It’s a night of freestyle games and lyrical dexterity. Come and freshen up your freestyle flow!

Every fourth Monday of the month, Freestyle Mondays joins RAW (Rhythm and Words) to present an evening showcase of the freshest lyrical styles!

http://www.myspace.com/sharpeningSAWDS

http://www.myspace.com/fmmcr

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKUZuv6_busSubtitled version of “INJA KOJAST INJA IRAN AST SARZAMINE MANO TO” (link below) – a woman speaking about the state of her country while filming the rooftop shouting of “Allah-o Akbar” in Iran on Friday June 19th, This was after Khamenei said in his Friday prayer that the crackdown on protesters would begin. It did, that next day, brutally.

There are three additional “poems” recorded like this one:

On June 16th (“Defenseless People”): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6bbEM…

On June 20th (“Listen Closely”): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5runbY…

On June 21st (“Let Us Not Forget”): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qocveg…

See ALL FOUR in the same place:
http://www.bit.ly/roofpoems

Original version of this video is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oM6l9…

VISIT http://mightierthan.com/rooftop
for a collection of Iran’s rooftop chanting videos, updated with each day’s new footage.

Good Old JCC- John Cooper Clarke – a bard.. a true Spoken Soul Trooper… last seen and heard playing live alongside Roots Manuva at the Mad Ferret festival  not so long ago in Manchester… We found a little clip of his time in ‘Chicken Town’- and an intro to his mighty wordsmith from Salford…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGWhjojt5dw

The forces that govern my life affirmed the reality of synchronicity (if only I was continuosly fully aware in order to cipher its gifts) when I was offered the opportunity to interview Lebo Mashile for my first offering for The Original Seed.

Lebo Mashile for me symbolizes the globally inter-dependent nature of the wlidwordwomb her style epitomises the heart and soul of not just South African (SA) Antiquitos and contemporary oratry but also the western worlds rapidly mutating expressive landscape.

Lebo, a 33 year old fiercely independant socially conscious Black woman has appeared in the feature film ‘Hotel Rwanada’ several years ago. She has gracefully and candidly brought the wider reality of life in SA to the cushioned living rooms of the have alls within her society in the TV show ‘Latitude’ which ran for 3 years and garnered peek audiences of 2 million.

Her work has won her Africa most pretigious literary award the Noma Prize in 2006 for her first book of poetry ‘In A Ribbon Of Rhythm‘ alongside a wholesome host of other awards,books and performances that you can read about at her on the website link below.

I caught up with Lebo one semi sunny Saturday at Manchester’s Contact Theatre the day before she facilitated a daylong workshop with some of Manchester’s latest emerging female poets…(hear more on The Original Seed Podcast- Chris Jam in Session)

http://www.lebomashile.co.za/

On and On and On and On……