Report To The Community 2021

verses unbound
Mixing melody and meters,
City Verses program, funded
by the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation, takes poetry
to the stage — Stephen Whitty
Hip hop artist Rakim inspired
poets from City Verses,
Arts Education faculty and
alumni as part of last summer’s
Horizon Foundation Sounds of
the City outdoor concert series.
The sweetly insinuating melody
of a saxophone. The rat-a-tat
rhythms of a poet’s plea.
They continued to come together and
make beautiful music last year in City
Verses: Amplifying New Voices in Jazz
and Poetry, a far-reaching project
that NJPAC launched in conjunction
with Rutgers-Newark’s creative
writing MFA program in 2019, backed
by a Mellon Foundation grant.
“The combination of jazz and
poetry has a long history going
back to the Harlem Renaissance,”
explains Project Director Jennie
Wasserman. “Look at the work of
Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn
Brooks, the Black Arts Movement,
The Last Poets. We like to think
we’re carrying on that tradition by
highlighting our local poets and
Newark’s rich musical history.”
“The two forms differ, in that
poetry is written from free
thought and memorialized as
such,” explains Rod Shepard,
a teacher in the program’s
summer camp and the head of
the music and audio technology
program at High Tech High
School in Secaucus. “Jazz, by
definition of its idiom, provides
a written outline, while its
performance is completely
open to interpretive expression.
Yet there is a freedom of
expression in either that
can draw them together.”
“There’s a melody and rhythm
that tie music and poetry
together,” adds Attorious Renee
Augustin, an MFA candidate at
Rutgers-Newark and the team
lead for the City Verses poetry
group. “They’re inextricably
linked by sound and tradition.
And to see students dive into
that — it was just bananas. They
really got down to the nitty
gritty. They genuinely inspired
each other. They inspired me.”
“My students love it,” Shepard
says. “It’s an escape, and
young minds need the break.”
From the beginning, City Verses
was meant to be multifaceted.
“We don’t only do performances
at NJPAC — we do high
school residencies, we do
poetry workshops, we have
a summer camp,” Wasserman
says. Obviously, that had
to be rethought during the
COVID shutdown, as some
programs moved into hybrid
models or went completely
online. “The program was
not originally designed to be
virtual,” Wasserman adds.
“But we made the best of it.”
Still, last year, in addition to its
free summer camp for teenage
students, City Verses offered
dozens of opportunities for
the community to connect with
jazz and poetry, including five
virtual poetry workshops led
by Rutgers MFA poets, and four
in-person poetry workshops
at Newark libraries and
other community venues.
The December concert Phronesis:
A Focus on Frequency,
streamed live on Facebook
“There’s a melody
and rhythm
that tie music
and poetry
together.
They’re
inextricably
linked by sound
and tradition.”
— Attorious Renee Augustin
from NJPAC’s Horizon Theater,
was an eclectic mixture of
readings and rhythms.
The newly virtual programming
brought some unexpected
benefits too.
“We were able to reach people
all over the world,” Wasserman
says. “In the summer camp
alone, we had students from
India, from Ireland — I don’t
know how they found out about
it, but it was so great to have
them sign on and give their
perspective on things. Going
forward, I think there’s going to
have to be a virtual component
to a lot of what we do. Of
course, we’re going to continue
to focus on Newark and Greater
Newark — those are the primary
communities we serve — but if
we can welcome people beyond
that, so much the better.”
Still, despite the advantages
of remote programming,
everyone agrees the in-person
events have a special energy.
One particularly high point
in July was hip hop artist
Rakim’s set for NJPAC’s Horizon
Foundation Sounds of the City
concert series; City Verses
students and faculty served
as one of the opening acts,
and gave a free jazz and
poetry performance for nearly
4,000 people. Wasserman
is also particularly proud of
a November concert, The
Movement Revisited, built
around a piece by NJPAC Jazz
Advisor Christian McBride,
and incorporating the words
of heroes of the Civil Rights
Movement and President
Obama with McBride’s music,
delivered by his band and
a large chorus. The opening
act? Mayor Ras Baraka,
performing his spoken word
poetry alongside The Last Poets,
a veteran music and poetry
group with a huge influence on
contemporary hip hop music.
“That was a real ‘Newark pride’
moment,” Wasserman says.
“And we’ve got a lot coming up,
including a big, international
day of jazz highlighting
our jazz ensembles.”
“I genuinely think this program
is institutional now,” says
Augustin. “It has to be. To see
the way the students in summer
camp just light up — they show
up and they are just so honest
and vulnerable and brave.”
“They need this,” Shepard says
simply. “We need this.” •
32
njpac.org
njpac.org 33