Amena Brown:
I feel like every time I come in here to talk to you all, I'm always talking to you all. Those of you all that are listening to this every week. But I realize some of you, this might be your first week. For some reason, you might have jumped in on this episode as your first time, so allow me to reintroduce myself.
Amena Brown:
My name is Amena Brown. I am the host of HER with Amena Brown and you are currently in our HER with Amena Brown living room. Sometimes there are guests here that I interview or bring in for conversation and sometimes it's just me and you all here and this episode is one of those. So, today's episode is a Behind the Poetry episode. I want to thank all of you for listening. You all have been giving these Behind the Poetry episodes a high amount of listens and I just appreciate you all caring enough about my poetry, to want to know what's behind it and listening to it. I really appreciate that. So, because we're getting the vibes from you that you enjoy this Behind the Poetry content, we're going to keep bringing you these hopefully once every other month. So, for this episode, we are talking about my poem, The Key of G. And I am looking forward to sharing with you more the story behind this piece. So, take a listen.
Amena Brown:
I was born of tambourine and handclap, foot stomp on old wooden church floors. I learned to love a sound that came straight from James Brown, but not the Godfather.
Amena Brown:
So, I'm talking about my father, who saw his Earth, Wind & Fire. Whose eyes are shining stars for me to see headphones bigger than six months old me placed around these little ears so I could hear a slice of what my life could truly be.
Amena Brown:
My grandma used to say, "Yo daddy can play piano by ear." Which meant his heart could hear what his fingers could interpret. See, his mother taught him to play in The Key of G. And he passed that blessing on to me. But no matter how many times old Miss Patterson reminds me to practice I just couldn't focus on the keys.
Amena Brown:
So I left the piano notes alone, I picked up a pen and a microphone I learned to live by ear, listening to the bass blasting from my $20 boombox like ripples of water, through the floor of my bedroom, and the only keys I press were record and play so I could capture my favorite song off the radio.
Amena Brown:
This poem is for the quiet storm. It's for the requests liners for the first time I understood the magnitude of "Shh don't talk, just listen." For my first real date, how we slow danced to All My Life with his hands around my waist. This is for the old holiness hymns that my grandmother taught me, from my mom buying me The Boy's first LP when I believed Hakeem would marry me.
Amena Brown:
This poem is for Trey, who taught me that Black thought calls me a queen named Amena. This poem is for that old bootleg cassette of The Fugees and my first taste of L Boogie. This is from my college roommate, who lend me six of Coltrane's Greatest Hits and I never did give her back that CD.
Amena Brown:
This is for Daniel, with the brown freckles, who sang with the words Under The Bridge. See one day, I'm going to have kids. And they're going to look up at me and say, "Mommy, where does samples come from?"
Amena Brown:
I want to sit them down. I want to tell them the truth that real music can be this special dance that instruments and lyrics do on one day baby, you'll find somebody special. You'll do that dance too, because I want them to listen to Coltrane in the womb.
Amena Brown:
I want them to know that a 45 is more than a loaded weapon. That needles and records go perfect together. And maybe in life, I'll only get my 16 bars but I hope my eyes are shining stars for them to see, because I want to teach them how to live by ear and play in The Key of G.
Amena Brown:
So, I think I was writing The Key of G around 2007. Isn't that crazy? How like it cannot be that long ago but now your memories already murky about it. But I think it was around 2007 because I was doing slam poetry at the time. And if you're not familiar with slam poetry, I want to make a differentiation here that, all slam poetry is spoken word poetry but not all spoken word poetry is slam poetry. So, slam is the competitive side of spoken word. And there'd be these local, regional and national slam competitions that you could compete in. And I really hope for live events to return to us because there is nothing like being in a live slam environment.
Amena Brown:
Here in Atlanta at that time, there were two slam teams and each slam team typically has a venue. So, one of them was the Java Monkey Slam team, because there was a coffee shop here then called Java Monkey, that had a slam competition once a month. And the other team was the Art Amok Slam team and I think at that time, their slam, which was also once a month was at the Red Light Cafe.
Amena Brown:
So, if you were a poet who was interested in being on a slam team, there was a slam season where you would begin sort of competing maybe in the fall, September or October and then each month there'd be a slam competition. There would be judges to score you. The judges were chosen at random. The rules are that the judges were not supposed to know any of the performers personally. But that also meant the judges could be some professor that has their PhD in poetry to someone that just walked up from the street, they never been to anything like this before.
Amena Brown:
So, you are getting a very interesting cross section of points from the judges. And then whoever were the two poets to score in the top two, at each of the slam competitions, all of those people would go on to your local finals competition. And then the top five scores from your local competition would become the team. And then you would go on to nationals from there. Sometimes regionals as well, we had the Southern Fried Poetry Competition, which was competition for a lot of the slam teams that were here in the South. There was Rustbelt, there was LEAF, there were all sorts of slam competitions to be a part of regionally.
Amena Brown:
And then there was the big national slam competition. And I only went to Nationals one year, but the year I went, imagine we were competing against 75 other cities. Most of those cities in America but I think there was at least one team that was from France, the year that I competed. So, just to give you an idea of how slam poetry works. And slam does work according to time. So, your poem has to be three minutes or less, if it's over three minutes and 10 seconds, then you start to get time penalties.
Amena Brown:
So, slam was a really interesting discipline for me, because you had to really learn how to write well enough and perform it well enough, that you could score well enough to get to the finals in your local city to make the team and then to hope you had some work that was good enough to also help your team win nationals. So, during this season of time, if I really think back on this, I had been involved in a church here, doing college ministry for a while and I really enjoyed that. I loved college students then, I love college students to this day. And some wild things happened at the church that I was going to, from my college years into my 20s, that caused me and a lot of my friends to have to leave the church.
Amena Brown:
And so, during the time that I returned to the poetry scene, I was on what I would call like a church break. I was like, "I'm still cool with Jesus and everything, but am too wounded about things to go to church right now." And that was the first time, really since high school, like I grew up in church. So shout out to any of you that are listening they grew up in church. I grew up in church and I was very involved in church growing up from junior high into high school. And then when I moved to Atlanta for college, I got involved in campus ministry and got involved in the church I was going to. So really, from junior high all the way until I turned probably 26 or 27, I had just been involved in church the entire time and in leadership and church too.
Amena Brown:
So, this time that I'm returning to the poetry scene in Atlanta, was the first time that I didn't have some leadership position, some Bible study to run, something like that to do. Now, I look back on it and think it was a really important time of me finding myself again and finding my voice, and also finding God, myself not confusing the voices of other people for God as well. So, it was a very fascinating time. I mean, I was dating. There was just a lot going on in this season of life.
Amena Brown:
So, when I returned to the poetry scene, my friend, Celita and I, shout out to Celita, went to Java Monkey's open mic and we thought it was the Open Mic Night, but it was actually the night for the slam. So, we inadvertently compete in this slam that totally, I feel like I have the phrase, that totally changed my life. I would have say that about a lot of things and I'm like, "How many times does a thing change your life?" But really, I have to say, in a certain way, it's true here. It's not just hyperbole here. It's actually true, because we competed that night. I don't remember what our scores were, maybe the two of us won that night, I really can't even remember. But the rigor of the slam versus the open mic was very interesting to me.
Amena Brown:
And I wanted to make the team so badly because there were so many like badass poets that were on the Java Monkey team. And I wanted to be on the team with them because I felt like if I could be around them, that it would help me to write better and perform better. So that was like a mini dream for me.
Amena Brown:
So it was around this time, that I also realized, those of you that are familiar with my work may know this but those of you that are just here for the first time and are like, "Who are you, girl?" So my career as a poet, ended up being in white conservative Christian space. Maybe I'll do an episode another time where I will talk more about that and the transition out of that, because a lot of people that I work with now are like, "How did you do that?" Especially being a Black woman working in white evangelical spaces for almost 15 years, honestly. So, I'll have to do another episode where I'll talk to you all more about that. But it was yes, these were white conservative environments. But it was also that I was just doing a lot of Christian type of events, which meant there were certain types of poems that worked in that environment and there were other poems that didn't.
Amena Brown:
And when I found myself back on the poetry scene, taking this big church break, I realized about my work, that was the first time it occurred to me that I'm writing things that I'm doing in a church setting. But that if I did them here, at this open mic or performed to them here at this slam, they would not make a lick of sense to do here. And some of the poets in the community were really encouraging me to think about what were the stories that I have to tell about myself, about where I'm from, about things I've learned. And that was totally opposite of what I was being told in a lot of the church environments where I was performing poetry.
Amena Brown:
There, it was more like, "Oh, if you're an artist, whether you're a dancer, a singer, you're a poet, you're a rapper. Whatever you do, this isn't supposed to be about you. This is about God. It's not about your story. It's not about you "shining". It's about God shining." And so over time, my work just became very devoid of my own stories, experiences, culture, anything. It was just like a sermon basically in a poem, was sort of the work I was doing. And I know completely down that because I wrote some things at the time that I really meant, that meant a lot to me. But it was very one-sided to have written that way. So, when I got back out to the poetry scene and realized like, "Oh, this poem might bring the house down in church. In this setting doesn't really work." And why doesn't it work? Because I'm not bringing myself to the piece.
Amena Brown:
So, during this time I'm giving you like a little bit of the background of where I was creatively as I was in the process of writing, what would become The Key of G. So, when I would hear the other poets performing, I was starting to think, "Okay, it's really cool, that person's story that they just share. What are stories I have like that?" And one of the most amazing things about the open mic setting that I hope returns to us, although I know there are a lot of open mics and poetry communities that have figured out ways to move this online and I haven't had a chance to participate in those yet. So, I gotta try that out, so I can report back to you all how it is. But in the before time, is when you could go in person.
Amena Brown:
One of the pluses of being at an open mic or even being in a slam was that you had your chance to perform but you also had more of a chance to listen. Because your performance was only going to be five minutes or less in an open mic and at a slam, hopefully you were three minutes or less. But if you wanted to find out who won the slam, you had to stay there until the end, which meant you had to hear everyone else. And I think that is a really beautiful thing about, I would say, my experience of poetry community in Atlanta.
Amena Brown:
And I know there may be a lot of you listening that have experienced poetry community and other cities, is you're gaining a lot by getting to hear the work of other poets. Not so you can copy their work or try to do exactly what they're doing but there would be times that a poet might share a particular story and I would think, "Well, I don't have that story to tell. But I have a story that makes me feel about it how they seem to feel about that part of their story. How would I tell that story?"
Amena Brown:
So, all these things were swirling around at the time. And I was listening, at some point to Sam Cooke's song, A Change is Gonna Come. And for those of you that are familiar with the song, the song opens up with the line, "I was born by the river, in a little tent. And just like the river, I've been running ever since." Which first of all, any of my writers who are listening, that line is amazing. I mean, to think of opening up a song and that's the first line people hear. I'm immediately curious. I'm immediately like, "Oh my gosh, what is it in life that is making him run?" And the beautiful wording of being born by the river in a tent, but the river is also metaphor there that just like the river I've been running ever since.
Amena Brown:
Also, let's take a pause to do a quick shout out to the movie on Amazon Prime, One Night in Miami. Directorial debut of Regina King, who I know wants to be on this podcast. I know you do, Regina and I want you to also be on the podcast. And no, I'm not even getting paid at all for telling you this about One Night in Miami but I bring it up because One Night in Miami is this fictionalized version of what happened if these four great black men have this One Night in Miami, and Sam Cooke was one of the characters in this film. Sam Cooke, Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X and Jim Brown. So, if you haven't seen it, please watch it because it is a beautiful piece of work. But you'll get to see this other sort of fictionalized version of Sam Cooke.
Amena Brown:
But when I listened to the song and I heard those first couple lines, I thought to myself, "I wonder how I would finish that. I was born... What would I say?" And so, the line that came to me was I was born of tambourine and handclap. And this happens to me all the time with poems, I got that line and that's it for a while. It just sat there. I think at this era, this was before I was using the smartphone. Even so, I think I was still carrying a small moleskine notebook with me around everywhere and little lines would come to me and I'd write them down and then over time, I'd go back and look at them and sometimes they'd become poems. Well, that one line, I was born of tambourine and handclap, just stayed in my notebook forever and I was just like, "This sounds really cool. But where's it going? I don't know what to do with it."
Amena Brown:
And so, I started thinking about music as an exchange. I was trying to think if I'm taking this little bit of a model from these couple of lines of Sam Cooke's song, and if I extend that idea that I was born of music, then what are the other moments in life that showed me this music that made me who I am. That made me love the music I love. That exposed me to these different genres and artists, and rhythms. And so, I started doing this, like archeology, if you will, of my own music exposure. And when I went back and did that sort of this timeline of my life, but marking the time by when I was exposed to certain types of music, then I discovered that most of the music that we love, we don't love because we were somewhere alone and we discovered it. Most of the music we love, we love because someone else brought it into our life.
Amena Brown:
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Amena Brown:
I also thought it was interesting when I did this timeline, sort of trying to think about the idea of this poem. I was looking at who the people were. And some of the people were family members, so they've been in my life my whole life. And some of the people were friends that I don't even talk to anymore. But I love that music because they showed it to me and now that's a part of my sort of music library kind of thing. And also, I thought too about how when you fall in love with someone or you have a crush on someone, they may have a kind of music that they like and then you start listening to that music too. And then you might break up with that person. You may only date them a short period of time or whatever. But now, you still have that music and I just thought that was interesting.
Amena Brown:
I think it's also interesting too, because I am a kid of divorced parents and my dad, which you're hearing some of this language in the early parts of this poem. My dad's a musician, my dad is a music lover. And even though I didn't grow up with my dad in my house, I grew up going to see my dad and the other part of our family during the summertime. But I didn't grow up with my dad in the house. And I feel like even though my dad and I did not grow up in the same house together, I didn't grow up in the same house with him. Rather, we didn't have the chance to know each other in the way that we might have, if we had grown up in the same home together. I mean, I guess parents grow up with their kids too.
Amena Brown:
Maybe they do. But anyway, I feel like that's one thing that even though my dad wasn't around to show me all the musical things all year. He showed me some things when I went to visit, that even for him, his relationship to me, it was a musical exchange that we had because that was a thing we share. That was a thing he passed on to me, even without teaching me that thing himself. So, when you are into the early parts of this piece and I'm talking about James Brown because my dad's name literally is James Brown, for real.
Amena Brown:
And talking about sort of this family idea is early in the piece that this music gets passed on. And one of my earliest memories of my dad, when my dad and my mom and I were still all in the same house together, is my dad in his do-rag, in his white sort of tank top undershirt, standing by the JVC record player and cassette player and him listening to that Earth, Wind & Fire album that had Shining Star on it. Anytime I hear a Shining Star or hear, That's the Way of the World.
Amena Brown:
Those are all songs that make me think of my dad. That remind me of that time. It's really because of him I had that early exposure to what an amazing Horn Section can sound like. I mean, Earth Wind & Fire, that's such amazing music. And I do literally have a picture of myself that my dad took when I was around six months old, with his big, over the ear headphones, I have to see if I can post that on social so you all can see that.
Amena Brown:
So, all this idea around how I started with, I was born of tambourine and handclap, foot stomp on old wooden church floors, because I really was thinking about the fact that I come from a church going family. And so, my first taste of music was truly in church. And then how did all of that become my dad? Become my grandmother, my mom's mom? Who was also a piano player but she loved that my dad could play by ear, that he wasn't just playing by the music he was reading on the sheet music or whatever. That he could also hear music and play, my grandmother loved that. And my dad's mom, played enough to teach my dad how to play now.
Amena Brown:
Fun fact, in here I'm telling about this moment that my dad's mom teaches him to play in the key of G. Well, after I finished this poem, I had video of it because I recorded an album at Java Monkey and The Key of G was one of the poems on that album, but I also recorded video of myself. I'm sure on YouTube, there's like the old grainy footage of me in a red sweater performing this and I took that. This was when I bought my first Mac laptop. This is back when Mac laptops were called iBooks. Somebody listening is like, "I remember." And they were like 12 pounds. Anyway, and I had iMovie. And iMovie had a component where you could basically make your own like DVD. You could make the menu and everything. So, this was like a Father's Day gift that I did for my dad. I wanted him to see this poem and I made a DVD with a little menu on it, and mailed it to him, so that he could click on the menu, like you would a DVD and watch me performing this poem.
Amena Brown:
And so, I got a call from one of my brothers on Father's Day saying, "You need to get on the phone and talk to your dad because your dad played your video and now he's sitting here crying." And that meant a lot to me. I was hoping that my dad was hearing in this poem that my love of music is very much connected to him and connected to his side of the family as well as my mom and her side of the family. But he did share with me, that I think his mother taught him to play in the key of G flat, and I was like, "Well, that doesn't sound good in a poem so, Key of G it is." So, you all the poem if it was really to be true, it should have been called The Key of G Flat but that just didn't sound right to me, so I left it like this.
Amena Brown:
Anyways, my grandmother, I was conjuring up all these memories. My mom's mom, I lived with her when I was six years old and I was in the first grade while my mom was in basic training to become a nurse in the army. And so, my grandma, knowing that my dad played piano, was hoping she was going to get a little piano player out of me. So, she sent me to piano lessons and it was an older lady. I mean, she probably was in her 70s or 80s. So, she was one of those that would hit your knuckles with a ruler if your form wasn't right and I annoyed her to no end because I could hear the music once I learned the fingerings, then I could go way past where she wanted me to in my piano book just because I could connect the sound to what the page was saying. That annoyed her and it made my form bad and so I quit playing piano.
Amena Brown:
And I always tell people, my grandma hoped she was going to get a tennis player out of me, she didn't. She hoped she was going to get a piano player out of me, she didn't. But she did get a writer and I feel like music still informs a lot of my writing process. So, that's part of what I was trying to write about here and say, "I didn't end up becoming a musician but I learned to live by ear." and that sort of translated into my own boombox, into my own love for hip hop and R&B of this era. Shout out to Jodeci, shout out to The Boys who were a boys group back then, Hakeem was the lead singer. Shout out to my best friend Trey from high school, who actually gave me a cassette of The Roots, Do You Want More, which had a song on it called Silent Treatment. That was the only hip hop song I've ever heard my name in, still to this day.
Amena Brown:
My friend Aron is the one who gave me the bootleg cassette of The Fugees. I remember the whiteout on the cassette tape, where he wrote the food cheese on top of it. And I did have a roommate in college, who now I believe is a music scholar and she was a flute player when we were in college, and she had a CD that was Coltrane's Greatest Hits. It had Giant Steps on it, it had Naima on it. And what was life changing for me is that it had the 13 minute version of John Coltrane's version of My Favorite Things.
Amena Brown:
And that's how I learned that I could not just listen to Jazz and study. That Jazz made all this poetry come out. It was from that CD that I learned that and I really did never give her back the CD. Sorry, girl. And also, I had this moment where I moved a lot as a kid. So, when I moved to San Antonio, Texas, I wasn't doing a great job of making friends, I will admit. So, I was at recess just with no one to play with. And Daniel, who was a white guy that was in my class, he was always in trouble. So, he had to sit and lean up against the wall basically, during recess he wasn't allowed to play. And so, he and I would kind of hang out together and he told me about The Red Hot Chili Peppers, he was always singing the words to Under The Bridge and I got so curious about it that I wanted to know what he was talking about.
Amena Brown:
So, he sang it to me until I knew the words and then of course, I went home, this was back in the era where you get home from school and there was a TV show on that had music videos, TRL would come on. So, I would go home and watch TRL. And then while I was watching TRL, they would typically show the video for Under The Bridge and so, I still know all the words to that song because of Daniel whose last name, I don't even know. I can't even find him on Facebook if I wanted to, sad.
Amena Brown:
And as I'm getting to the end of the piece, I'm starting to think about I thought it was going to be like a cute tongue in cheek idea to think about how a lot of kids will ask their parents where babies come from. And because I grew up in an era where a lot of our music, a lot of our hip hop and some of our R&B music too, was being made on the basis of samples, which meant that music we grew up with that was made of samples, for us was great music. And then we got old enough to actually listen back to the music that really was our parents music that was being sampled to make the music that our generation loved.
Amena Brown:
So, I thought there'd be this cute idea, sort of imagining a kid asking you where do samples come from? And you're going to sort of sit down and have a musical birds and bees kind of conversation with them. And to say that, if I am able to have kids or any kids that are in my life, whether they're mine or not, wanting them to know what the basis is of some of the music that they love and that it's important to know the originals behind the samples. And it's important to know how your favorite pop star really got the ability to make that music because they are third, fourth fifth generation of someone like Sam Cooke.
Amena Brown:
And I love to being able to end this poem talking about the number 45 and that 45 isn't just a weapon, nor is it just a terrible president. 45 can also be a small album. Can be a small record that you can play and the needles and the records, and the 16 bars and really returning back to that Earth Wind & Fire idea. Wanting to teach kids how to live by ear and play in the Key of G or parentheses G flat, we don't know.
Amena Brown:
So, it was a lot of fun writing this poem. I had a feeling when I finished writing it that it was good. But I had to take it in front of an audience, that's always my process. I got to take it in front of a crowd, so I can find out is it really good? Does it really work? So, I think I took this piece out to a couple of open mics for a while and tried it out, try to get the rhythm of it. And then the goal was to slam with it, which meant I had to get it memorized and get all the rhythms down and everything else. So, I don't remember honestly the first time I perform this piece but I'm pretty sure it was at... When I say perform, had memorized, it felt like it was really in its zone, I'm pretty sure that was at a slam.
Amena Brown:
And this poem did so well at my local slam. I got very high scores on this poem. I was so excited about that. This was probably one of the first newer things that I'd written that wasn't written to be done in a church service. Could be done in the church service, but wasn't written to be done for that was very much me bringing myself and my own story. And so, it was really good encouragement for me that it scored well and that the audience responded so well clapping and cheering for me. I really appreciated that part too.
Amena Brown:
So, then it got kind of interesting because even though at this time I wasn't going to church myself, I was still getting booked to perform at other churches. And here I was sort of doing slam on the weekends when I'm home and not traveling and then going back into these church environments and sort of the work is starting to feel divergent in a way because I'm writing The Key of G, a piece I'm really proud of but how do I do The Key of G in between two worship songs at church service? So, I just felt that was a little disjointed but at the time I was like, "Well, I'm writing work that I really enjoy, whatever. This is what it is." Kind of thing.
Amena Brown:
So, years later, probably 2010/2011, I started working on my first book, which was a kind of spiritual memoir, called Breaking Old Rhythms. And I got this idea that I wanted the show that went with Breaking Old Rhythms to be a poet and a DJ. This is basically the love story of my husband and I. That we were friends, I asked him to come in the studio and build what was going to become the Breaking Old Rhythm Show. And that's basically how we ended up dating and then subsequently got married.
Amena Brown:
And we added The Key of G into the set, because my first book talks a lot about music and how music informs how I see God. All of that was there, I was talking about deejaying and how deejaying shows me about God and hip hop, I mean there's all this stuff in there. So, it made sense to me, for us to put The Key of G in the show and I don't know how I'm going to figure out a way to show you all or if we have video of it, but we had a version of The Key of G that we were doing in our show, where my husband and I are performing it together.
Amena Brown:
So, I'm saying the poem, he's deejaying there, adding in some of the clips and sounds from this music that I'm making reference to. And that was probably the most fun way to perform The Key of G. I mean, it's fun to do when I'm by myself, but we had a lot of fun sort of making it even bigger and adding the music to it. And so, we really toured around the country doing that show, which included The Key of G. We were touring around the country probably for four years doing that. So, it's pretty cool to think of that this poem that I wrote all these years ago, got all of this first, second and third life really.
Amena Brown:
How do I feel about the poem today? I still love The Key of G. And it's interesting to me the spaces where I've performed it, because when we were touring, we were still touring, and a lot of Christian and faith-based environments and it brought a lot of joy to people that we were sort of bringing some of that music into the conversation.
Amena Brown:
I mean, we'd have people come up to us at the merch table. Come up to us after the show and they were like, "I remember that, Jodeci. I used to listen to that." And we'd have one part of the show, where we would let that Under The Bridge play. And just seeing people not expecting to get to sing Red Hot Chili Peppers in church, seeing them sing that, "I don't ever want to feel like I did that day." I mean, it just took everybody back. And I love that about this poem that I've done this poem in church. I've done this poem for all sorts of audiences, different races, different generations. And there's always something in this poem that someone in the audience is like, "Oh yes, that was my song." Or, "Oh yes, I remember my big brother playing that." And passing by his room and hearing that song coming out of his speakers or whatever.
Amena Brown:
And I love that there are things you can write as a poet and as a performance poet. That there are things you can perform that can just about be performed in front of any audience. And this is one of those pieces that it almost has something in it that would catch just about anybody hearing it.
Amena Brown:
So, I love The Key of G. Now, I feel like when I'm doing my poetry sets, I don't do it as much as I used to but every now and then, especially if I have the type of performance where I can just do whatever poems I want, there's no theme or whatever, man, I still love that poem. It's a lot of fun to get to the end and sing all the things, it's great. So, I love this. And if you want to hear more of what my poems sound like live, I'm terrible at reminding people of this but I do have two live spoken word albums. One of them is Live At Java Monkey. That's the album where you're hearing The Key of G from and you can hear some of my early work. And my most recent live album, Amena Brown Live actually was released at the end of 2016 and just has some work on it that I'm really proud of. So, if you love hearing these live pieces, you can check those out wherever you like to listen to music.
Amena Brown:
For this week's edition of Give Her A Crown, I am giving a crown to my grandma, Bertha Lee. She unintentionally exposed me to some really good music. I lived with my grandma when I was in first grade and she had a rule in her house that I couldn't watch BET or MTV but she did let me watch VH1. Back then VH1 was mostly videos that would be considered easy rock oldies now. It's because of my grandma rule that I learned about Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel and Tracy Chapman. So, shout out to my grandma for being the reason I know all the words to call me out. My grandma, Give Her A Crown.
Amena Brown:
HER with Amena Brown is produced by Matt Owen for Sol Graffiti Productions as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network in partnership with iHeartRadio. Thanks for listening and don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast.