If you frequent “undiscovered” hipster-kid spots, secret spaces, and quaint cafes, you’re bound to stumble upon a spoken word show or open mic. This style of poetic performance has been gaining popularity over the past couple of years, largely due to poetry being presented in a more relatable way. The scene has just begun its second coming, and with the community growing exponential, it can be tough to get on its pulse.
NINNO
Enter Voice Night Out by CT/FX Creatives, a Manila-based indie event production company. The show acts as a three-man mixtape providing at least in part, a cross-section of the variations in style and spirit that make spoken word so dynamic. None of your lit class clichés here–this is poetry for the Gen-Y set, spoken, rapped, and rhymed with slick and sly turns-of-phrase, vivid imagery, and depths of expression that might lead even the most jaded millenial to drop their phone and just listen.
Jam Pascual
Featuring virtuoso “third culture kid” NINNO the Rapper, Jam Pascual of hard-rock band Imelda, and poet-slash-performance artist Franz Pantaleon, VNO (as it’s called) showcases the versatility of spoken word in style and subject matter, taking the elemental need for humans to express and relate to other people and wrapping it in everyday tongue, modern beats, and pop-culture metaphors.
Franz Pantaleon
For both spoken word newbies and regulars who may get caught up in its stereotypes, Voice Night Out provides a great introduction, or reintroduction, to how broad the art form can be and also, thanks to its three magnetic leading men, just how appealing.
So When In Manila and looking for a night on the town, why not spring for one that puts a little culture in your soul? Drop by CT/FX Creatives’ Voice Night Out, happening at SaGuijo on April 23rd. Who knows? It might even awaken the poet in you.
