First Friday Poetry This Friday Night!

First Friday Youth Open Mic
Ceschi Ramos

Friday, August 4 from 7 - 10pm

First Baptist Church in Jamaica Plain, 633 Centre St.

"Ceschi Ramos is a rapper and singer from New Haven, Connecticut who has been hopping genres and spilling guts for the better part of two decades.He has been seen outside venues at 3am in Germany playing an acoustic guitar and singing to people that didn’t want the show to end. He has written poems to fans from behind bars whilst locked up on bogus marijuana charges. He has suffered a spiral fracture of the humerus while arm wrestling a marine in Hawaii. He has recorded with and toured alongside some of independent rap music’s most influential figures, including Sage Francis, Busdriver and Astronautalis. He has been in bands described as hardcore, crunk rap, lo-fi synth pop, Latin progressive and psych-jazz-rap. He has crafted abstracted and personal narratives mining the depths of depression and heights of hope. He has slept on countless floors when hotels weren’t in the touring budget and lost girlfriends and jobs all for the love of creating and performing.

"Ceschi was born with four fingers on his right hand, which served as partial inspiration for the name of his DIY record label, Fake Four, Inc. Those who have worked with him describe Ceschi as one of the most artist-friendly labelheads out there, a rare breed who values art over profit almost to a fault. Since 2008, he has curated a roster of wildly original and critically praised talent and put out albums from the likes of Open Mike Eagle, Buck 65, Sister Crayon and Dark Time Sunshine in addition to his solo records The One Man Band Broke Up and Broken Bone Ballads.

"An engaging, theatrical live performer, Ceschi Ramos has treated entire venues like a stage, viewing the middle of the audience or an empty barstool as good a place as any to perform a soul-baring folk song or tongue-twisting rap track. Ceschi once described himself in song as “a martyr at most… a failure at least” and said that, “In the eyes of history I’ll be no more than a leaf on a tree.” He knows what it is to suffer for his art and is aware that music exploring the ugliness and sorrow of the human condition will always exist on the fringes of a game dominated by disposable escapism and expensive publicists. Yet he still pours everything he has into his craft, and on any given night you can find him tracking vocals at his cousin’s New Haven studio, warmly greeting fans and friends at a dive bar merch booth or rapping double-time in Japan or Europe for audiences that often don’t speak his language, but are able to see the giant heart at the core of it all.” - Brett Uddenberg

FEATURED ORGANIZATION: ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Coalition

As this month’s featured organization, the ANSWER Coalition will be giving a short presentation and collecting donations to help fund buses traveling to DC for the Millions for Prisoners March on August 19.

The United States of America has roughly 5% of the world's population, yet it has at least 25% of the world's prison population. Incarcerating, jailing, and surveilling upwards of 7 million people, predominantly Black and Latinx people, the U.S.A. is the world's leading jailer. This exists because of the socioeconomic system we have but principally because of the legacy of slavery as well. In 2017 organizers, activists, families, prisoners, ex-prisoners, and more are organizing all across the nation to descend on Washington, DC on August 19th 2017 in the halls of power, to demand that the clause in the 13th amendment which enables a form of legalized slavery via the prison industrial complex to be fully and wholly abolished. In addition we are demanding that prisoners' human rights be upheld on our long march to prison abolition and collective liberation. Locally, the ANSWER coalition has been leading organizing to raise consciousness, expose and combat prison abuse in Massachusetts, and send people to Washington to spark the flame that we will bring back to continue organizing with new friends and allies across the nation. Without struggle, without collective, intelligent, and mass based grassroots organizing, there will be no progress. Please consider joining the ANSWER coalition in this New Abolitionist Movement. End modern day slavery! Educate, Agitate, Organize, and De-carcerate!

If you are part of an organization that you think should be featured at our next open mic, please get in touch with us!

Doors open and dinner is served at 7. Open mic begins around 7:30. Free for under 26, $10 suggested donated for over 26. Learn more at the Facebook event page. Organized by the First Baptist Church in JP and hosted by Kaleigh O’Keefe.

Bring your friends! Bring your art! You are welcome!