I'm a big fan of the Saint Paul Almanac and its founder, Kimberly Nightingale (see the article I wrote on both for The Line a while ago). This desk-calendar/almanac devoted to the city could have been obvious and sleepy—a civic fact parade with weather forecasts—but Nightingale and her many collaborators run it as an energized local-culture industry.

They solicit short pieces of writing and art from members of just about every community in Saint Paul, from lauded writers like Patricia Hampl to recent immigrants from Burma, and lard its pages with these contributions: poems, bits of memoir, accounts of culture shock and clash, paintings, drawings—richly showing rather than just telling that the city is vibrant, dynamic, and in love with its history as few places north of the Mason-Dixon line are.

Writings and Readings

But there's more to the Almanac than the Almanac. Nightingale and company also serve the cause of local expression by sponsoring three series of readings and performances—a cluster of readings of Almanac content in nearly every independent coffee shop in town  when the new edition comes out in the fall; the Soul Sounds Open Mic series all through the year at Mycheal Wright's convivial Golden Thyme Coffee and Café on Selby Avenue; and the Lowertown Reading Jams--multi-writer affairs held at the Black Dog Coffee and Wine Bar in Lowertown.

The next Jam is a pretty amazing-sounding spoken-word showcase next Wednesday curated (I know you have to say "curated" these days, but what's wrong with "produced"?) by Saymoukda Vongsay, a charismatic young poet, playwright, and performer.

In the Almanac's spirit of honoring elders while celebrating the funky-fresh, "When Poets Found Bass" brings to the stage Desdamona, one of the major stars of the burgeoning Twin Cities hip-hop community (she cofounded the B-Girl Be Festival, which promotes female rappers, and she's been touring in France for the past two years) and Truth Maze, who's been called "the Afrika Bambaataa  of Minneapolis." This multitalented pioneer of local hip-hop began as a beat-boxer (vocal percussionist) named B-Fresh in 1983. Since then he's been involved with an array of local projects, from I.R.M. Crew (the first local rappers to garner national attention) to the Mighty Micronauts, whose intense first album has just been re-released by local hip-hop powerhouse Rhymesayers Entertainment.

Vongsay will perform as well—keep an eye out, by the way, for her play Kung Fu Zombies Versus Cannibals, coming to Mu Performing Arts this fall—and so will Fres Thao, an accomplished Hmong-American rapper and writer who works as the Program Director at the Center for Hmong Arts and Talent.

Crossing the Divide

All of these rappers are also serious writers, and among the attractions of this particular Jam for me is that it engages the interesting, and somewhat vexed, question of the relationship between rap and poetry. "With poetry's performative aspects being akin to the stylized delivery of vocals in rap music," says the web site writeup of the event, "the line between spoken word poetry and rap has been blurred and the debate on whether or not rap is poetry and vice versa continues to leave commentators on either end of the spectrum."

This Jam, the web site goes on to claim, will "prove that the tools, devices, and guidelines observed by poets are the very same ones utilized by MCs. Without stripping away either of poetry's or rap's own aesthetics, these trailblazers have a dual identity, equally at ease when writing stanzas in notebooks or spitting bars over a track."

As somebody who prefers good writing to mere macho rhyming but has been bored to tears by conventional readings and just loves to see the words get up off the page onto the voice, into the air with force and fabulousness, this evening is a can't-miss for me. If you go, say hello to Kimberly Nightingale and thank her for her labors to show anyone who wants to pay attention that Saint Paul is a long way from Lake Wobegon.