The Foundation
My Chronicle of Birmingham’s Modern Spoken Word and Soul Movement
Post #3 of #20: I’m reflecting on twenty years of personal and professional insights in Birmingham. Visit www.medium.com/HonestlyEd to read the full #20for20 series.
I was born into Birmingham through the cultural arts scene.
While a student at Alabama State University I was a part of a spoken word collective in Montgomery, AL called Vibes & Verses Poetry Society. We enjoyed a peer relationship with a similar collective in Birmingham called Infinite Currents. Occasionally, members of each collective would road trip to experience each other. Birmingham poets drove one hour south on I-65 to light up our stage at The Rose Supper Club (formerly known as Top Flight.) We would do the same. Driving one hour north to make our way to the Birmingham-adjacent city of Fairfield. It was always late at night when we got on the road, later when we arrived, and I was always lost in the winding, hilly and worn roads.
The poetry set dubbed The Cypher was hosted by Infinite Currents in a small, nondescript store-front owned by a musician named Dr. Lud Yisrael. This place was affectionately known as The Foundation and it sat in the middle of a residential neighborhood in Fairfield with vacant dirt plots across the street that served as convenient parking spaces.
The first people I met in Birmingham were like superheros to me. At least, one would think they were superheroes because of their stage names at The Cypher: “The Seventh Sun”, “L, The Urban Servant”, “AkMu”, “Teapots”, “Mimi Latoine”, “Brotha Shay”, “Essence", “Obeah, The Intellectual,” among others.
For the better part of a year, this building and this space was the only thing I ever knew about Birmingham other than the Magic City Classic.
Some of the icons of the Infinite Currents collective could not have been more different. Organizing founder, Seventh Sun was a towering young professional and transplant from D.C. A full-time engineer and quite worldly in his musical tastes including a special penchant for Afro-Latin grooves. On the other hand, the shorter Kuumba Nia was older and Birmingham-born and bred. Kuumba Nia’s signature poem, A Cry for Birmingham, told the gripping story of Bonita Carter’s murder and why it mattered and should matter to every person hearing the story. The structure, length and passion behind that piece has stayed with me more than twenty years. Plus, every time he recited the poem he literally cried. It is hard not to be affected by that kind of love for Birmingham, especially to me as a new resident.
Things fall apart, as they often do. Infinite Currents dissipated and another group emerged. Synthesis, was another brainchild of Seventh Sun and a small network of young professionals; some were performers, some were not. But, they were all about enriching the arts and culture scene of Birmingham. So, they spawned a series of signature events in the early 2000s: cosmopolitan poetry sets called Urban Groovz and community conversation series dubbed The Speakeasy.
If Infinite Currents was the blues, then Synthesis was jazz.
Urban Groovz and The Speakeasy attracted a broad cross-section of Black Birmingham. Elders, college students, working professionals, academic intellectuals, street philosophers and sexy singles. The collective experimented with partnerships with other groups and embraced Birmingham-born national jazz artist Eric Essix, and new local bands like Mecca’s Groove and visiting regional artists like Anthony David. It was a cauldron of black arts excellence.
By fall 2000, I was a featured poet at Urban Groovz at The Harambee Room — an urban event venue with dark wood floors, mocha brick walls and authentic African decor owned by Elias and Gaynelle Hendricks, a couple that excitedly embraced Birmingham’s burgeoning black arts movement. Soon thereafter, I served as co-host of The Speakeasy alongside a Birmingham Post-Herald journalist, Marie (Jones) Sutton. Every two months, Marie and I would lead engaging and real conversations in various bars and lounges — Xindigo Blue, Chaser’s Pub, and 22nd Street Cafe to name a few. Topics ranged from relationships to music to issues of race and society. We laughed and got deep, but above all we created space for real conversation. The number and quality of people who met, married or otherwise partnered at these events was substantial. I met my best friend and my first wife betwixt these events.
While Urban Groovz and the Speakeasy were filling social calendars in Downtown Birmingham, other networks of urban arts in Birmingham were taking root and growing — fast. Thankfully, local black tech entrepreneur, Russell McClinton, launched a new website — Urbanham.com — to serve a critical role in making the broader community more aware of Birmingham’s civic, cultural and social events.
Poetry remained in Fairfield. It moved to a bigger venue and invited people to bring their songs, raps and other modes of expression for a massive open mic night at The Phoenix, located in Downtown Fairfield. Easy to find, three times larger than the Foundation and hosted by popular 95.7 Jamz radio personality, Tammy Mac, The Phoenix drew people throughout Birmingham. I met Alabama’s poet laureate finalist, Priscilla Hancock Cooper, at The Phoenix. Here, established poets had a bigger platform and were beginning to sell CDs and books and were introduced to a network of other artists with few outlets.
Other poetry sets were launching: another club down the street from the Phoenix in Fairfield, another in a vacant storefront in Downtown Ensley, among other venues. Local poetic juggernauts like Yogi Dada and Glenwood Urbz were emerging with their mix of Birmingham-centric poems and entrepreneurial zeal.
New hip-hop artists, a few years removed from heyday of Birmingham’s legendary Hip-Hop group, Red Light District, began to nurture a community around the High Note Lounge. The High Note, known for hard rock and heavy metal embraced a new event called Eargasm, created and hosted by DJ Supreme. I enjoyed attending the Eargasm and seeing break dancers, including those who traveled to Birmingham from other cities to battle our best. This was Birmingham’s 8 Mile experience replete with live freestyling; lyrical artistry from rhetorical geniuses like emcees RTist and Shaheed. Real authentic Hip-Hop in Birmingham, who knew?
My journey took a turn when I attended a set hosted by Glenwood Urbz at Club Infinity. There, I met an emerging DJ by the name of Rahdu. I’ll never forget sitting in the audience during a break and hearing the most incredible blend of Hip-Hop I had ever heard. I went right to the DJ to thank him, dap him up and let him know he was giving me life. I crowded in his small DJ booth and hovered for a while. He hasn’t been able to get rid of me ever since.
Rahdu would soon form his own collective, The Soul Rebels. A mix of artists from all walks of life who hosted urban sets called RISE that featured regional and national new soul artists like Eric Roberson and Goapele. RISE was hosted in loft venues with dark wood and reddish brick that seem to slow grind with up-lights, high hats and smooth vocals of the live bands and the great DJ mixes. Beautiful people like Darrius and Megan Peace would dance the night away, Marika Johnson was selling her artwork and the requisite anonymous brother was selling incense and nag champa body oils near the restroom.
One of the RISE sets welcomed a new resident to Birmingham unknown to many people in Birmingham, but well-known in the pantheon of modern international spoken word artists. His name was Sharrif Simmons. Sharrif came to Birmingham as a single Dad. He and his son, Amari, actively sought to make Birmingham their home. More than an urban poet and socially conscious voice of a generation, Sharrif had a massive white following in Birmingham and in Europe. He spoke several languages and represented an international perspective and brand of afro-centric humanity often missing in Birmingham’s cultural arts scene. Later, Sharrif would be shot at Southtown housing project while seeking assistance for his broken down car. Fortunately, Sharrif survived but his leg — nearly amputated — was literally shattered. He walked with a cane for nearly two years and his mother moved to Birmingham to support him and Amari. She became a part of our community as well.
I also experienced other poetry sets which were decidedly whiter, but equally energetic. The first and only poetry slam competition I ever attended (and won) was held in a basement lounge in the grungy 5 Points South area of Birmingham. That’s where I first became aware of Laura “Mojo Mama” Secord and a number of others who were really great poets and excited to see the diversity in the scene. Eventually, I would see Laura partner with other local artists take their talents to the main stage at UAB’s Alys Stephens Center for a dynamic performance of The Vagina Monologues.
Eventually, spoken word went mainstream. A young Ensley creative bearing the named Brian “A Free Voice” Porter partnered with the Birmingham Public Library while Shariff partnered with the Birmingham Museum of Art. Both of these cultural anchors of Birmingham embraced the movement and hosted regular monthly or quarterly events with legitimacy. It was beautiful to see what the Foundation birthed; me, my peers and a whole movement influencing all of Birmingham.
One of my last memories this chapter of the arts and culture scene in Birmingham was when a young entrepreneur named Antonio Minnifield and his cousin, NFL star and Alabama native, Terrell Owens, co-founded Amani Raha. Amani Raha was an urban lounge in the Martin Biscuit building at Pepper Place, a beautiful red brick commercial building with a few eateries on the first floor. Pepper Place is situated in a blended industrial and commercial district on the edge of downtown. The Red Cat coffee shop that occupies the space now used to be buzzing with dreadlocks, entrepreneurs, social activists, and a diverse progressive constituency. They hosted film viewing parties from black filmmakers as well as private special events. And, when Sharrif Simmons was shot and needed help with the medical bills it was Amani Raha that hosted a fundraising benefit featuring acclaimed artist, Saul Williams, who performed to raise money for his friend.
The demise of Amani Raha represents the end of the era of the arts scene as I remember it. There were plenty of other venues beginning to open and a whole generation of live bands and musicians, several of whom would go on to national acclaim. But, that’s a different story. This is an origin story.
This is my foundation.
The beautiful thing about this story is that all of this was created by everyday people. No politics, no begging for corporate money, no wishing someone else would do it.
Where is that spirit now? I walk the halls of so-called power every day and, to some, I might even represent that power. That saddens me. Not because of how some people see me. But, because of how they do not see themselves.
The people were our power and still are our power.
The Foundation was OUR foundation. The people’s foundation. The house that I live in, the spaces I occupy, the work that I do was built by black artists, intellectuals, street scholars. Frustrated and liberated alike.
This is my foundation. I stand on it.
CLICK HERE to see (or add) photos and flyers from many events referenced in this post.
Post Script
The Foundation
We stood face-to-face
on a vacant lot
across the street
from a well-worn brick building.
I took her hand.
She was close enough for me
to smell her breath
I greeted her
sheepish and coy —
“Hi, I’m Ed.”
She smiled
raised her eyebrows
lifted her right hand
ran her thumb
across my brow
down my cheek
then placed her hand on my heart
which quickened, then quivered
she looked at me, silently at first
parted her lips
and said
“It is nice to have you in Birmingham.”
