For as long as Bandcamp Friday exits, I’ll try to recommend an album on Bandcamp that you should buy. The first recommendation is Bump Kin’s Let Me Out My Room Please
Sometimes after a Boxedin, or after finishing a Sofar sounds, I’ll talk to someone who’s never seen spoken word before, or has had a preconception of what spoken word is- and they’ll talk to me like a huge secret has been unearthed- that spoken word is in fact, not shit. What started as an intense, three minute explosion of focused performance poetry to win slams at the Nuyorican Poets cafe in New York wound up becoming an umbrella for disgruntled artists from rap to theatre to poetry and comedy- all finding refuge in a vague genre title.
It’s been bubbling for a while now; bigger crowds at festivals, it’s statesmen getting on talkshows and becoming novelists, constantly growing out, the but never up. Many spoken word artists have become major players in the financially stable art form they’ve jumped to, while spoken word as an industry is little more than a couple of non open mic nights… and a lot of open mic nights. It’s malleability also a hinderance, with the BBC or ad campaigns using spoken word as an easy way to sell a product and give it heart- and there’s no payday bigger than what they’re offering, but it winds up being the only representation the art form actually has, and therefore gets seen as something without edge, something a bit dull.
I think this is cos what makes a good spoken word night still hasn’t been translated into another medium; the mix of inspiration, reflection, perspective, humour, all put into an almost exhausting as it is fulfilling few hours. For so long these events have been exclusive to theatre’s studio spaces and the second floors of pubs. The only successful translation of this I can think of is Bump Kin’s Let Me Out My Room Please.
Let Me Out My Room Please is a nineteen track album, with nineteen performers/writers, all produced and curated by Gabriel Jones- under the moniker of Bump Kin.
Gabriel Jones is part of the Barbican Young Poets scheme and the Roundhouse Poetry Collective, nearly all the poets are from those two groups. This is very much like what a spoken word night in London* would sound like- or at least would have roughly four years ago when most of these writers were open micers.
The album is just over an hour, with one performer per track, most having a slight into/outro of them talking to Gabriel- those talks being the closest thing to a through line you’ll find. It’s a credit to Bump Kin’s versatility as a producer and curator that he’s been able to put so many people together and still make a cohesive project without losing any individual qualities of the artists featured. In fact, he’s been able to play to their strengths.
Certain tracks lean into conventional songs, where artists who make music are able to shine. Particularly Boy by Raheela Suleman, Blockage by Adam Kammerling, Mantra by Tania Nwachukwu***, Tale of Two Cities by Luke Newman, and Bonfire by Manor the Latekid. If they don’t have a song structure, there’s at least a tempo and rhythm to these tracks that allow the artist to play with the music that someone who’s more theatre based, couldn’t.
You’d think that the artists who are more musically inclined would be clear stand outs, but Bump Kin creates a different space for different artists. On these tracks, the performer feels more like they’re being supported by a score. With strategic moments of silence on Laurie Ogden’s Hunger, a building momentum for Zia Ahmed’s Acid Rain, and the trumpet on Michelle Tiwo’s Maybe I’ll Be The First a cathartic release in time to the poem itself. The instruments more tools for emotion than they are keeping any type of rhythm.
There are tracks that feel like they’re on rails, keeping you in the space of the poem- like Omar Bynon’s 32 Bar Affirmation and Vanessa Kissule’s Things I cannot Promise you- then there’s Kareem Parkins-Brown’s I hate endings, where the music almost feels a step behind Kareem, following him as he chases his thoughts.
There are some ideas you have in life that you kick yourself for not seeing- like words swirling round in your head and you can’t wrangle them into the sentence you need. Then there are ideas you have and carry like a weight because you know how hard it will be to realise. A few years ago I emailed Jack Prideaux saying I wanted to use the Roundhouse music studio to make a spoken word mixtape, something that could align with Boxedin Clash. I essentially wanted to be DJ Khaled****. I was excited by it- but as I started the early stages of planning- I realised how fucking hard it would be. To think Gabriel not only organised all of this but actually produced it blows me away- and yes it’s ten million times than whatever shit I’d have put together.
When the people who look at me like they can’t believe spoken word isn’t shit- ask me where they can find more work, I tell them about Boxedin, and then tell them to check out LMOMRP. It showcases the best of what spoken word can be, but it’s through the direction of Gabriel Jones that it’s able to be. The amount of work that must have gone into this- to make something so simple and brilliant. Orange juice, the album. Buy it.
*Vanessa is Bristol based
**Feel like a bit of a mug for saying this. It’s a London scene at a Boxedin, but different parts of London have different featured artists, different open micers, and the quality isn’t any less, it’s just different- talking about nights like Poetic Unity and Flo Vortex in particular.
***Tania is a theatre maker- the track just bangs.
****
to be fair this was in 2018, after I recorded my track with Gabriel. Maybe I was trying to do to him what Antz did to A Bugs Life.
**** I’ve listened to Victoria Adukwei Bulley’s track over a hundred times. At least fifty of those times was on loop while lying down.