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Friday, March 29, 2024

Spoken word in Manila

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Sev’s Cafe, a small restaurant at the basement of the Legaspi Towers on Roxas Blvd., was brimming with twentysomethings last Saturday evening. Everyone was intently watching performances on the stage. The performers, after all, were their friends and others, friends of friends. Still others were cult personalities they knew about through social media and maybe have seen perform once or twice before.

Severo

It was poetry and open mic night at the cafe; and every kind of poet and musician was welcome to share their talent with the packed house. The monthly event is organized by the very young spoken-word group, Words Anonymous, which celebrates its first anniversary next month.

Sev’s, owned by Howie Severino, is one of the few places that embrace the decidedly under-the-radar art known as spoken word, as evidenced by its willingness to lend its space to these young poets at least once a month. In fact, it was at that quaint cafe where the members of Words Anonymous found one another, which led them to form the group.

For five hours, the audience listened—intently, as this writer observed—to acoustic covers of both well-known and obscure songs sang with the passion of angsty post-teenagers, and original poems for the heartbroken, the ones who are moving on and everyone in between. While romance or lack thereof was most explored subject of the evening (as it usually is at these kinds of events because we all know how much we love our #hugot), there were a few performances that tackled other issues like self-worth, disease and societal ills.

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Musical open mic nights are commonplace here in the city. What’s uncommon is the inclusion of poetry, and specifically, poetry’s performance-based form, spoken word. The craft has been slowly gaining traction among Filipino millennials over the years and it’s getting even more popular.

Sev’s Cafe

 “The thing about spoken word poetry is that it makes poetry accessible for everyone,” my friend Juan Miguel Severo, a member of Words Anonymous, tells me. “Performers don’t need a degree in literature or creative writing to be called up on stage, or have a valid story to tell. It acknowledges everyone’s right to tell their story.”

And for many, using spoken word to tell their personal story is a form of catharsis and validation. Severo, whose pieces are mostly in the vernacular, adds, “It’s the medium of the underdogs. And you know how Filipinos have always loved underdogs.”

(There’s a lot more to The Gist’s conversation with Severo about all things spoken word. Watch this space next week for more.)

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