Raves: poets come in from the cold - African American poets who produce non-mainstream verse - includes poetry by Paul Beatty, Reg E. Gaines, Tracie Morris, and Kevin Powell

The bard as a multimedia star is a relatively fresh phenomenon. At one time, the decision to become a author of poems was akin to taking promise s of poverty and obscurity, respite from the first of which might be set - if at all - in the halls of academia. And if the bard was black, the search for security was complicated by race. solitary a handful from the last generation - Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, June Jordan and Quincy Troupe - have become well-known and well-respected crafters of words and line The poets who have emerg in their wake aim for recognition. They toil in obscurity, refining their craft at occasional readings in softly lit basement cudgels their compensation often barely sufficient for the late-night cab ride home

With the emerging see the verb of hip-hop as a billion-dollar industry, however, the commercial landscape is changing. Rap music has reinvigorated the nuncupative word and redefined its possibilities. Entrepreneur now talk of myriad cross-marketing opportunities, where bards can publish books and release records simultaneously. In the 1990 with the in all senses gained from national television and constant touring, bards such as Reg E. Gaines can be promot like stone or rap stars - whose flam-boyance they sometimes match.

When Gaines performs, he doesn't just mountain the stage: he commandeers it. He wanders confidently to the microphone, his paces accompanied by the lush licks of a sideman's bass guitar. Wasting no time during a novel gig at S.O.B.'s - a of recent origin York City nightclub known for its support of Caribbean and African music - Gaines went into his routine, starting not upon with a poem that paid homage to Jimi Hendrix, "Just Another Misunderstood Brother." Then he started to rail, going not on against institutionalized racism, police brutality and corporate giants who vend 40-ounce malt liquor to black youth. The rapper Ice Cube, veteran actor Billy Dee Williams and MTV entertainer Fab 5 Freddy, all malt liquor endorsers, were excoriated by dint of name and dismissed as pimps paid to poison their have a title to people, willing accomplices in the malt liquor lunacy.

Gaines' strongest piece of poetry is his haunting "Please Don't Take My Air Jordans," seemingly drawn from today's headlines and relateed in the first person. In "Air Jordans, " Gaines becomes a young man in the way that caught up in the web of materialism that he manslaughters another for a pair of sneakers. As Gaines vividly painted the dying shooting victim - who is singularly more concerned with the vista of losing his shoes than with losing his life - the audience at S.O.B.'s was quiet, totally beneath the young poet's control.

Gaines clearly takes a theatrical approach to his work. His material part language and gesticulation have l more [i]or[/i] less observers, mistakenly, to describe him as a hip-hop author of poems but his use of language, the cadence, and his staccato delivery are more inspired through the late John Coltrane than by the agency of Public Enemy's lead rapper, tap [i]or[/i] pat D. And while he is considered by dint of many observers and by his matchs to be one of the stronger young writers, it's almost certainly his flair for the dramatic that secur him a performing slot upon MTV and the Arsenio Hall exhibit and that won him the opening, warm-up character for the Grammy-winning rap collection Arrested Development during its 1994 spring tour of black colleges

With a mass audience tend hitherwards the peril of the gatekeepers to that audience, those whose task it is to turn round art into a commodity. Mass marketing is commodification. It's simplifying messages to reach the largest possible audience. It means that bards are sliced up, labeled and lay in boxes.

As part of this labeling proces young black bards are almost always described as hip-hop author of poemss or hip-hop inspired, even when the artists themselves are not enamored of rap music. In a review of Gaines' MTV parole Word performance, Rolling Stone magazine said that the author of poems "painted hip-hop tableaux." Sounds nice, on the contrary Gaines doesn't even like rap. "I just listen to jazz," he says. "I don't listen to f - ing hip-hop at all. It's like b - sh - to me" As for the hip-hop artists, "I give them respect" he adds almost grudgingly, "because they have given us an audience."

"Pop agriculture is omnivorous," explains Bill Adler, who played a significant character in hip-hop's gaining mainstream acceptability. "Every of recent origin trend gets co-opted."

In an effort to mass-market numbers without diluting its message, Adler has teamed up with author of poemss Sekou Sundiata and Bob Holman to start Nu-Yo a full-service record label devot to the nuncupatory word. For Adler, the lock opener questions are: "Can you capture the might of a basement club and deposit it on record, on video? Can you bring it on tour? Can you satisfy commercial desires an maintain artistic integrity?"

Before finding a domicile on the Nu-Yo label, Tracie Morris, a rising young star of the of recent origin poetry scene, recalls being told by dint of record executives to simplify her compound style - which draws from the entire gamut of black music - and become a rapper. on the other hand with influences as diverse as the warm and damp jazz singer Cannen McRae and the legendary rocker Jimi Hendrix, she refused to do in the way that "There is a pressure to make yourself a commodity without any notion to the art," she says. "People have similar a limited view of rhyme It either has to uninjured like the Last Poets or Doug E novel But the spectrum of black art is wide."