iLL-Literacy and the Hi-Lifes, presented by the Asian American Students Association, brought the house down yesterday evening in Salomon 101. Sure, the house was one-third full and some audience members were studying for midterms, but the performers brought it down nonetheless.
iLL-Literacy, a spoken word group, hails from the Bay Area. (Judging by their yelps, many audience members did as well.) Its members - Adriel Luis, Dahlak Brathwaite, Nico Cary and Ruby Veridiano-Ching - proved themselves to be word contortionists, bending and stretching the English language to entrance or curse, politicize and disarm.
This is a group that defies specific categorization, and instead is evocative of several popular undergrounds. Skinny jeans, baggy pants, pageboy caps and rainbow earrings coexist on one stage. They could be called intellectual hipsters with an ear for hip hop, or rappers who know about poetry. Regardless of label, this group of twenty-somethings was an impressive ensemble of talents and genres, packing uncommon insight with a punch.
As the performance began, the lights went dark, and a bizarre, biting sound, probably sampled from a car horn, blasted through. The only illumination was an eerie glow from two strings of green lights. Figures began to gather on the stage as a series of electronically scrambled voices floated through the air.
The lights turned on, revealing a band, someone at a mix machine and four people with microphones, one of whom was wearing a moose hat. Veridiano-Ching started a fast rap that turned into a song, with the band starting up behind her. The rhythm of her words and the music danced together into bullets.
"That's the Bay's finest. If they had a better venue with better acoustics, it would have been the performance of the year," said Eli Marienthal '08.5, who went to high school with several members of iLL-Literacy. It took some coaxing, but the audience eventually started enjoying themselves.
After Veridiano-Ching finished her song, the whole group, with the band playing in the background, implored the audience to repeat after them, saying, "AAACHOOO!" Eventually, people stood up, reciprocating the speech. The performers continued shouting encouragement, the guitarist yelling, "I said, do y'all wanna solve this energy crisis? Stand up like there's fire in your seat!"
Many bobbed their heads, and the bold danced with their whole bodies. One person even stood up on the back of his seat - although it turned out he was just trying to switch rows.
The versatile performers switched easily between pieces evocative of rock songs, rap, poetry and even the prototypical spoken word. Yes, there was a guy with giant sunglasses holding a drum. Cary explained to the audience that this section of the performance was prompted when "someone said we don't do spoken word any more."
Although this segment started as a hilarious mocking of overwrought spoken word performance, Brathwaite was able to switch from sarcastic melodrama to a real message in a single piece. He started out talking about the origins of English, and managed to turn it into an impeachment of the hypocrisy of censorship.
"I wish I could have heard more of the words and lyrics. I really liked the spoken word parts," said Kai Huang '11, a member of Brown's own spoken-word group, Word.
"It moved really well. They made spoken word really accessible and really engaging. I was left wanting more, which is good," said Phil Kaye '10, also a member of Word.
