Verbal Balance at the Corner Cafe

This was quite the interesting experience for our group. As we walked it we definitely looked out of place but were greeted with a friendly upbeat atmosphere. The café was located at 8458 South Green Street Chicago. As far as what the café had to offer it seemed to be pretty modern with T.V.s in the back and an ample amount of seating room. As far as coffee goes I had a vanilla late that was amazing! Nothing better than a coffee at 10:00pm at night. They hosted the Verbal balance which is an ensemble of different talents. Some use spoken word and others use song to convey their talent and life stories. As their faceboook page says they are “Speaking Words that elevate nations, blowing the mind of masses, Journeying to places never seen before....” “We Are Chicago Spoken Word at its Best. The group is a nationally recognized and award winning ensemble and have been doing weekly performances since 2005.
The performance began with a witty host who introduced the group and gave a short performance herself. She didn’t win over the heart of Kevin right away because of the fact he was a guy and told the guys they needed to stand for the ladies in the room to have a seat. After that Kevin stood back a bit looking grumpy but at least seemed to like it more as the show went on. And as it went on, I learned a lesson in that if the crowd is doing something you should be too. While being technologically dumb I was trying to figure out my phone and how to record on it. While doing so I was caught in the act or not acting since I wasn’t clapping the 7 times I was supposed to with the large group, and from then on was used in various ways to make a few jokes out of, and entertain the crowd.
We heard some amazing performances that ranged from serious stories, humorous poetry, and very emotional acts. One performance that was talked about for the remainder of the trip was by FM Supreme and her song Crazy Mama. Her song told us about her complications and while not “toting the Lama” in which we learned all about thanks to Cedric. What surprised us the most though about her act was her “sexy seizure,” in which she fell to the floor in front of our surprised professor and began whaling around. One of the more clever poems was about a guy telling us about his love life which also startled us until the end we were shown the connection he was talking about his pen and pencil.
One of the more serious performances was by Red Storm in which he laid out many of his struggles to us using a serious and witty choice of words that blended in a way that shown his emotional strife to the audience.
Overall this was a unique experience for our group in which we were able to see a different side of Chicago which wasn’t laced with shopping bags, pretty flowers and sculptures.

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