Open mic goes global . . . US and UK creatives join event

The audience and interest in the Gine On Open Mic night is growing. Last Saturday, lovers of poetry joined in for a segment hosted by Empress Zingha, also known as The Bajan Fairy and DJ Simmons around 6 p.m.

Featured artistes on Saturday included spoken word champion BirdSpeed who won tournaments in the United Kingdom but has Bajan roots, social media entertainer Bajan Fari while interviews were conducted between Empress Zingha and DJ Simmons and Mahalia from 2 Mile Hill and Fighting Traffic.

Also present was a newcomer to open mic all the way from Detroit, Soulful Poetry, in the United States, who performed a piece on love.

Dario Devon, one of the Baje To De World finalists, performed an original called Happy Ending. He promised the audience that he would be releasing a new E.P. soon enough.

T’afari Steede performed a piece explaining to the white boy how “brown skin” is made. She did a different take on racial differences and the white impressions of black girls with brown skin.

Kadeem Ward, with an electronic guitar in hand, performed a bit of psychedelic blues rock. He received a lot of encouragement from the crowd as people posted the “fire emoticon” in the comments.

DJ Simmons spoke of the growth from inception. “It has grown from numbers in the high teens watching simultaneously to between 40 to 50 on average. When we have features, it is more obvious in growth because they would bring their followers in. The most concurrent views we had were 89,” he said.

Each week they have had approximately 800 views over the 24-hour period.

DJ Simmons told Bajan Vibes that there are a lot of opportunities for networking and artist collaborations. “I believe there is a lot of potential due to how strong the community is. It is really them who keep propping up the open mic over the last seven weeks,” he said.

DJ Simmons hailed RhyMinister for hosting one week when they were unable to. “We plan to keep it going because outside of helping to provide a platform for expression, we see how businesses can benefit from being integrated into this digital family as well.”

You can look out for them on Instagram @wuhgineon. (MR)