By George D’range
(Unpublished)
For those of unfamiliar with Girl Fest, it is an event organized around a very special group of women and men whose common cause is the fight to ”prevent violence against women and girls through education and art.” It is a collection of artists, dancers, musicians, poets, writers and films presented from across the nation, but is mainly based in the Bay Area of California, New York City, and Hawaii, and the proceeds of the annual festivities go to the cause.
This year’s festivities opened with a gala night at The Hawaiian Hut, and featured poets, writers, and musicians both local and national. For those of you who were lucky enough to take place in any of the week’s events, you know how emotionally charged and socially important this yearly fundraiser can be. For those of you unfamiliar, who have not yet had the chance to catch Girl Fest on any of it’s previous 2 times, you’re going to want to make time next year for you and your friends and family, and not miss at least some of the goings on at this very special event. Some guys out there might be shy about sharing the audience with a largely female crowd, in what they may suspect to be a kind of “Vagina Monologues” affair. But this is not simply about the anonymous, faceless victims of rape and abuse you read about. As the artists involved in this event would remind us, this is about our mothers and our sisters, our aunties and nieces, our female friends and neighbors, and yes, even about our abused male friends. It is about ending domestic violence as a disease upon our culture and our society. The more men attend, the more it says about our humanity, and the progress we are capable of making.
But enough preaching of the cause! This is also about all those talented and dedicated souls who make this event worth attending! This year’s festivities were dedicated to former coordinator Alex T. Handler, who passed away in July of this year. There are many other crucial people who deserve honorable mention, but I will save these honorable mentions for the end of the article, so that we might move things along here.
The night opened with the Taiko Center of The Pacific. Currently under the masterful direction of Gabriel Ishida, this highly disciplined style of Japanese drumming is part dance, part rhythmic performance, with overtones of that remind one of martial arts. So stunning is the prowess of the Taiko performer, I pity the poor soul who runs afoul of one these masters, armed with their bachi. (Drumsticks) Each performance has a story and a dedicated ceremony from which the ikkyoku, or tune was derived. Taiko has an extensive lexicon, and history, so for more information on this artform, and this group of performers, please visit: http://users.lmi.net/taikousa/dictionary.html and www.taikoarts.com.
The spoken word and poetry slam segment of the evening involved both the insanely talented words presented by Youth Speaks, and the panel of celebrated writers, Kealoha, Mindy Nettifee, Amber Tablyn, Andrea Gibson, and Derrick Brown with musical accompaniment by Emily Wells.
When youth speaks Hawaii took the stage, I felt as if I was run over by a verbal steamroller. These young people are so immensely talented, and their words so powerful, it hit me with the unrelenting force of a Gatling gun! It is very fortunate that I was also invited to cover the 3rd annual Interscholastic Youth Speaks Hawaii Slam competition, so that I might have a chance to get to know these great young people and their work better. I will therefore reserve further judgment until that time, but I can say that I don’t anticipate being any less impressed!
Kealoha, local poetry slam trail blazer and founder of Hawaii Slam, among other things, got things started with a stirring poem about abuse and equality, and the aforementioned connection me all share the women who may be among those we are trying to protect.
Mindy Nettifee moved things along in her oddly slow paced and methodical style, beginning with a poem about the blues, and mouthing the bass line from “Stand by Me”, lulling us all into a false sense of security! She then kept the audience on its toes with her nonstop jabs at life’s little foibles and peeves, turning them into hilarious anecdotes of poetic justice! After delivering one such poem entitled, “Seven Things I Never Told My Sister”, she then announced that she was going to do “some serious stuff”. Her idea of this began with a poem called, “Dear Guardian Angel”, whish began, “Dear Guardian Angel: BACK OFF!” You get the idea. Mindy can be found at: myspace.com/thecultofmindy.
Amber Tamblyn is better known as TV’s Joan of Arcadia, a Golden Globe and Emmy nominee, among other things, but there is much more than meets the eye about this multi-faceted performer. As well as being an actor and poet she is also a writer, with several books under her belt, all with titles of which she claims not to know the meaning. She is at once emotionally accessible, wickedly funny, well balanced, and delivers pointedly cathartic slams, which lent a wonderfully complementary chemistry to her fellow performers. Like mirror moves on a chessboard, Amber seemed to match Mindy blow for blow, and laugh for laugh! An example of Amber’s quirky sense of turning angst into mirth was reflected in a poem entitled “Hate: A Love Poem”. For more on Amber’s colorful background and family, I strongly recommend doing a Google search on her background. Also look up Bonnie Tablyn, while you’re at it. Amber can be found at: myspace.com/ambertablyn.
Andrea Gibson: It’s hard for me to be objective about Andrea Gibson. Although Andrea admits to spitting in her furor as she Slams, this reviewer would consider it an honor to be in the front row as the poetry begins to flow, saliva mist or no. I would scarcely be able to differentiate the spit flying from Andrea’s lips from my own emotional reaction to her concerto of venomous verbal justice. I’m only glad to not be on the receiving end of Andrea Gibson’s indignant derision, and ironically enough, —perhaps because of the cathartic nature of her work— I found Andrea to be a delightfully amiable, accommodating and friendly person. It was a pleasure to make her acquaintance, and I can’t wait for the next time I get to see her recite her unique brand of socially significant poetry again!
Derrick Brown was described in Rolling Stone Magazine as being the “Darker side of Jude Law. He didn’t seem really comfortable with this, but nonetheless flattered. As I watched Derrick, I decided that a more accurate description would be that he is like a funnier version of Steve Carrel. After the show, I actually took a gamble, and ventured to mention this to Derrick, who perked up and remarked that it was one of the highest compliments he ever had! (I knew there was something I liked about this guy!) Mindy chipped in that he was much better looking than Steve, which I decided to concede to her female opinion in that matter. At one point during Derrick’s performance, The Multi-talented Emily Wells joined in as accompaniment, I believe for a poem entitled Kirasawa Champagne. I might be mistaken about that, as it was an evening of many interesting surprises, and outstanding entertainment! Whatever the case, he, Mindy and Amber made a great Combination, and were a counterweight to Andrea Gibson’s heavy-duty social commentary.
Derrick was followed by comic Ali Wong, who probably grows tired of any comparisons to Margaret Cho, other than to say she is gut wrenchingly funny! Besides, I found Ali to be very much the master her own approach to female comedy, and making any comparisons at all to other comics would be, in my estimation, just unfair. Between the humorous approach of the celebrity slam panel, and Ali’s stand up routine, I found myself in a relaxed state afterwards, my body coursing with endorphins from the deep belly rolls of laughter from these very clever and funny performers.
In addition to accompanying Derrick Brown during his set, Emily returned to the stage to close out the evening with her very interesting and eclectic style. as an artist, I have to respect and admire Emily as a musician who held out with the music companies in order to maintain creative control over her art. She is a living statement of artistic and personal empowerment, and seriously of kicks ass on the violin, too!
As previously mentioned, there are many people who make Girl Fest and Youth Speaks Hawaii possible, so without making this into an acceptance speech, I would like to give some credits, and few of my own shout-outs. A big salute goes out to the tireless efforts of Lyz Soto, Kathy Xian, Darron Cambra, Kealoha and TravisT, and all the other Girl Fest coordinators, volunteers and mentors of Youth Speaks, who deserve credit for their good work with the youth of Hawaii. My own personal thanks go out to Katie Whitman at The 808 Scene Zine, who was also a workshop teacher during Girl Fest, for giving me a shot at getting published, and Darron again for the Youth Speaks assignment, and for all his help in getting me connected. Also special shout-outs go to local scene moguls “SeE” and Jonathan at Ong King, and DJ Nocturna, just because.
Aloha!
