LAST POETS Museum of contemporary art, 2/13 & 14 The MCA’s Hip Hop Life series and the Guild Complex’s Musicality of Poetry festival make natural copresenters, and the Last Poets are a particularly inspired presentation. In the late 1960s, the collective took the literary renaissance that accompanied the black power movement and broadcast it over African percussion in a style derived partly from jazz scatting and partly from the incantatory cadences of black preachers. Who knew that poetry about African-American life and liberation chanted rhythmically over beats might someday really catch on? The turntable side of hip-hop can be traced back to late-70s New York block parties and (arguably) the Sugar Hill Gang, but its history as an oral literary form goes right back to these guys. I first saw the Last Poets in 1994, just after their reunion, squeezed into a corner of the vendors’ parking lot near the toilets in that glamourless Lollapalooza ghetto called the spoken-word tent. The MCA theater by nature will prevent such intimacy, but I’m happy to see them getting the reverence they deserve. On Friday founding poets Umar Bin Hassan, Abiodun Oyewole, and drummer Don “Babtundell” Eaton are joined by local poet Reggie Gibson; Saturday’s show features poet and teacher Quraysh Ali Lansana and a full band that includes In the Spirit storyteller, singer, and percussionist Glenda Baker.
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JAI 2/18, DOUBLE DOOR This undeniably well-dressed young English “mod for the hip-hop generation” has a sweet, high blue-eyed soul croon, but there’s nothing exceptional about the tunes, arrangements, or by-the-book beats on his RCA debut, Heaven. The hypesters like to point out that he lost the rhythm section of his first band to his neighbor Polly Harvey; I can see why. Nevertheless, Billboard is right to predict he’ll fill a market niche–for pale-faced pubescents and upscale adults who like their funk in tiny, sanitary doses. This isn’t Jai’s first Chicago appearance, but it’s the first to which the general public is actually invited. Am I the only one who thinks press-only performances are degrading to everyone involved, like dog shows for people?
