Every week, we’ll be interviewing our #Babishai2016 Poetry
Festival guests. This week, it’s L-Ness from Kenya. Her session is for
children. Babishai Poetricks is in for a
treat. L-NESS alias Lioness is a Poet, a Femcee, a Hip Hop Cultural Specialist,
and one of the top lyricist and performance femcees of Hip Hop in the region.
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| L-Ness, courtesy photo |
Her
first album is titled SIMANGWE 2011 and the theme is ‘’Don’t Stop the Music’.
One of the songs in this album is being used by Music Copyright Society of
Kenya as their campaign theme song against piracy and artist exploitation.
1.
Explain if
you are you the poet you wanted to be 5 years ago.
In actual fact, I am growing to be more than the poet I
wanted to be five years ago. I started as a rapper and transformed into a
Mc/Femcee. I have been blessed and privileged to share the same stage with
international poets from all over the world in events like the Poesiefestival 2015 and the Spoken Worlds 2014 concert, both in
Berlin. I didn’t even know I was a poet. Other poets and institutions involved
in the Poetry and Spoken Word arena like Kwani
and Storymoja in Nairobi, Kenya
and Literaturewerkstatt in Berlin,
Germany, identified me as a poet. They read my translated poems/rap verses and
saw my live stage performances and creative writing workshops and considered it
poetry. Due to the direction I choose my poetry to take, I am able to tackle
selective topics that open discussions which generally people are hesitant to
talk about like politics, religion and worship jealousy (Terrorism), social
issues, cultural issues, woman power and leadership in Africa.
2.
Poetry is
subjective and yet all talent needs to be nurtured. How has this fact
influenced your work?
The subjective nature of poetry has influenced different ways
of performing, recording, publishing and distributing my works. Some suggest
that language and logic are predominantly functions of the left side of the
brain, while music/sound is processed in the right side of the brain which
deals largely with feeling and emotions. I combine my poetry with musical
accompaniment, in addition to the fluctuating tones that I incorporate in my
performance poetry, in order to evoke spontaneous reactions from the listeners.
The subjective nature of poetry has also influenced the
content of my works, since I aspire to inspire and empower through my poetry
thus nurturing young minds. Positive content from any art form contains
messages that must protect the listener’s eyes and ears, in order to protect
their emotions, thus protecting their hearts and minds. Poetry has the power to
mould minds by sharing views on lifestyles and moralities, either godly or
ungodly. You find that most African poetry is about our good values, rich history,
our struggle and our grappling with the question of how to get to where we
ought to be as a continent globally. This is simultaneous with conserving and
preserving the positive aspects of our culture and heritage.
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| Courtesy photo |
3.
Tell us a
bit how Rapercussions began and how it’s grown?
RAP +
PERCUSSIONS is the definition. It is the ancient essence of our
communication. It combines conscious poetry and rap alongside live traditional
African percussion instruments like Obokano, Marimba, Shakers, Nyatiti, Orutu,
Kayamba, Nzumali and reed flute.
The concert was launched at the Goethe Institute Auditorium
in Nairobi, Kenya, on the 12th of June 2015, and the coverage was
featured in the African Journal Documentaries.
The educative element of Rappercussion then featured at the
Storymoja Festivals on the 16th to the 20th of September 2015, and
it was at the Nairobi Arboretum in Kenya.
The concert has grown into a monthly event at the Tree House
in Nairobi, Kenya. It involves more poets and Mcs like Mwafreeka and Monaja. The
accompanists and participating team are currently developing a center where
people can come and learn how to make and play these traditional instruments.
It has also grown beyond the borders of its origin, to the
level of being featured at the Babishai Poetry
Festival 2016, which will be at the Kampala Museum, in Kampala, Uganda.
This is where there will be simple explanations about the different functions
of these traditional instruments, in the past and at the present, with
enlightenment on which community each instrument emanates from.
4.
Your
session at the Babishai Poetry Festival is entitled, Roots and Rhymes. Who is
the target and what can they expect?
The children are the target, which means that the content is
suitable for all age groups who desire to earn back the pride of our culture
and heritage.
They should expect to:-
a. Learn
performance techniques with active participation from their side.
b. Connect
traditional ways of storytelling with current methods of creative writing and
performing poetry.
c. Learn about
our traditional instruments, their origins, materials used to make them,
functions and roles.
5.
Why was it
important for you to accept our invitation?
I respect every chance I get to exchange and share cultural
values and heritages which empower others while at the same time being a growth
and learning experience for me.
As an African woman, whose content is about Africa, I feel it
is a great privilege to be able to visit other parts of this continent in order
to broaden the content of my poetry through the different contexts where I get
to visit.
6.
What are
the two main subjects you find yourself constantly writing about?
a. Women empowerment because it is through Woman
that society gets empowered, everyone in society is related to her as she is somebody’s
daughter, someone’s sister, somebody’s mother, someone’s aunt, somebody’s
sister-in-law, someone’s grand-mother, another person’s first cousin or distant
cousin. All those connected to her therefore, need to be empowered. So Woman
empowerment boils up to Family empowerment and hence total Society empowerment.
Society is made up of families and that
is what make our continent.
b. Socio-Political Issues because
leadership affects how we develop or under-develop as Africans. We are very
hard and smart working citizenry but are being dragged behind by social vices
like corruption, income inequalities, tribalism and nepotism. These are
leadership related issues.
7.
How do you
feel towards art for social change?
Art for social change must be
greatly advocated for because:
a. It is the
job of the writer to observe and put out, as a wake-up call to what is going
on.
b. Poetry
gives people true solutions.
c. We can
incorporate our own empowerment in poetry instead of depending on foreign aid.
d. Social
progress is attributed to freedom and empowerment of the woman, and social
decadence is directly associated with a decrease and lack of that freedom, yet,
women are naturally talented and gifted in the arts.
e. Society
suffers from dilemma of equality, the dilemma of difference and the dilemma of
identity. Poetry and other arts create adversity in the middle of diversity.
f.
There is over-emphasis on African problems, thus
poetry and the arts builds confidence and showcases raw talent and original
ideas, as positive aspects of the African society.
8.
We look
forward to hosting you. Any concluding remarks?
Your invitation is deeply appreciated and I look forward to
the Babishai Poetry Festivals, where we get to network with other poets from
the globe. Thank you very much for this priviledge.
We’re grateful to Praxis Magazine online for supporting the
#Babishai2016 Poetry Festival. For more details, email festival@babishainiwe.com or call
+256 751 703226.
