28/08/2024
Putting into words what amazing artists Tali and Chiccoreli - Liquid Lowdown are.
Thanks David Dunham
At its best, with coffee, no distractions, and no hand cramps, my shorthand speed could get to 120 words per minute (wpm). What that means, is that someone could talk at 120 words per minute and I could get down all of their words, give or take an umm or an argh.
This was convenient as regular humans doing regular talk deliver 100-120 wpm on average, depending on regional dialects, environment, sense of urgency, introvert or extrovert, patient or impatient, level of inebriation and so on.
What was inconvenient was when I came across a professional talker. Folk who deliver 180 words per minute in the workplace. I’m thinking commentators on the radio or tv who can’t hit the brakes when off air. These people left me in a shorthand deficit. They’d say 180 words and I’d get 120, hoping the absent 60 weren’t important (they always were).
These days, I’d have no such problem. Hit a button on a phone and every word of a professional talker would be accounted for. Now, I could romanticize the days of scribbling words on a 8mm ruled pad in my messy shorthand. But I won’t. I hated shorthand. Park it for a day and you’d find it to be a stranger upon your return. Monday you’re fluent in French. Tuesday you return to English. Wednesday you’re left with nothing more than ‘je m'appelle David’.
In truth, I doubt I could even write my own name in shorthand now.
(update: I just tried.. I can’t).
Thankfully, I’m liberated from having to use shorthand, but not liberated from shorthand’s hangover.
Other than a mild shudder if I picture desk drawers rammed with notebooks, shorthand has left me with a compulsive calculation of someone’s words per minute delivery.
Which brings me to the picture.
In frame is MC Tali, an outstanding vocalist at the top of the enunciation tree delivering 200 words per minute + on stage.
I use + as I have no idea what wpm speed MC Tali (Natalia Sheppard) is actually hitting. It’s not that I’m out of practice in calculating wpm, it’s that it's been years and years since I have been in a room with an MC of her standing.
Actually, I don’t believe I’ve ever been in a room with a drum and bass MC of her standing. For anyone unaware of Tali’s stature as a DnB MC, know only that Roni Size was an early champion of Tali’s work. I use that name again, Roni Size. If you were a Country artist it would be like having Reba McEntire in your corner.
And here she was at The Thrift Shop Ball. An artist who has played Glastonbury, Bristol Academy (in its pomp one of the places to MC at), toured and wowed the DnB global community, had a UK Top 40 hit, won numerous awards (including a NZ Music Award for Best Electronic Artist), written 8 albums, over 100 songs, had a track (Lyric On My Lip) played by the legendary Jo Whiley on her BBC show, and later in her career became an esteemed producer.
Pioneer. Icon. Supreme DnB orator and freestyler to the damn fine beats played by the brilliant Chiccoreli (husband Ben Sheppard).
I left TOTARA STREET on a high from Tali’s delivery. Irrespective of whether you love, loathe, or are indifferent to DnB, being present as an artist performs at Tali’s level is something to cherish.
What troubles me is a very real awareness both during the show and after is that it is 1) A rare thing to witness a NZ drum and bass MC at Tali’s level in our backyard, and, 2) It is a rare thing to witness a New Zealand MC in New Zealand.
It’s almost as if we (and by ‘we’ I mean people who attend gigs and the industry that delivers them) have accepted a level of what qualifies as entertainment and decided that was good enough. I don’t believe it is.
I’m hugely thankful the awesome team behind Thrift Shop Ball (Rozella Presents and Mamamanagementnz) brought Tali and Chiccoreli to Totara St. Others need to follow.
I’m not saying you should book Tali (though you most definitely should), but if artists of her calibre are not celebrated as they are in the UK/European festival scene, we could lose the next generation of aspiring MCs who would have been inspired to learn their craft had they known there was a clear path to one day being on a stage, delivering 200wpm+ with supreme enunciation, whilst freestyling about the audience. Oh. And singing too.
If others do not follow then, alas, we will have to make do with the mainstream of a DJ-only booking culture. No matter how accomplished or original the DJ is, there is room for others on a bill. The risk of losing a future generation of MCs in New Zealand, and not nourishing the creative subculture it feeds, is worth charging extra at the door for, and it is worth paying extra at the door for.
I hope there is a venue near you with a night showcasing MCs. If there is, please, do go along.
