|
|
Ezekiel Brown
The discouragement of LA prompted him to take his money and run back to the "dirty South." In the summer of 1997, a friend dragged him to his first open mic. Brown saw that there was a place were he could express himself, letting his own "gumbo" of thoughts and words flow. Performance poetry became a bigger, more life-changing experience for Brown than he had imagined. By 2001, he was part of the PolyRhythmic ensemble in Chicago; Brown collaborates with writing, multi-vocal performing, and does some DJ'ing for the group's live shows. Over the years he has crafted a personal style that bonds narrative, music, and poetry. With the release of his second book A.M. Creme, Brown believes he has come to another point in the circle. Audio selections below include work released on a companion audio CD to A.M. Creme in a boxed set, something quite unusual for an author-published work, but not so surprising given Brown's own media skills, from print to film. A.M. Creme itself is unusual, in that there are four distinct versions in the original printing, each with different art (provided by Brown's colleagues who are painters and illustrators), and each with unique poetry selections from Brown's written/performed works.
|
Originally from Louisiana, Ezekiel attended the Art Institute of Chicago in 1993 to study film, because film was all that he could eat, sleep and breathe. After leaving Chicago, returned to Louisiana, then saw Texas, and finally settled in Los Angeles. There he worked as a boom operator, grip, electrician, transportation driver, set dresser, and assistant camera operator; all the while writing screenplays and getting more and more frustrated. In his Los Angeles year, Brown began looking through his journals to seek some type of "order in the gumbo," as he put it.