Taking the rap

Staceyann Chin, a Jamaican resident of New York City, is a poetry performance competition winner.

You might think of it as rap without the soundtrack, except for the fact that Def Poetry Jam, an American act coming to AK05, includes a DJ.

But the emphasis in this performance by as many as 10 poets will be on the words, with the DJ filling the gaps between their recitals with hip-hop and R&B sounds.

The act's origins are firmly tied to the rap and hip-hop music genres, however. Def Poetry Jam's producer is Russell Simmons, who founded Def Jam Records, responsible for making performers like LL Cool J and Run-DMC famous.

Simmons' ambitions extended well beyond recording to film-making (Def Pictures), a clothing label (Phat Farm) and TV (Def Comedy Jam, followed by Def Poetry).

Wondering what "def" is? Where the word sprang from isn't certain, but the meaning is - def poetry is excellent poetry. (Phat's meaning is similar, but is a more recent addition to the hip-hop vocabulary.)

If such hipness is intimidating, don't be. Def Poetry successfully made the transition from US TV network HBO to Broadway, where, as Def Poetry Jam, it won a 2003 Tony Award for best special theatre event. The poets - the line-up changes from time to time - have since toured extensively, last year performing at the Sydney and Edinburgh festivals.

According to a 2002 review of the show when it first hit Broadway, it packed in audiences representing a cross-section of New York City dwellers - young and old, from a wide mix of ethnic communities. The cast were, and the present line-up remains, equally diverse.

Black Ice, who began performing on the streets of Philadelphia, was the first spoken-word artist signed by Simmons to Def Jam Records; Georgia Me, of Atlanta, is a veteran of the first season of Simmons' HBO show; Lemon also featured on HBO and had a part in Spike Lee's movie She Hate Me; Poetri is a past collaborator of LL Cool J and Bootsy Collins and a prolific commercial maker; Staceyann Chin is a Jamaican resident of New York City and poetry performance competition winner; Suheir Hammad is a Palestinian-American whose poems have featured on the BBC World Service; and Ishle Park, a Korean-American, was the 2004 poet laureate of Queens, New York.

According to reviewer Matthew Murray, the performers have in common that they're all "enormously talented poets, capable of bringing new artistic and linguistic perspectives to a wide array of topics". The Broadway performance he went to in November 2002 consisted of themed recitals.

"The first set of poems is about identity, the second series finds each of the cast members paying tribute to a specific person or influence, and the third tackles love. The individual subject matter and presentation of the poems can vary greatly."

Def Poetry Jam is on at St James Theatre from March 9 to 13, with tickets priced from $29.95 to $59.95.


* What: Def Poetry Jam

* Who: Produced by Russell Simmons and Stan Lathan. Directed by Stan Lathan.

* When: Wednesday, March 9, 7.30pm

Thursday, March 10, 7.30pm

Friday, March 11, 7.30pm and 10.30pm

Sunday, March 13, 7.30pm

* Where: St James Theatre