Entering my third year at Groovalizacion - happy birthday to La Danza Poetica! The 24th edition is intercontinental, transnational - a world of poetics, mainly new releases, ranging far and wide in the spirit of the dance. 

Let me take a moment to thank you for listening to and supporting me with this podcast over the past two years. Sometimes it feels like all of us creative radio makers are throwing our passions into the big dark night sky, and the little pilot lights are getting lost in all the stars (to borrow from Derrick Brown's poem  this month) ... or to put it more simply: "is anybody listening?" It doesn't matter in the end. Passion has to be thrown, regardless! But a sincere thank you to the listeners I know are out there, and to the artists sharing their work. Every exchange of positive energy fires the lights.

Tracklist

Balzi del Mulo - Il Ceffone
Mura Masa - Miss You
Derrick Brown - Debbie
Pipas de Coco - Buongiorno (prod. Arbaroh)
Beny Esguerra - Somos
El Remolón - El Chamuyero (feat. Iv Anna)
Ken Nordine - No News Is Good News Blues
Sleepin Giant - Glitch (feat. Aja Monet)
Garden City Movement - Move On
Derrick Brown - A Finger, Two Dots, then Me
Guts - Libre Je Suis Devenu
Ken Nordine - Tree of Knowledge
The Spy From Cairo - Albanian trance
Sun Sunych - Pegasus
Mau Power - Intro + Transitions Of Life - Feat. Shirley Davis
Aja Monet - Inner City Chants
Zen-Zin & Pawcut - Fade To Black
Ana Tijoux - Interludio Agua
Rz Omar feat. Larry T Hill - Naam Ontrai
Zen-Zin & Pawcut - Outro

Notes on the show

Our honoured, very-alive-and-well-mind-you ghost, is great grand uncle of the spoken word, in the West at least, Ken Nordine, who has "committed word jazz again." Which makes me very happy. At the ripe young age of 94 Ken released a whole new album a month ago. Classic Nordine-esque stories, conversations with his own self, meditations on the state of things. I wrote about it at the time.  

A track that I've wanted to play for a while but haven't managed to slip in is from Balzi del Mulo, from Italy - poetry and folk music. Il Ceffone (the slap) is a collaboration with accordionist Maestro Bettini off the March album Nel desert di sonora 2014. Recorded mostly live, the poetry and music of Massimo Ocera, Andrea Calegaro and Simone Garza is at turns sentimental and absurd, full of humour and passion. I also love this track: 

A live album - really live! The loveliest Californian poet Derrick Brown recorded by the loveliest literary journal Going Down Swinging, here in the loveliest Melbourne, back in May this year. This is part of GDS' current project One Night Wonders - high fidelity recordings of full-scale live solo poet sessions in Melbourne, released digitally. Always a step ahead of the game, GDS is now releasing like a label. And none too soon for the spoken word scene particularly here in Australia. Derrick is one of my favourite US poets. He has been since Cupcake. Something about his whimsy and wickedness, all wrapped up in one sonorous drawl ... his almost absurdly dirty-romantic turn of phrase. Also, the fact that he started the ridiculously good Write Bloody publishing house. So, two poems in here - the second, A Finger, Two Dots, Then Me is one I defy you to make through without holding your breath. If you cry a little bit, I won ok? A beautiful story. As beautiful and heart wrenching as James Garner crying. (If you know what I mean, you know what I mean.) As the GDS editors said: "Anyone who was at that show can talk it up - the audience were so replete with laughter and sneaky tears that when Derrick finished the show by walking out of the room and not looking back, it seemed the only way it could have ended. But lots of shows are brilliant, and even as they’re happening they vanish into the ether. This one decided to stay with us.." There will be four in this series of ONW - Eleanor Jackson performed first up, Felix Nobis is next, and in November there will be a cross-continental reunion of Sean M Whelan and The Mime Set. And, hopefully, more into the future. It's all here.

To Sri Lanka, finally, something specially captured for us, by the industrious sailor poet Larry T Hill - currently living and working in his native Sri Lanka, he is collaborating with Tamil hip hop artist Rz Omar. They filmed the collaboration on Rz' track Naam Ontrai and here it is (including the discussion of the track at the end, cut from the podcast):