to another continent and from a lower class to middle class. These experiences of the artists were answered with a lot finger snapping by the audience, confirming that it was exactly the right audience to share these intimate feelings with. 

One situation emphasized that even more, when an artist recited a poem in Swahili and knew one person in the audience that spoke Swahili and asked who else understood the language. One other person raised their hand, which confirmed the artist’s assumption. And so, she goes on to recite the poem, in between making eye-contact with the two people. Though, everyone else was excluded from the meaning of the words in the poem, we couldn’t hold back to look at the two people’s faces to understand the meaning of the poem. 

Reflection on note taking during the event:

Because I took notes during the performances a few times I could still listen to the poems and the music, but couldn’t see the artists face while speaking their words, sharing their works. I felt like I’ve missed some of the experience of being present with everyone else. 

My experience reflects the quality of the event in so far, as I could feel a sense of communal spirit and resistance – the audience was soaking everything in like a sponge. The artist’s words seemed so freeing for most people. Therefore, the artistic performances had something groundbreaking in them, something that isn’t said out loud, mostly. The artists could give the audience what they craved for and a freeing, emotional atmosphere comes out of that.