Dana Bryant
But somehow the stars never came out. A few of the slam scene’s leading lights put out albums on major labels and toured rock clubs. The record store’s Spoken Word section, and later the cut-out racks, swelled slightly with the likes of Nuyorican vets Maggie Estep and Reg E. Gaines. Though she missed its buzz-bin days, Dana Bryant’s Wishing From the Top (Warner Brothers) is the best recording of the spoken-word renaissance, a brilliant fusion of poetry and music that qualifies as the real thing on both counts. She’s the movement’s first diva, and everyone knows you don’t tell a diva she’s late.
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Like a rapper, the 31-year-old Brooklyn native gives props to her influences. In fact she name checks Ntozake Shange, author of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf at every opportunity, allowing that For Colored Girls awakened her muse and that she began her career “covering” Shange. In “Heat,” recalling summers spent in the south, watching ladies at church–“Though sweat pooled in the ample armpits of Jett Thunderbird / And soaked her dress into the crack of her ass she never acknowledged any discomfort / But rocked back and forth / in / it / Hallelujah / Amen”–she strides into Alice Walker territory.
In this mode Bryant could easily connect with the middle-class black female audience of McMillan, Benilde Little, Tina McElroy Ansa, and Faye McDonald Smith. But she is also tied to a tradition of social protest that the new black literary aesthetic finds tired and corny–a stance still fundamental in performance poetry and hip-hop. One of Bryant’s regular showstoppers is a cover of Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” which she recorded for the Giant Steps Volume One compilation. The big political statement on Wishing is the morally unassailable Rodney King redux “Electric Skies,” in which Bryant mimics Scott-Heron’s declamatory natter: “I am Ten million voices Raised In a collective Scream of disbelief Outraged That your token Gesture of justice Would Be Tolerated Supported Believed N called due process.” You can almost see the pint glasses in white slamgoers’ guilt-dampened palms.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Christopher Griffith.
