The Mayhem Poets to Perform at the Overture Center for the Arts on May 5: A Free-Style Expression of Emotion
Above: The Mayhem Poets - Mason Granger (l-r), Scottt Raven and Mikumari Caiyhe
Below: Mason Granger in action
By Jonathan Gramling
Growing up, Mason Granger, a member of The Mayhem Project, which will be performing at the Overture Center on May 5, tended towards the nerdy side interested in math and science. But his creative side broke out in high school when he made some parody songs.
“I started making these Weird Al Yankovic style parody songs of popular rap songs at the time, go to Sam Ash, get the instrumental and rewrite the lyrics,” Granger said.
But it was in college at Rutgers University in the early 2000s that Granger went totally over to the creative side.
“I took a trip to The Nuyorican Poets Café in New York City,” Granger said. “This was early 2000s, so pre-YouTube. There were no internet videos. Poetry never came up on the scrolls the way that a lot of people discover it by accident these days. It was just completely in-person in the room. If you hadn’t ever been in the room, you didn’t know it existed. I went to the show. I had one idea of what poetry is and it ended up being like this style of poetry. It was part hip-hop, part stand-up comedy, part one-man play. I remember just seeing that and saying, ‘I want to do that.’”
He found an open-mic café at Rutgers called Verbal Mayhem. It was just what he wanted.
“I went the first night and said, ‘This is that thing in New York except right here,’” Granger said. “’And it’s free!’ That was really great because I was broke. I started going every week. And then the guy who started it graduated and then I started hosting it. And then I kept it going like that.”
It was a style of expression that just captured Granger’s imagination
“What struck me about this particular style of poetry — you can call it performance poetry, slam poetry, spoken word — was how stripped down it is versus one person and the microphone. And just how much variety can come from such a stripped-down set-up and even variety within one poem. You can be angrily talking about something sweet or talking about something really sad, but you throw a joke in there, acknowledging all of your sides that we all have as human beings, acknowledging them all at once in one presentation. It seemed like super-real but like the most authentic representation of what it is to be a person. Everyone has all of those different sides. It just struck me. ‘One person can get up talking for three minutes and can divulge all of their sides at once, instead of just one at a time, was illuminating to me at the time.”
While initially focusing on the external world as an inspiration for his material, Granger has also become more introspective as he explores himself and finds parallels to the world around him.
“I have, for the most part, talked about outward things,” Granger said. “But I am recently connecting more with inner-things, particularly in ways that they parallel outer things. The same concept of when you look in a microscope and the patterns that the molecules are resemble the same patterns you see when you look in a telescope and look out into space. Really small stuff mirrors the really big stuff. And we are in between just seeing parallels in relating to the world can be distilled down into a series of feelings that I feel just within myself, whether you are talking externally about the world or internally about yourself, you are going to find a lot of parallels of scale.”
And while spoken word speaks truth to power, the truth that is being spoken isn’t limited to just one part of life.
“How I describe it to kids in a workshop is, ‘If you like poetry, then spoken word poetry is clearly for you,’” Granger said. “You can do this and enjoy doing it. If you like cars, then write a poem about cars and you will like it. If you like football, write a poem about football. Do you like politics, write a poem about politics. We can even subdivide the subject of politics. If you are into environmentalism, write a poem about environmentalism. Whatever it is that you are really into, you can do poetry with it and for it and poetry can be of service to both of yourself in processing it and be in service to the cause that you are about, giving a well-crafted, emotionally-laden thing to put out into the world.’”
After graduating from Rutgers, Granger hooked up with the founders of Verbal Mayhem, Scott Tarazevits and Kyle Sutton, who had formed The Mayhem Poets. They really got it going on.
“When they got out, they started Mayhem Poets, the touring group as an offshoot of Verbal Mayhem. They were Mayhem Poets and would go into high schools around New Jersey primarily. That’s where they were still living. When I got out of Rutgers, I linked up with them as a third member of Mayhem Poets. That’s when we really took off and started touring. This is around 2005. We started doing middle and high schools all over the place. We got into the realm of performing arts theaters, similar to Overture. There are PACs equivalent to Overture in a lot of cities all over the country. We would get in a tour of those and colleges and universities. We did that heavy for quite a few years.”
When the pandemic hit in 2020, The Mayhem Poets were doing 80-100 performances per year. Before Granger moved to LA, their venues went from elementary schools to PAC. But the pandemic put them on ice and along with the rest of the country, they are now just recovering.
“The gigs that we primarily speak to are these larger performing arts centers,” Granger said. “They are fewer, but we’re still out here. I anticipate that there will be more gigs as we get further from COVID-19. These shows that we are doing had been pushed back since during COVID-19. These performing arts shows have such a long lead time — they book maybe 12-18 months in advance — think about what the world was like 18 months ago. There weren’t that many people booking shows because no one knew where we would be right now. And so, I do anticipate that next year and the year after it kicking back up a bit. That 12-18 month lead time has led us to here.”
While The Mayhem Poets features the three performers on stage with little, if any, props or backdrop, the entertainment and variety comes straight from their souls. Their essence comes out on stage in sometimes unpredictable ways that can take the audience through all kinds of changes.
“We are quite different dudes,” Granger observed. “We have a lot in common. But we are three different dudes who have three different styles and three different perspectives. Each poem is about something different. One poem is about environmentalism. Another poem is talking about his dad. The next one is about how much he loves hip-hop. The subject matter is very wide-ranging. But I think that part of how our success as a group in a bigger picture would keep spoken-word poetry moving along despite the fact that in the grand scheme of things, it’s not the most lucrative of things. But keeping it moving along is how pure the connection is when you are in a crowd and you hear your words come out of someone else’s mouth. And also hearing words that you are just couldn’t barely hear the words for coming out of someone else’s mouth and you’re like, ‘Yes that’s the thing I’ve been right on the cusp of. That’s it and it was said perfectly.’ That’s kind of the thing.”
And there isn’t a boring moment during their performances.
“The mixing up of styles just comes from the fact that we are different people, different voices, different writing styles and perspectives,” Granger said. “And we mix it up by having, perhaps, a poem that has all three of us doing it at the same time and then we switch to a solo poem and another guy’s solo poem. And then two of us perform. It just keeps the variety of it. With it being so stripped down, it can get monotonous if you are just presenting the same thing for 60 straight minutes of just a dude talking. Boxers don’t just come out and just go punch, punch, punch. They go over here, do the thing and then set you up for an actual punch. You can write a whole poem that is just meant to be entertaining and a good time. But those four lines at the two-minute mark, that’s what I really want you to come away with. And the poem that leads up to that is setting you up to be as receptive as possible to that point that I really want you to remember and feel.”
And it isn’t just spoken word; it is also performance art.
“Body language is certainly a tool,” Granger said. “When we do shows for younger audiences, it is even more emphasized just keeping the attention of 300 second graders. You’re bopping around. You’re moving around a lot, making larger hand gestures and doing more physical comedy, if you will. But even for the adult shows and all-age family shows, I like moving around. And I don’t know if it not as much a scientific thing or something that is learned, but if you look at my favorite stand-up comedians, they are always pacing the stage. I’ve always caught that. If you watch a Chris Rock special, he’s pacing back and forth when he is doing the set-up. And then he comes to a stand-still and faces forward to deliver the punch line. And that goes into the bob and weave sort of set-up to then deliver. They are all part of the same mentality.”
And true to their roots, they have audience members come on stage for their moment under the spotlight, to give them a taste of performing before a thousand people.
While they may be Mayhem Poets, after they blow it up, they put it all together for the audience. Don’t miss it.
