City hall 'Traffic Jam' replaces music with spoken word

For a few moments Thursday afternoon, traffic faded to the background. Above the fray, words vibrated, danced and cut through the clutter of everyday life.

Hip-hop and its first element -- spoken word -- took over City Hall Plaza as part of the Seattle's commuter concerts in the "Traffic Jam" Poetry Mash Up, a free event city officials hoped would postpone some of the evening rush hour. It's the first time the series has featured spoken words, usually sticking with a music format in its concerts.

Up-and-coming young poets from Youth Speaks Seattle and Christian St. Jacques mixed it up with seasoned vets such as Common Market's RA Scion and poet Melissa Noelle Green at the show, which also gave participants free refreshments and plenty of reading material on alternatives to traveling by car: biking, bus riding, ride sharing and Flexcar.

"I've never seen anything like this outside," said Kirby Grey, 22, a senior at Seattle University whose friendship with RA brought her to the event. "It's amazing that it's free. More people should be coming. You get to see hip-hop in a more intimate setting, and you get to know hip-hop artists on another level and see their other talents."

Although most of three or four dozen people there didn't seem to be commuters so much as friends or friends of friends of the performers, it didn't take away from the experience, one that broke hip-hop down to its roots in spoken-word performances -- think of it as hip-hop a cappella -- so those that tuned in could really tune to the lyrics.

Lyrics flew by, but they stuck. They talked about love, life, death, politics and, of course, hip-hop. Green, the 2005 recipient of the mayor's award for spoken word, reminisced about hip-hop.

"I remember you, hip-hop. I remember you at the mouth of the Hudson River, Statue of Liberty riding high, Brooklyn Bridge, Queens, Boogiedown Bronx, Central Park, L.I., Bed-Stuy do or die, Jersey, Chi-town, Puerto-Rican black brown, Latino Spanish flava, reggae island dub beats with Caribbean Jamaican heat, waking up next door neighbors, playing dominos by the corner store, rolling dice, rolling paper, lovemaking, rolling like a thunderstorm in the night. Hip-hop make it all right."

Christian St. Jacques told people to keep doing their art -- whatever it is -- for the love of it, while embracing the idea that maybe it's not Mrs. Right he should be looking for, but rather the idea of becoming a Mr. Right.

For a change of pace, performance artist Stokley Towles talked about his findings about the inner life of libraries: a "Where's Waldo" book in which someone had carefully circled every Waldo; a book checked out in 1917 and returned in 1987 aptly titled, "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow"; how a juvenile detention center ended up on a book tour of a popular youth author; and finally, a curse he created for book vandals that would doom the violators to finding out every ending of every novel they just began.

Afterward, Green talked about the benefit of events like this.

"This shows people we have to respect the first element of hip-hop -- spoken word," she said. "People look at the ugly side of rap. But there's a lot of beauty in hip-hop. It's able to convey messages and bring people together."

In some ways, the show was about how closely the city and hip-hop are intertwined. Just look at Green's last lyrics.

"I remember you hip-hop, your roots run deep. I hope you continue to bring us together. We need you. You like family. My heart says it best: There's much love for you, hip-hop, in the Pacific Northwest."

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