OCtech to hold poetry performance event
By CANDACE NEWSON, T&D Features Writer Thursday, January 17, 2008Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College will host a New Year's Dub Poetry event from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m Thursday.
The event will feature Maurice Gordon, a jazz guitarist who has performed and worked with the famous dub poet Mutabaruka. Activities will include a concert by Gordon and an afternoon poetry workshop.
"We will feature a presentation that explores the background of dub poetry as a social and political instrument and will provide opportunities for students to add music and other sounds to their own poems and practice performing them publicly," said Tamara Miles, director of OCtech's writing studio.
The poetry assignment follows a model used at Claflin University by Dr. Susan Till, Miles said. Till and some of her students will be at the event to work with OCtech students and perform their own evocative poems, she said.
Representatives from the Charleston Academy of Music will also be on-hand to work with students.
OCtech and the Charleston Academy are combining their educational goals of increasing participation in music and poetry events among students, Miles said. The theme of the event is "Where I'm From."
Claflin graduates Bevis and Tembi Gray, directors of the nonprofit GMG Music Center in Orangeburg, will share their instrumental and vocal talents as well.
The New Year's Dub Poetry event was funded by a $15,000 South Carolina Arts Commission grant. The grant will be used to fund a series of yearlong events that will deepen participation in the arts among OCtech students.
The South Carolina Arts Commission provides grants, services and leadership to arts organizations, schools and individual artists to preserve and promote the arts across the spectrum of the state's cultures and forms of expression.
The event is open to the public. For more information, call 803-268-2513 or e-mail milest@octech.edu.
T&D Features Writer Candace Newson can be reached by e-mail at cnewson@timesanddemocrat.com or by telephone at 803-533-5540. Discuss this and other stories online at TheTandD.com.
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