Ethnography Results, Week 6

By Evin Schuchardt, Jeremy Nelissen, Ryan Kerbow and Wesley Konderla

Goal: 
We planned to travel to Revolution again on a poetry slam night to once again look for continuities in attendance as well as the atmosphere of the event.


Setting: 
Going on the Sunday upon returning from spring break, there was not the usual large crowd there so the slam was again held inside the bar.  It was a fairly warm night so it was surprising that the slam was inside.  We arrived around 9:45PM to see roughly 40 people sitting mostly in chairs inside the bar listening to the slam.  Again there was a feature poet whose team placed second in nationals when he began slam poetry.  We were able to witness locals slamming for half of our stay and the feature slamming the other half.

People: 
The MC was a poet who we saw slam in the past (not the normal MC).  The normal MC was there close to the front.  The reason for this may be because the normal MC is training up someone to replace him, or he wasn't sure he would be able to make it in time for the slam.  These are just guesses as we were not able to determine the reason.

As mentioned earlier, there was not a large crowd Sunday.  Aside from the bartender, regular and working MC, and just a couple others, we did not see people who we recognized.

One important person to note was a person who seemed intoxicated.  This person either liked or did not like the poet who was slamming.  On multiple occasions he booed and slandered the poet up front out loud, even on one poet's first time to the mic.  The response from the audience was negative as they told him to leave and hush up.  Eventually he was asked by the bartender to leave, but he did not, but he calmed down after that.  I was a bit surprised that the group did not make a bigger fuss about this man.  From this instance it seems that they are not very confrontational, but on the other hand seek to comfort people as much as possible.  In response to the person's antics, the crowd and MC greatly encouraged the poets who were being booed, especially the first-timer.

To note I was able to speak to one of the poets who presented a very pro-religious piece.  This is something that I have never seen before.  Many poets mention religion, God, and such but none have ever performed a piece focusing completely on God in a positive way.  I was interested in his motivation for going against the grain.  He was not a very talkative person, but did respond that he just thought of that poem during class.  Upon further examination, he really did not have much to say.  I am unsure whether he was embarrassed or simply did not want to talk about it.