Marc Bamuthi Joseph engages with his audience in the aisles of the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall. (Photographs by Phyllis Graber Jensen)

For a performance Jan. 13, performer, educator, activist and slam poetry champion Marc Bamuthi Joseph took the Olin Concert Hall stage—only to leave it again.

“This place is really fancy,” said Joseph, jumping off the stage into the audience. “I believe in ‘not fancy.’ ”

Joseph offered a staged (or off-staged) reading of his acclaimed performance piece red, black & GREEN: a blues in the evening event, part of Martin Luther King Jr. Day observances at Bates.

The piece is usually performed on a circular stage, with large “houses” on wheels representing different American cities. His Bates reading performance included two of the four acts, Chicago and Oakland. (The Bates Dance Festival presents the full-blown production April 27-28.)

Joseph called upon the Bates audience to fulfill the roles usually performed by the other artists working on the project. For one poem, the audience was split into four sections, each with a verse of “I’ve Got Peace like a River.” Without breaking cadence, Joseph would conduct the audience in singing while he moved around the room telling the story of a woman who emigrated to the U.S. from Sudan to escape the violence there, only to have her son murdered in Chicago.

Along with the excerpts from rbGb, Joseph offered original poems from previous projects. In tribute to King Day, he began with a piece dedicated to the civil rights leader. Using quotes from some of King’s greatest speeches, Joseph asked how far America has come in realizing King’s “dream.”

When an audience member asked Joseph how he came to be a performer, he answered with a rap from the album that, he says, changed his life, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back by Public Enemy. “Chuck D gave me a whole new vocabulary for liberation,” said Joseph.

But his last piece of the evening, a story from his time in Senegal, also shed some light on his emergence as a performer. After realizing his vulnerability to street hustlers and theft, Joseph encounters an American woman who is fighting the traditional practice of genital mutilation.

While visiting one village, that friend asks him to distract an impromptu village dance party while she negotiates an end to genital mutilation with the village elders. As a poet, Joseph is unsure how to “distract” a crowd of dancing locals. On a whim, he breaks into the hip hop dances he learned growing up in New York City–and the village is won over, as was the Bates audience by his re-enactment.

Joseph performs on the Olin stage.

Joseph worked his magic in a more intimate setting the evening prior to the Olin performance. While plows cleared the streets after the winter semester’s first snowstorm, Bates students congregated in the student-run coffee house, the Ronj, to enjoy an evening of hot chai, music and poetry from Joseph and student performers.

Sponsored by the Arts House, the evening was a successful turnout of student talent.

It was one of several opportunities for students to interact with Joseph, who also visited anthropology, dance, environmental studies and rhetoric classes during his four-day visit.

Standing in the middle of the room rather than onstage, Joseph performed two energetic spoken-word pieces that combined dance with storytelling and role-playing to captivate the room.

Humorous but introspective, Joseph’s pieces tackle questions about identity: What does it mean to be a father? What does it mean to be “hip hop” outside of America? Joseph danced, contorting his body to show pain, pleasure and confusion, his arms and legs swinging out over the heads of students sitting on the floor around him.

Eleven students representing all class years read original poems. Although some seemed nervous, the room was supportive and everyone got a hand. Many students admitted it was their first time reading in front of their peers.

“All of the student readers and performers were incredibly talented,” said Emma Timbers ’14, a creative writing major who co-organized the event with fellow Art House representative Doug Welsh ’14. “And it was exciting to see so many freshmen sharing their work.”

For some, reading has been an important aspect of their time at Bates. Seniors Charlotte Simpson and Alana Folsom, both members of the Bates Authors Guild, read from their creative writing theses. About half of the readers performed original slam poems and invited the audience to join their new slam group.

As for student musicians, Sawyer Lawson ’12 kicked off the evening with a bluesy acoustic guitar set. Also performing were Grace Glasson ’14, who performed folksy covers and originals on ukulele, and Hansen Johnson ’13, who performed covers and originals on acoustic guitar.

– by Erica Long ’12

From Naima: As the semester ends, it seems appropriate to give you all a quick little recap. This has been a busy couple of months; I guess taking five classes, working three jobs, and wanting to soak up every Bates moment before going abroad might have been a bit much. I went on more sunrise paddles, sang in some more a cappella shows, frequented football games, and attended some wonderful dance parties.

I also went to class. I read Aristotle, explored intoxication, examined the human body, recounted black histories, and recorded literary methods. But now as I write to you, I have finished my four term papers and am beginning my week of tests with little worry. My lack of worry is not because I am excited to sit down for hours with a pencil in hand, pouring my thoughts and revelations from these courses into a blue booklet. Instead, I am drifting between stress and freedom, agony and excitement. Now don’t get me wrong, part of me actually enjoys spending late nights in PGill and the Ronj, inhaling caffeine until I place the last period on the page; but sleep is nice too.

From Naima: So last weekend the campus was flooded with parents and younger siblings checking out the Bates scene. My parents couldn’t make the trip from Chicago this year, so Parents Weekend meant a few other things for me.

1) Big Tips. Working at the Ronj, Bates’ student-run coffee shop, is always dope, but the tips are generally sparse. When parents are in town, they tip well. Maybe it’s because they’re used to tipping in the real world, where one might discard their change into a tip cup. Or maybe it’s that the Ronj employees are wearing dirty clothes or no shoes and these lovely parents are trying to help us out during this economic crisis. Whatever the reason, the same tip cup that is usually home to spare dimes and nickels was overflowing with dollar bills.

2) A Cappella. Every Friday night of Parent’s Weekend, all of the a cappella groups on campus put on a massive show at Lewiston’s middle school. It’s literally steps from campus and holds over 500 people. This year, the Crosstones, the group I am in performed songs from Gnarles Barkley, Jackson 5, and Sufjan Stevens. Other groups performed songs from acts like Flight of the Concords and Ray Charles. Here’s a picture of my group on stage. *excuse the fuzziness*

3) Harvest Fest. This doesn’t always coincide with Parent’s Weekend, but it did this year. It’s basically a “hippie fest” of sorts. Think girls with hair dressed in flowers, flowing dresses, lots of food, hemp sweatshirts on sale, devil sticks, tie-dye, and a vast musical green and grassy knoll. Not so bad if the parents stayed home.

4) Free Meals. This is a perk of having your own parents come up as well, but generally, us “orphans” (as we are so affectionately called) end up tagging along to a meal. It’s also just a great opportunity to get to know some of your good friends’ parents. Sometimes it’s hard to really understand someone you’ve spent nearly every day with unless you have a good idea of where they’re coming from.

5) Sporting Events. Almost every sports team in season has a home game on Parent’s Weekend. So if you want to show off the athletic program to your parents, then you can head over to the turf, football field, soccer field, or rugby field and something is bound to be going on. This year, a bunch of my parent-less friends and I watched our field hockey team beat Conn College. It was fun, and it was a good opportunity to see a few good friends of ours play some hockey. Also, it was gorgeous out so it just nice to sit out in the Maine sun.

6) Catching Up On Work. I won’t tell whether I actually did this or not, but I definitely thought about it. Since my mid-terms are kind of spread between last week and the week after break, I thought I could dedicate some mind power to preparing for tests, essays, and take-home exams. Especially since many of my friends were busy with their parents off in Portland or just down the street, I planned on getting loads of work done. That said, I was up until the wee hours finishing papers this week. Oh well. Parents weekend without parents? Success.

Peace and then some,

Naima