MC Ewor

Ewor es entre mis favoritos poetas de la Cd. de México, y además es de los mejores freestyleros que he visto jamás. Y si eso fuera poco, sus hablidades con el beatbox mejoran constantamente. Él es el MC principal de nuestro Sonidero Verbobala, aunque hasta ahora sólo nos ha podido acompañar en nuestras tocadas chilangas. Acabo de salir esta entrevista que hizo el con una radio cultural del DF, que lo disfrutes. Ewor is among my favorite poets from Mexico City, and also happens to be one of the best freestyle rappers I have ever seen in any language. And if that wasn't enough, his beatbox skills are always on the increase. He is the principal MC of our group Sonidero Verbobala, although as of the moment he's only been able to play with us at our Mexico City shows. Here's a new interview that he did for an arts & culture radio program, I hope you like it.

Where Do Airplanes Build Their Nests?

Aero avión, build nest.

Nido airplane nave. Vuelo, cielo cielo.

Caught the aeronave from the Juarez war zone back home to the onda arizona. (Amazing trip. Saludos a Leon. More soon.) The flight from PHX to TUS takes 20 minutes. The metal iguana doesn't climb over 5,000 feet. The up. Then the down. Bottled water for sale. Sixteen ounces. Two dollars.

(I'm on tour schedule again, sleeping from five A.M. to one P.M.) (Last night I made this video.)

Arizona is the fastest growing state in the Union. Maricopa County, home to the capital, Phoenix, receives an average of 7.76" of rain per year.

Maricopa County has the highest number per capita of golf courses in the United States of America.

The aquifers can't last forever. The metal iguana flies on.

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fotovideo LOGAN PHILLIPS

additional music LIARS

thanks ADAM COOPER-TERÁN MOISÉS REGLA LEÓN DE LA ROSA

tucson, arizona dirtyverbs.com 2008

Preview of the new Verbobala piece “WORK”

Regular readers of the site will have noticed that I'm not posting new material nearly as often as in the past, and that most of the posts in the last few months have been videos. Signs of the times, amigos.

Hola a tod@s,

well, we're two months into jamming on the new Verbobala piece, whose working title is, well, "WORK." This will be the first piece that we've created completely from scratch, rather than a combination of our solo work. We wanted to give you a glimpse of it now.

The piece will premier at the finale of the 26th Annual Tucson Poetry Festival on April 12th, 2008––US visa gods willing. After that, we'll be touring throughout the US: to the Pacific Northwest, the East Coast, and Texas. There are also plans for the UK this fall. If you know of anyone who might be interested, please let them know.

This video shows off a bit of the shooting we've been doing for the piece. Lots of interviews and time spent in unusual pieces: pulque farms, mesoamerican observatories, illegal mezcal bars. Most of the work thus far has been done in Mexico, though once we start traveling the piece will take on a much more global feel. The video doesn't include any original poetry yet... but imagine pantoums of remixed interviews, Lorca meets Eduardo Galleano meets Cummings, Mexican slam poetry, etc. etc.––this video is just a taste.

Here's the link

There is also higher quality available.

And of course a compilation of some of our 2007 performances.

The audio is a Verbobala remix of the Zizek crew from Argentina. Jacob Cooper of Bark Bark Bark has recently agreed to collaborate on WORK's score. The Tucson premier will also feature a collaboration with spectacle experts Flam Chen.

We have lots of tricks up our collective sleeve, and hope to see you soon.

Ink & airplanes,

Adam, Logan & Moisés

Into the Two-Thousand-Great

Well chavos, we're on the other side. 2008 already feels different, doesn't it? It feels great. As do this year's rhyming opportunities. Don't be late. Or irate. I'm in Arizona on vacation. Basically been AWOL for the last month. Sleeping, riding my bike, hiking, meditating. Trying to catch up with myself after an autumn that kept me running for months straight. Verbobala is taking off, and I didn't have much time to dedicate to this site or Radio Dirtyverbs or many other side projects. That will be different in 2008, as I'm giving up being a professor for now. Time for going full-time again.

Adam is coming back to Cuernavaca with me, and we'll be entering a 40 day residency at my place with Moisés. The idea is to develop an entirely new, hour-long show, which we'll be taking on the road off and on throughout the year with Verbobala. I'll be on the road a lot throughout the year. I'd love to come to whereever you're living. Let me know if you have ideas.

Some random things:

  • New and old poems online, previously only available to people who shelled out the clams for a book (I love them people)

    The Boy's Pockets Arizona Freeway Sunrise Arnold Duncan Doesn't Live Here Tell Me You'll Never See Her Again I Confuse the Dead Man, Michael's Fever

  • Slam Revolution, a great new documentary about the worldwide poetry slam movement by Rolf S. Wolkenstein. They were in New York City at the same time I was last summer, and I make an appearance in the first few minutes of the film. Cool stuff, watch it online here, or below.
  • Spoken Circus trailer. We just finished it this morning. Spoken Circus will be Verbobala's tour partner for the fall '08 US university tour.
  • I had the blessing of ringing in this here TwoThousandGreat by helping out my friends Flam Chen with a show in Bisbee, AZ. They're heros of mine, and it was amazing to see them make several hundred people scream for minutes on end. They're professionals at that. I also got to spend some of the first minutes of the new year flying above Brewery Gulch on those balloons. Coolest thing I've done so far this year. Check it out:

Teopotzlán Sunday

First of a new series of videos I am doing. A kind of "hyper slideshow" set to music. This one follows us from Cuernavaca to Teopotzlán, a fairly well-known pueblito just up the way. Music by the Nortec Collective. Inspiration (1, 2) by my friend Bart Pogoda (who else?). And yes, I'm on YouTube now. Also, I've put up some fotos from Cuernavaca.