Karen Gibson Roc & Fluid

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"For all the music lovers, poetry lovers and great people lovers, check out Karen Gibson Roc. She is in the forefront of a re-emergence of a fusion of poetry and live music. But she does not just write poetry and put beats behind it, she and her band of seasoned musicians Fluid create music" - TLA-PROnline.com/ROBERT

Is Karen Gibson Roc the next Gil Scott-Heron?
By Hugh Pearson
Renowned author of “The Shadow of The Panther”
From www.nyage.net
Into this horribly debased era for African Americans, enter Brooklyn based performance artist, Karen Gibson Roc, an attractive, African American woman, who hails from Toronto, Canada.
At a Karen Gibson Roc performance, like that she gave last April at the Brooklyn Academy of Music; you don't see a skimpily clad woman, shaking her hips, telling you how eager she is to "see the size of it." Gibson Roc hugs no strip tease polls. Neither do her lyrics contain any declarations about "muthafuckas…"; Instead, the eyes fix upon a woman "keepin’ it real" with an Angela Davis sized afro, when she doesn't wear the same hair braided. Actual music gets played by a backup band. And when she opens her mouth, the listener hears spoken, poetic lyrics like:
“White feathers accentuate highs,
Blue skies like birds to fly,
Baptizing elevated minds
Yeaaaah!
Sunlight can heal the bad for real,
Bless every thought and every meal,”etc
Clearly, her lyrics, and music are a throw back to the late sixties, early seventies. While hearing Karen, one thinks of young people distributing flowers and talking about peace during old newsreel performances in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, or New York City's Filmore East. One listens to Gibson Roc and is reminded of Gil Scott-Heron at his best. I listen to her and am reminded that her music straddles a crucial intersection in our culture where we once questioned things.
(HUGH PEARSON HAS RECENTLY PASSED ON, HE AND HIS WORK WILL TRULY BE MISSED) - HUGH PEARSON

BOOMER BOX:

Reviews for baby boomers that still listen to music

New York Tendaberries

By Mark Fogarty


http://www.brokeruniverse.com/boomerbox/archive/?column=20060915.htm

Karen Gibson Roc is an astonishment. This Brooklyn-based (by way of Jamaica and Canada) poet and musician is fierce and fearless. A musical chameleon (she calls herself a "poetist" or poetic vocalist), she combines elements of rap, downtown-diva poetry slamming, and an urgent backing band called Fluid that lays down beats for her that range from jazzy to soulful to the rock edge that the hip-hop pioneers used to such great advantage. Karen Gibson Roc is so committed to what she is doing, she even dreams in rhyme!


Karen Gibson Roc runs it down at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City. Styling herself a poetist, the performer celebrates the creative spirit in front of her empathetic band, Fluid.I first heard of Gibson Roc when I was riffing through the spoken-word jukebox at American Idol Underground and saw one of her cuts. Clicking through to her website, I noticed she had the chameleon-like ability to look different in every photograph (although her hairstyle is most often a beautiful big natural). Getting on her mailing list, I received from her one of the most over-the-top reviews I have ever read, about her performance at the Whitney Museum in Manhattan this past spring. The reviewer seemed to think Gibson Roc had something to do with the preservation of the universe. I decided it was time to check her out.

The universe may be able to survive without Karen Gibson Roc, but I see no need for it to be deprived of this glorious celebrator of the creative spirit. Gibson Roc is all over that vibe, and her performances put the exclamation point on the end. She is absolutely weightless, soaring and floating above the checks and balances that keep most of us secured to the weighty surface of this rolling ball we find ourselves assigned to. She is unafraid, not worried about her looks, not needing fame, and in the memorable words of one of her songs not even needing to be sane, all of the time.

Gibson Roc is as much a poet as a rapper, although she rhymes pretty regularly and occasionally breaks off an obvious one. (Don't we all?) She also doesn't resemble the modern run of female rappers in that she is quietly but noticeably non-trashy. Though gorgeous and stylish, she is usually covered neck to toe and with a hat to boot, daring you to look at her bounding spirit and spacious mind rather than the prizes she won in the gene pool. I admire that quite a bit.

She has been compared to Gil Scott-Heron, a declaiming pioneer of the 1960s ("The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," "Johannesburg") and I can see a similarity, although she is not political, as Scott-Heron was. She is a sloganeer as he was, but in a more personal mode. "I refuse to die unfinished!" she trumpets out to the universe in one song. I hope we can soon see more unfinished business from her.

I see her more as a poet/musician in the mode of the greatest of all New York City divas, Patti Smith, following her creative itchiness wherever it may lead her. Gibson Roc can crack off great poetic images, like "Smile/ like a sundial/ telling time/ from inside." I've been thinking about that one. Notice how it blows up a cliché (the "sunny" smile). I can't make out how a smile is like a sundial, but I don't think that's the point. It's turned inside out. The person smiling, though, can be like a sundial, because she tells time from the inside. And she can smile because she has that power of telling creatively.

It's all about the creative spirit for Gibson Roc. In her rhymes, whether gotten on the night shift or during the day like most poets, she is intensely creating, over and over. In sweet images she is writing blueprints for Noah's next arc, and reattaching leaves to trees. Being creative is intensely IMPORTANT to her, and by extension to the rest of the world. (Maybe she does have something to do with the preservation of the universe! At least the part that has spirit.)

There is something elemental about Gibson Roc. She can cut right to the chase, as in her song "Born Alone." She boils down an entire existence to about twenty words. "We're born alone and we die alone /In between the spaces I call home/ I shed my skin and walk alone." That just about snaps it all off right there.

Gibson Roc has just given birth to a daughter, (she beautifully says her child has given her grace) so I was unable to meet her for this piece. But we did an e-mail Q&A and I spoke briefly to her on the phone. She says her main theme "is the evolution of spirit and the truth about following what is your dharma or your calling here in the physical." And her objective is "to inspire dream chasing and to uplift hearts, open minds."

She admits to being a bit of a chameleon ("I like being free to see myself in different ways") and says "I am most passionate about art and the different ways that I myself and others interpret and create it!"

Her band is called Fluid, both for the easy flow of the grooves and the tendency of musicians to come and go. Current band members are Eric Simmons on guitar, brother-in-law Ronnie Roc on keyboards, and Washington Duke on drums. By the evidence of a live sampler DVD Gibson Roc sent me, this band is alive and, when wedded to her gleeful exploration of the stage and the words, I can see where the Whitney reviewer could go over the top. (Gibson Roc calls the Whitney her best gig of many, many live shows over the past seven years, the one in which "all the stars aligned." Other notable shows have been at the Opera House at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and a fashion show in Chicago where Gibson Roc shared the runway with the models!)

Gibson Roc sent me her CD 5&2 Fish (that's a Biblical reference to feeding the multitudes) and there are three fabulous tracks on it: "Born Alone," "Sweet Life" and "Already There." I've already quoted from "Born Alone," kind of a signature song for her, an urgent and compelling life resume. "Sweet Life" has that same kind of creative urgency. When she declaims "I'm walking in new shoes that I choose" the band comes to life and lays down some walking riffs for her.

"Already There" is a great track, aided by Bruce Daniels' sensitive backing vocals. Rappers and hip-hoppers are not noted for their introspection. They are great at boasting, usually about romantic prowess, and not bad at the bitch-and-moan. Gibson Roc fits into the boasting brigade, sort of, because of her pride in her expressive powers. But in "Already There," she riffs around the breathtaking line "I don't claim to be sane all the time." This is a riveting number, told from a poet's perspective.

Gibson Roc had a baby less than two months ago ("it has balanced me out tremendously") and is taking a maternity break from playing live. She tells me on the phone she isn't planning on rushing back but still has managed to record one track since her daughter's birth, so even the inside-out of childbirth can't keep her creativity down for long.

A poet since her late teens, Gibson Roc didn't start putting the words to music until eight years ago. She remains a poet on paper as well, with two pieces in an anthology and a forthcoming book of her own writing called, wittily, A Side Order of Truth. She is a painter and photographer as well and has been working on an art book she has just posted online. A live DVD is in the works, (helped out by a grant from the Canadian Council for the Arts) and the sampler Gibson Roc sent me shows Fluid really cranking it up behind her.

I am old enough to remember Jack Kerouac, a pioneering writer who read his words to music back in the 1950s and was also a night-shift poet, keeping a dream book by his bedside. Karen Gibson Roc is just old enough to remember Gil Scott-Heron but probably shouldn't admit it, since if the age she reported to me is correct, there is a picture of her getting old in an attic somewhere. However, a diva should never cop to her age, and I'm not going to break her spell, even though her birthday is tomorrow. For in addition to being weightless and fearless, Karen Gibson Roc is also ageless.

- BOOMER BOX REVIEW

The New York spoken word artist proves everything she names turns to gold
by Jamie Elizabeth Hall

http://venuszine.com/stories/music_interviews/1681

Karen Gibson Roc has an aptitude for naming things the title of her CD, "5 & 2 Fish", came effortlessly, as did "Traveling with Light", the title of her DVD. It just comes to me, she explains as we talk via cell phone. We are walking toward one another, hoping to meet up in Fort Green, near her home in Brooklyn, New York. I am supposed to walk up Fulton Street while she walks down.

We'll meet up eventually, she tells me. I dont argue, even though this is the stuff of Brooklyn horror stories. For a meeting like this to work, you must have a defining characteristic. Fortunately, Roc has two.

Look for my afro, she says, then adds something else which is swallowed by an ambulance siren.

When I spot the afro, I cross to meet her. She hugs me and commences the interview with, I'm a musician, a poet, an artist, and soon to be a mother. It takes me a moment to realize her belly is as big as her signature afro.

Guess you didnt hear me say Im five months pregnant.

Laughing, she provides a perfect package of goodies: CDs, DVDs, and pamphlet for her upcoming show at the Whitney Museum. Roc is meticulously organized, a prevalent theme in her work. When she sings, the words are a precise fit and her voice pours with the steady motion of heavy cake batter which is perhaps why her band is aptly named "Fluid". Neither depressing nor conflict-oriented, her lyrics are impassioned love songs to black heritage, femininity and art.

"I chose to live a life of an artist", Roc explains. Roc's new life began in 1989, when she moved to New York from her native Canada. I was a sad, shy little girl, she confides. My sisters were over achievers. I didn't start until I was thirty. However, at thirty, Roc had an epiphany. Giving up a corporate job, she turned to spoken word. She never worked a desk job again.

I made a decision and its all hard, no matter how you do it, so, I made a choice to do it my way.

Working her way into the scene, she eventually made appearances on HBO's Def Poetry Jam, and the Brooklyn Academy of Musics Def Poetry Plugged-In. She has also appeared on Central Parks Summer Stage and off Broadway. And, although its been a steady ascent, it hasn't always been easy.

"I've had to check my ego", she explains. If I'm worried about being famous, that takes away from who I am.

Presently, Roc is very much involved in the role of mother-to-be. The book I'm working on, "A Side Order of Truth", it begins, my name this week is Bijoux. I'm my mothers four-month-old fetus.

In lieu of Roc's propensity for great names, I can hardly wait to hear what she decides to call her latest project.

- VENUSZINE.COM

DANNY SIMMONS EXECTIVE PRODUCER OF HBO'S DEF POETRY JAM

"KAREN GIBSON ROC, ROCKS! HER AND HER BAND FLUID ARE INNOVATIVE AND CHALLENGING- YOU GOTTA HEAR THEM!" - DANNY SIMMONS

BRUCE GEORGE, CO-FOUNDER OF HBO'S DEF POETRY JAM

"KAREN GIBSON ROC IS ONE OF THE FEW PERFORMANCE ARTISTS THAT CAN HOPSCOTCH BETWEEN SPOKEN WORD AND HIP HOP, SHE SPITS FIRE LIKE BURNING SPEAR!" - BRUCE GEORGE

"During the show, guests enjoyed musical performances by the legendary Patti Labelle, The Commodores and Def Jam poet Karen Gibson Roc, who said she was more nervous about the press line than performing. All gave a jaw-dropping performance."

- FACTOMAGAZINE.COM