ALIXA + NAIMA: Climbing PoeTree
“Critical,” “powerful,” “fulfilling,” “heart-wrenching,” “motivational,” “magical”, “intoxicating,” “thrilling,” “moving,” “raw,” and “inspiring” are some of the words audience members have used to describe Climbing PoeTree’s performance in the emails and letters that pour in after every show from individuals who profess that they have been forever changed by Alixa and Naima’s words and presence. There is something in their voices so refreshing yet timeless; Alixa and Naima are artists of the words the world is thirsty for.
With roots in Haiti and Colombia, Alixa and Naima reside in Brooklyn and track footprints across the country and globe on a mission to overcome destruction with creativity. With flawless cadence and impeccable lyricism, these soul-sisters weave together their voices to tell powerful stories of suffering and injustice, courage and love in a world plagued with fear.
Now Climbing Poetree’s lyrical prowess have combined with the musical genius of an impressive assembly of vocalists and producers to create a new brand of dub poetry. AMMUNITION 2ND EDITION combines the original CD with a live recording of a fiery performance in Humboldt, California. In new sustainable packaging with fresh new graphics, this double disc is a double dose of impassioned poetics and infectious beats. Raw, bold, and unclassifiable, AMMUNITION is a collection of poems, prayers, and anthems for a world filled with contradiction, love and struggle.
More about ALIXA + NAIMA at www.CLIMBINGPOETREE.com
REVIEW OF AMMUNITION BY Alexis Pauline Gumbs
featured in Left Turn magazine:
"WARRIOR, GET UP!"
Listen once. This is about a body, healing and growing through rage. Listen twice. This is about our planet ravaged and wakening. Listen three times and remember that the past meets the future right here in the sound of your breathing. Listen again.
Ammunition, the debut album from Alixa Garcia and Naima Penniman, the dancing, sewing, singing, rhyming, painting, theorizing duo that makes up Climbing Poetree is meant to be used. This album is a reminder and a toolbox, consistent with the group’s lived belief that art can and must transform lives.
Speaking from a grounded, but visionary center where ancestors speak and futures bloom, this album enacts the struggle of birth, the bloodlines of freedom, and the bassline of hope. This album makes a radical and inclusive reproductive justice analysis audible, lush, vivid and compelling, revealing a world where sexual and physical violence against women, the mining of the earth’s resources, the police state, and global economic violence are the same act. In this world, past genocides are as present as stage fright, lust and love.
“Ancestors Watching,” featuring Bryon Bainn, which is now also a music video produced by Warrington Hudlin, is a rhythmic reminder that the real ammunition for present-day struggles comes from the energy and watchfulness of the ancestors who survive through us despite everything. The track sounds like what a railroad gang would sing if it were hovering in outerspace linking together stars or what finding a way to keep going feels like on a cosmic scale.
Huge props to Alixa and Naima for creating the first poetry CD I have heard that is able to insist on the birth, survival and eternity of people of color, while maintaining a queer ethos and eros. On the exuberantly sexy track “Between Us,” the duo explains that women of color loving women of color is creative healing made loud and whole, which is suddenly the same thing as an earth at home with itself painting futures everywhere.
Wounded places
And some of that love is tough. “Diamond” gives me goose bumps every time I listen to it. This track is gravelly and rough with the use of muscles that we didn’t know were strong. It is a study of what it means to lead and fight from our most wounded places. “I was 13 and he raped me, you’re 25 and he hits you,” comes before a rousing and insistent shout that we, survivors of gendered violence are warriors, simply for surviving. And now it is time to get up to face the “Goliath” of a system and to teach it “who David was.” My heart explodes into new versions of fierce every time I hear them demand of me, “Warrior, get UP!”
Get this CD. Listen to it over and over again. Play it for your students, your parents, your comrades. Give it to loved ones who are overcoming trauma. Dedicate a different song to someone everyday. Tell your local community and college radio stations to play it. Invite Alixa and Naima to come help you transform your hometown.
But more importantly, remember who you are. This is an album made by warriors for warriors. Get up!
—Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Read more...