Poet Benjamin Zephaniah
Brunel University, Uxbridge
By Terry Jones
The first time I visited Club Inegales, it was in a basement in Euston – their usual venue. This time it was at Brunel University in the creepily named Antonin Artaud building (he of ‘the theatre of cruelty’ fame). Instead of a metropolitan dive redolent of the aroma of an excellent curry, we had the stark space of the kind of box you often find in colleges with the sign ‘drama studio’ or ‘performance space’ on the door.
Peter Wiegold started us off with a couple of pieces by Notes Inegales – his ‘house band’. The first, called ‘Gamelan’, did not sound like Gamelan, but did have that music’s beguiling way of standing still and moving at the same time. The second, inspired by the Robert Herrick poem ‘The Hourglass’, was even lovelier. Wiegold’s interest in getting different musics and different artforms to talk together was well demonstrated here.
Club Inegales’ method is to invite an artist to do their own work in the first half and then collaborate in a combined performance for the second. Tonight the artist was Benjamin Zephaniah, who also could be said to have combined music and words in interesting ways – particularly in the 1980s. Unfortunately, the works chosen here were rather old and, I felt, stale. At the end of one poem the audience were so underwhelmed that he resorted to instructing them to ‘clap’. Isn’t that something we are supposed to decide for ourselves?
In the second half the contrast between the ever-evolving Notes Inegales and the stalled poetry was ever more acute, except in one splendid poem – the highlight of the evening, ‘Us and Dem’. Here the mesmeric delivery of the lines became an extra instrument in the ensemble – insistent and compelling. It was a disturbing and timely piece, even though it was written decades earlier.
So, for me a mixed evening, but I left with an increased respect for the project that Wiegold and his friends are engaged in. The poetic highlight was not Zephaniah, unfortunately, but Herrick. 