Jazz & Poetry: a Big Conversation

Phylisha Villanueva is in constant conversation and collaboration. As Westchester County’s second poet laureate, she describes herself as a jazz poet. In fact, she has been performing with the Jazz & Poetry Choir Collective (J&PCC) since its foundation in 2011, just a year following her high school graduation.

Now in the process of obtaining her MFA in poetry at St. Francis University in Brooklyn, Villanueva has found herself influenced by the work of other prominent jazz poets such as Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez and Grammy Award-nominated Aja Monet. This form of poetry uses rhythms and patterns, and relies heavily on improvisation and spontaneity, similar to the musical form from which it has earned its moniker. Poets Langston Hughes and Jack Kerouac famously used and popularized the style.

Speaking to her innate appreciation for collaboration, she says she is influenced by her fellow poet and bandmate E. J. Antonio and acknowledges the role poet Golda Solomon played in cultivating her experience as a jazz poet. Villanueva says Solomon, the band’s leader and Yonkers’s first poet laureate, believed that she “had a role…and a place in the band.”

This acknowledgement is further present as she traces her work with the band back to workshops on ekphrastic poetry, taught by Solomon taught at Blue Door Art Center, which influences her work.  Ekphrastic poetry, work composed in response to another work of art, kindled Villanueva’s fascination with jazz poetry because, as she says: “You know, I’m a kid and now I’m in it and then I’m like, okay, there’s something really here and I have access to it.”

Not limited to the context of the classroom, Villanueva describes her performances with J&PCC as a form of ekphrasis: “the listener… [is] able to translate an energy of a poem, of a piece… Then when [they] watch us… we’re literally embodying this moment,” causing the roles between the performer as art-maker and spectator as viewer to become blurred. Villanueva will perform with the Jazz & Poetry Choir Collective on September 11 in ArtsWestchester’s performance space. The performance is part of the five-day JazzFest White Plains taking place at multiple locations throughout the City’s downtown area from September 11-15.

Of the band’s process of practicing, she says: “We lean on the genius of [the] musicians in [the] group…. When we rehearse, we kind of rehearse for the theme and the vibe that we want to give the audience…. And when we get on the stage, whatever happens, happens – because sometimes, you know, it’s really intuition-based; it’s really spiritual… While musicians are playing, poets are reading, our vocalist is making sounds, and there’s percussion. And it’s all creating an atmosphere.  Everyone’s engaged. Everyone is in community. Everyone’s in communion.”

This communion extends well beyond the stage, offering itself to the audience, and further highlighting the multiplicity of communication that occurs when one views the relationship between jazz and poetry. Villanueva explains that there is “a conversation happening between the audience and the musician; and the musician and their instrument; and their instrument with the poetry and the sound….  It’s like multiple stories happening at the same time. It’s like a big conversation.”

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