Bringing My Family Along With Me

What happened at Speak for the Culture this past Sunday?

“Now babies, can you all say ‘Speak for the Culture?’” - Grandmother

The audience repeats it with a chuckle. As I am waiting for the DJ to play my song, and someone screams, “Do the Speak for the Culture piece! You already up there waiting.”

I as my Grandmother, start looking around and pointing out “family members” at our family reunion.

"Who that is?! Is that Pavonne? Chile, it has been a minute since I seen you. Now you know we miss you over Calvary on Christ Southern Baptist Methodist Church on the Hill, mmhhm!"

This moment was not scripted - but neither was this monologue/poem to begin with. The day I created this piece, I hadn’t thought about what I was going to perform until I walked into the Cotton Club. But I knew that it needed to speak for the culture!

I’ve always loved watching movies with my mother and my grandmother; these experiences helped me to develop my world view. I believe my inner child was yearning to have space with these moments anywhere I went as an artist. (More on inner child work as an artist.) 

Grandmother asks "What you watching that Speaks for the Culture Poon?" and originally I performed Morgan Freeman’s Lean on Me speech to the student to jump off the roof, Denzel Washington’s final speech in Training Day and Katt Williams’ “Weed ain’t a drug” speech in Pimp Chronicles. In school settings, I would do excerpts from MLK and Malcolm X speeches along with the opening lyrics to FREELANCE’s title track (more on lyrics from the album). 

But for some reason, Denzel’s Great Debaters speech on Willie Lynch spoke to me and I didn’t even know I had bits of it memorised. This is how it happens: when I’m in my purest creation mode, I create nothing - I only channel using the tools of creativity that I’ve sharpened in rehearsal. But once I’m on stage all of that work goes out of the window and what happens on stage is no longer me or my conscious will. (To be continued...)