Duende’s cut “Where Do You Live?” is currently the featured cut on TWiN East Poetry. Here’s their promo for it:
Where Do You Live?
DUENDE
Artist
DUENDE
Band Members
Tony Brown (performance poet), Steve Cafaro (electric bass/guitar)
Track Title
Where Do You Live?
MySpace Page
http://www.myspace.com/poetrybytonybrown
Genres
• Experimental • Alternative • Jazz •
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Where Do You Live?
It was my sister-in-law’s idea, I swear,
to hire the origami artist for Martha’s birthday party.
I expected the kids to be bored but
Yumiko’s fingers snared all of us
as they delicately spidered
upon the paper and
began to
fold life into three dimensions from two,
taking us through a door into
a place
where one can build without cutting anything,
without making a Slot B to hold a Tab A.
She said it takes great peace of mind to learn to do this well.
She told us that in Hiroshima once a year,
thousands of people fold small paper boats,
set each boat on a river with a candle inside,
and let them drift and burn for peace.
Where are you from? Are you from there?
I asked her.
She said, I was from there once, but now I am from America.
Where are you from?
I would have liked to tell Yumiko that I am from America, too,
but I fear that I am instead from a place where origami comes to die
at the hands of market forces
that make culture and tradition a source for party tricks.
I would have liked to tell her that I live all my time in America,
but the truth is, I live most of my time in the United States
because here are two countries which exist simultaneously on one geography.
Here is the US of radio designed by the moneyed calculus of bleating repetition.
Here is the America of the gospel choir that shouts for splendor
even as the mob burns their church around them.
This is the US of terrific missiles and cars
as large as our shrinking sense of control.
This is the America of outsider art, free jazz, and small mercies
shown to the smallest and strangest of us.
This is the US of sweet plastic that has ignited and burned
through all the easy answers,
the land of the fire that has begun to lick at the edges of the America
of red sandstone, deep woods, wide rivers;
the America where we always remember that we are all descended from someone somewhere
who burned; the place where we care about those
who have been burned, are being burned,
where we pray we can be forgiven by those we have burned,
pray that we can all make ourselves whole
by making our common home among the folds and creases
of a single idea: that we created the US as a launching pad toward America,
and if we didn’t like the footing it gave us, we could always change it.
But it did seem to me (after that one red second had passed)
that it was too much to ask a paper crane folded for entertainment
at a child’s birthday party
to balance all this weight
even though people come here all the time
to balance their dreams on our old paper
and there are people in Japan
who annually load the fate of the world onto burning paper boats —
so instead I told Yumiko,
I am from right here, too.
And at least for that moment,
it was true.
And soon enough, a dozen cranes
were on the table,
and Yumiko showed us how
a tug on the tail will set the wings in motion;
and the children were hushed
as they handled each one
and tried it for themselves;
and soon enough,
small, important flights were beginning
all around the backyard.
Copyright © 2008, DUENDE.
All rights reserved.
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About DUENDE
DUENDE
http://www.myspace.com/poetrybytonybrown
Tony Brown is a performance poet from Worcester, MA and with virtuoso electric bass/guitar player Steve Cafaro, AKA Faro, one half of a dynamic performance act called Duende.
Duende will be performing their most recent album, Americanized,”from which “Where Do You Live?” is taken, as a show at the Bowery Poetry Club in NYC on May 6.
Duende performs around New England and up and down the East Coast, including NYC, and has released two albums which each include both a CD and a chapbook of the words to the poems, as Tony and Faro are strong believers in the importance of both the text and the performance of poetic work.
Tony is a longtime member of the national performance and slam scene, and has performed at venues all over the country, including various venues in California, DC, Baltimore, New England, and many times in NYC. Widely published, most recently as a featured poet in the Performance Poetry special issue of World Literature Today, Tony was honored as one of the “Legends of Slam” at the National Poetry Slam in Austin, TX in 2005. Tony has shared the stage with such poets as Patricia Smith, Marty McConnell, Lynne Procope, Guy LeCharles Gonzalez, Victor Infante, and many others.
Steven (univerally known as “Faro”), is a 20 year old bass phenomenon. His playing is reminiscent of the work of Victor Wooten, Jaco Pastorius, and Michael Manring, and serves in full, equal collaboration with the poetry. Faro is also an excellent guitarist, and his nylon-string work accompanies much of Duende’s work.
About Americanized:
Duende’s most recent album is a suite of poems set to music that reflect on various contradictory facets of the modern American identity. It explores how the pressures to fit into various categories (white/non-white, male/female, right/left) mold our characters into the wild mishmash that makes us paradoxically “American.” They use humor and anger, sadness and joy, stories and impressionistic pieces to try and illuminate the people we have become.
Contact Tony at myspace.com/poetrybytonybrown
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Please visit DUENDE’s MySpace page at :
http://www.myspace.com/poetrybytonybrown
Leave a comment if you can and spread the word !
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Dark Matter 
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