Sage Francis performs at Santa Cruz Music Festival on July 20.
‘Poetry, spoken word, language and all forms of communication are important. Anything that can be used as an outlet to express or entertain oneself is important,” explains underground hip-hop artist and poet extraordinaire Sage Francis. “Without outlets, we’d probably self-destruct sooner than later.”
Francis should know. The 36-year-old Rhode Island rapper has used his words to carve a name in the outlet of hip-hop as one of the best independent MCs in the business. His lyrics are soulful and often dark, reflecting the evil in the world outside as he internalizes it, trying to find the meaning.
On July 20, he will be one of 100 performers and artists to participate in the inaugural Santa Cruz Music Festival (SCMF). Spawned by locals Thomas Dawson, photographer Brian Crabtree (of Blank Productions) and Pacific Wave Surf Shop manager Bubb Rader, as a West Coast rival to Austin’s famed South By Southwest fest, SCMF is a seven-venue, 11-stage, all-day music extravaganza.
For anyone who doesn’t believe hip-hop is poetry, the Santa Cruz Music Festival should clear up any doubts. Apart from his main hip-hop set, Sage Francis will also be performing on a mind-boggling spoken word poetry bill at Kuumbwa that also includes champion slam poet Buddy Wakefield, the Coup’s Boots Riley and Elliot Wright of Santa Cruz’s Eliquate.
“It was important for us to have spoken word performances so we can expose our audience to an new experience with a different form of art,” explains Crabtree.
“The fact that Sage Francis and Boots Riley are doing spoken word is just…I don’t even know what’s going to happen,” says Dawson. “It’s going to be chaos.”
Speak Now
Born in Florida as Paul Francis, Sage Francis cut his teeth on the hip-hop underground, battling emcees in freestyle competitions and performing his poetry at slam events. There’s a goldmine of YouTube videos with Francis battling underground greats like Slug (from Atmosphere), Esoteric, Brother Ali and more at events like Scribble Jam. In 2000, Sage won the Cincinnati-based competition, nicknamed “America’s largest hip-hop festival,” under the alias Xaul Zan.
“In the mid 1990s, Patricia Smith inspired me to get involved with the spoken word scene,” Francis remembers. “Since then, there have only been a handful of spoken word artists who have inspired me—mostly from the New England area—but this was all from around 1997 until 2000. That's when the scene felt the most electric, eclectic, sincere and original to me.”
For anyone who doesn’t know, hip-hop battles are when emcees are given a minute of instrumental beats to spontaneously rap over or “flow.” As an extra treat, the best flows are usually attacks against the opponent with a wink, nod and jab in the ribs.
While Sage Francis never dwells too much on the past, he does remember those times with a healthy dose of love and respect.
“I think those battles happened at a perfect time in my life, though I was already on the cusp of losing interest in doing anything that is competition-based,” he explains. “Get in, do your thing, have fun if you can, make a name for yourself if you're lucky/talented enough, and then move on…That said, I do miss the fun of it all. I don't miss the anxiety, though.”
No doubt. Along with his own albums and shows, all of which he takes a hands-on approach with, he also is the head of Strange Famous Records, the label he started in the late ’90s as a way to get his mixtapes heard. Over time he has created an independent label boasting roughly a dozen artists.
“That's what eats up most of my time and energy,” he says. “I do my best to make sure we're able to survive as an indie label.”
Sage Francis’ style of hip-hop is constantly changing. Usually one to hire out producers for his beats, in 2010 he dropped Li(f)e, featuring live bands made up of musicians on the Epitaph records, which was his last album for the label.
“We wanted to make special use of the situation considering all of the musicians that they [Epitaph] work with,” explains Francis. “It was interesting stepping into a whole new process to achieve a different sound than what I'm used to.”
Siddhartha of Slam
Meanwhile, SCMF organizer Dawson says of Wakefield: “He is probably the most incredible artist on this whole thing. He makes crowds of grown men cry. It’s incredible what he can do.”
Some people burn for a truth that can only be born out of starvation and tribulation. That’s probably why Wakefield left his lucrative job as an executive assistant at a biomedical firm, sold all of his worldly possessions, and hit the poetry circuit living out of his Honda Civic. After all, only the Siddhartha of Slam could deliver something like:
If you've never been rocked back by the presence of purpose, this poem is too soon for you. Return to your mediocrity, plug it into an amplifier and rethink yourself. Some of us are on fire for THE ANSWER.
More than that, he performs it with such conviction it slams you in the gut, because brutal honesty is a rare commodity these days.
It’s this truth that put Wakefield on the spoken word map, earning him two consecutive championship titles at the Individual World Poetry Slam in 2004 and 2005. He has released three spoken word albums (most recently signing to Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe Records) and three books of poetry, with 2011’s Gentleman Practice as his most recent.
Wright Thinking
The spoken word show will also feature Santa Cruz’s own Elliot Wright, who also believes in the stripped-down honesty of the art form.
“To me, spoken word is the most raw form of emceeing. There’s nothing to hide behind except your words and opinions,” says Wright. “Which for most emcees, is the reason why they do it to begin with.”
Known locally as the front man for conscious hip-hop rockers Eliquate, Wright lives and breathes language, constantly writing rhymes and practicing his delivery. In 2010, he graduated from UCSC with a B.A. in Literature and plans to drop Eliquate’s first full-length album, A Chalkboard’s War Against Erasers, in August.
“There’s so much music in 2013 about escapism, and slam poetry allows a way for us to see the human flaws we all have,” Wright states. “Poetry is not about escapism as much as it is about relating to one another.”
Tickets for the Santa Cruz Music Festival are $30 and can be purchased at Streetlight Records in Santa Cruz or at www.ticketfly.com.
