to move up and down
Be-Side
The Home of Hakm's B-Side e-alter ego...his auxiliary brain or external hard drive...
Celebrate or Criticize? #LiveYourLegacy
Last Night at Jazzbah Presents JazzBars with Hakim Be & Friends…circa 1920 (The Roaring Twenties meets the Golden Age of Hip-Hop). We hope to see you next month! March 6th Jazzbars.
“Old Knowledge, New School. We teach you how to do the math.” - Jazzbars
Special Thanks to the 2bers, Leah Black, Darbstar, Artha Meadors, Zack Freeman and the crew and staff at the Jazzbah!
*Don’t forget the 2bers CD Release at the El Rey Theater on April 7th, D.I.G. I’ll be your humble host that evening.
JazzBars with Hakim Be & Friends is coming up this Tuesday (February 7th) at Jazzbah. This month’s features “friends” will be Eph’sharpe and BlesInfinite of The 2bers! In advance of this month’s show (& Etta James Tribute), you can get a FREE DOWNLOAD of a collaborative track by Hakim Be and BlesInfinite. CLICK ON THE PHOTO ABOVE to get the track at Facebook. Share with your friends and then come see it performed live at the Jazzbah on Tuesday, February 7th! Can’t wait to see you there.
Also checkout the upcoming Jazzbars press release at www.immastar.com
First Tuesday’s in Albquuerque…
Performance poetry + live jazz = a pre-hip hop flavor in an upscale setting
Award-winning M.C. and award-winning mixology at Albuquerque’s newest jazz club
JAZZBAHABQ.COM - Downtown Albuquerque has not seen a jazz club since the 50s. That’s when Albuquerque High School alum Chester and his wife, Pert, owned Chet and Pert’s Flamingo Lounge. Downtown has changed since then. Jazz, the only pure blooded American, musical offspring of this mutt country has changed too. In fact, it had a child and her name is Hip Hop.
On the first Tuesday of every month at Downtown Albuquerque’s newest jazz club, hip hop’s genetic precursor and future is on display. Jazzbah Presents: JazzBars with Hakim Be & Friends is a throwback to the era of jazz poetry from which hip hop emerged. Flirted with by the likes of T.S. Eliot and E.E. Cummings; conceived by Black poets in the 20s; and maintained by Beat generation poets in the 50s, jazz poetry has been said to be reborn in hip hop music and at poetry slams.
Hakim Bellamy (AKA Hakim Be) is a two-time national champion in the poetry slam community and acts as the musical curator of the monthly series. A published poet and hip hop emcee, Bellamy also sees the future of hip hop in its jazzy origins. “Groups like The Roots, The Coup and J. Davis Trio apply improvisation to live instrumentation and lyricism,” says Bellamy. “As a result you get the ‘once in a lifetime’ jam band feeling that would come from a Grateful Dead or a Bob Marley show, but with the poetics and danceability of hip hop.”
According to the JazzBars Facebook event page, “A bar is a measure of music…Whether the it be the bars on the sheet music of a jazz musician or the hot 16 of an MC, every generation measures itself in song. Every month at Jazzbah, a few musicians and a poet or two will give you another moment to remember…We don’t bridge the gap between Hip-Hop and Jazz, we eliminate it.”
Along with Jazzbah’s standard fare of white tablecloth cuisine, black tie service, wine menu by wine steward (and owner) Don Putz and mixology by internationally renowned drink chemist Daniel Gonzales; JazzBars puts a younger, hipper, hopper face on the establishment. Students 18 and up get into the 7pm and 9pm JazzBar shows free with student ID. The general public can see both or either show for a $12 cover.
This month, Hakim Be has invited vocal percussionist and break beat looping magician Zack Freeman to join him along with “keys junkie” Romeo Alonzo on piano. Rumor has it that Romeo will also bring his horn, so if you are a brass fan, come see a gumbo of electronic and acoustic music with some lyrical roux. “It’s like having dinner while hanging out in the studio with us,” says Bellamy. “While Executive Chef Robert Pacheco whips up culinary chemistry in the back, we experiment with beautiful music out front. Welcome to our laboratory.”
Jazzbah Presents: JazzBars with Hakim Be & Friends
@ Jazzbah 119 Gold Street SW, Albuquerque, NM 87102
Tuesday December 6th 7pm & 9pm sets
$12/2 shows
www.jazzbahabq.com
Jazzbah: Designed to evoke the taste, touch, and feel of the urban jazz club vibe, Jazzbah is the southwest’s premier destination for lovers of fine wine and dining, and true bar mixology.
Two weeks later, Urban Verbs still Thanks You, Albuquerque. (READ ME!: Live Creation from June 18th show @ Filling Station)
Letter to Hip Hop II
(June 18th, 2011, Live Creation for Urban Verbs Show, Barelas USA)
-Hakim Be
Dear Hip-Hop
When no one listened to us
You spoke
“Us”
Like Huffy bicycles
And E.T. Childhoods
Around blocks
You’d ride us
Before tricked out cars
And handle bars
You read us bedtime stories
While our parents argue’d
Before you were profiled
On America’s Most Harmful
You were most wanted
On our Christmas lists
The secret we shared with our best friends
Gone public
When they branded you “thuggish”
But we still loved you
And recognized family members
By iTunes playlists and Timbs
Different shades of kin
Not so much recognized by our skin
But rather the songs that we sing
You might call them hymns
And we might call you the resurrection
Of the life we once lived
The new career that didn’t exist
More than a way to feed our kids
You are the borrowed wings
That we’ve used to raise them
The heartbeats we gave them
To play with
The sandbox we freestyled to William & Kate them
Queens and Latin King them
As a parent in a broke beat generation
You taught us how to four finger ring them
So we bring you
This offering of thanks
From your offspring
Who never made enough
To afford you a respectable
Father’s Day gift
Instead
We learned to serve the community you left
Our Juneteenth of breath
A bunch of poor kids
From the wrong side
Of the Cross Bronx Expressway
With nothing to do
But this.
(C) Hakim Bellamy, June 17th 2011 during Urban Verbs Friday Night Performance
A week later, Urban Verbs still thanks you, Albuquerque. (READ ME!: Live Creation from Friday June 17th Show @ Filling Station)
Letter to Hip Hop I (June 17th, 2011, Live Creation for Urban Verbs Show, Barelas USA)
-Hakim Be
Dear Hip Hop
Open your speakers
So you can speak
“Us”
Hear us
Mirrors
We are what you look like
In the morning
Good morning
From the kids you never slept on
Chased Boogie Monsters out of our imagination
Through headphones
The ones I snuck
Under sheet music
When mom banished the TV from my bedroom
From the generation that considered silence
Violence
You lullabied us
Pops worked two jobs so I could buy you
And I knew
When I grew up
I wanted to be just like you
The bastard Love Child of Gospel and Rock
You are what Blues turned into
Just to get hitchhikers to pick her up
A wax museum of classic sculptures
That never so much as flinched
When they called you a vulture
You’re the swan song of ugly ducklings
With your puberty of percussion
You turned awkward into popular
For many an acne’d b-girl
And four-eyed beat boxer
For all the kids
Who couldn’t play
Football, basketball or soccer
The same kids who
Stayed up all night
Playing Halo
And make believe movies of mobsters
But your competition’s a little more honest
Two heartless sleeves in a steel cage match
Soul, saliva and spit
Sprawled across the celebrity death rap
We fight the way you taught us
In the absence of battered mothers
And abusive fathers
We became dead beat authors
Break beat martyrs
The music of YOUR generation
Resurrected in HI-DEFinition audio
Dear Hip-Hop
We bomb these letters
Upside the womb of your Manhattan Projects
We are your Trinity products
However, nonviolent
The kids who are still feeling you
In Hiroshima and Nagasaki
(C) Hakim Bellamy, June 17th 2011 during Urban Verbs Friday Night Performance
