It was November 19, and LA’s West Side was wrapped in a breeze uncharacteristic of a California night, but was a welcome interruption to the heatwaves the state is known for. The historic Odyssey Theater Ensemble, home of some of the city’s most multi-cultural plays and productions, housed the Sippin’ Poetry Slam Food Drive, hosted by the multi-hyphenated talent, poet, actor, and artist combo, Ahkei “KeiRock” Togun.
A Los Angeles transplant since the age of 19, the young, gifted and black poet is a powerhouse of lyricism and heart. Coming up on his sixth year in the famed City of Angels, his platform — the Sippin’ Poetry brand of live shows — continues to lead him towards community, building bridges and filling the gaps where he sees the need and however he can.
I entered the theater an hour after the advertised time — being a plus-one afforded me the opportunity — but I was pleasantly surprised to find the show hadn’t started just yet. I handed my Trader Joe’s bag of canned and microwave goods, donations for the food drive, to a tall, long-haired man (boyfriend of the receptionist, and equally as fashionable) and made myself comfortable in the lobby. The night’s talent mixed and mingled with the audience and it would be hard to have distinguished the two if you weren’t in the know; the Sippin’ Poetry events keep a very leveled playing field that revolves more around the communal versus the hierarchical.
Cutting through the crowd, you could find various vendors situated around the room including Heart Therapy, with graphic apparel and poignant quotes across their merchandise; Typaway Poetry, pseudonym for Monica Salazar, who creates custom, typewritten poems on the spot from a simple prompt or phrase from buyers and whom quickly became a crowd favorite, and many more. I was smuggled from the lobby to the theater room just ahead of showtime, where Sippin’ Poetry’s in-house band warmed up the crowd with jazzy improv over classic pop, rock and R&B tunes. I was sat on the second row, between Salazar and poet-songstress Macías, a friend of Sippin’ Poetry who also often assists with the organizing.
And after a brief spell of live music and new arrivals to the room, KeiRock appeared with the electricity of a pop star mixed with a tsunami: he riled the crowd up with a call and response that intensified while the music swelled, seamlessly ran through the rules of the Slam Competition and even took a FaceTime call from his mother and grandmother — and welcoming plenty of audience participation for it — probably within a span of five to 10 minutes. No doubt was left: the crowd was thoroughly warmed up. And so began The Slam: spanning a little over an hour and some change, plus intermissions, some of the fieriest, most passionate and deeply profound poets took to the stage to battle. The night’s poets, including Jordan Stanley and Marty Drew, verbally sparred for three rounds until it dwindled down to the final two; a decision that was determined by a 0.2 scoring difference in favor of Stanley, while Drew received the Fan Favorite award.
As the festivities rolled on, KeiRock returned to the stage to share his own testimonies with the audience on the hand life had been dealing him up to now and how his faith in God had been carrying him through it. That would be important for later. Over the sounds of the house band riffing and the audience being totally present, he revealed that they had collected over 105 cans of food donations, excluding other types of food offerings. A successful event and a successful night.
I had met KeiRock before, very briefly, at a previous, Halloween-themed Sippin’ Poetry event just the month before, and after hearing him perform his own poetry — about God, abandonment in the storm of life, and betrayal of love — followed by a rousing testimony encouraging the audience to create and ultimately embrace the fullness of life and themselves as both art and artist, I guaranteed him I would come to his next event. Plus, I was curious to find out how “Sippin’” came about. It was a unique concept, fusing traditional Slam poetry with musical trivia, a dance competition and jam sessions all into a 2-3 hour showcase. Even more impressive was that it attracted such a diverse and high-level of talent across the board. So I had to know: who was “KeiRock?” What got him into poetry in the first place? And where did the concept of community outreach blend into that?
“I was introduced to poetry just as a sad young man sitting in his bedroom,” Ahkei Togun laughed upon reflection, “trying to figure out his emotions. I was introduced to spoken word poetry in a way of I was doing a poetry competition at school. And my friends that were in the city that I was in, they told me to come to this event or whatever the case may be. And I was doing recitation poetry at the time, but the thing that I went to was a Slam.
“And I was like, ‘yo, what is this? What are they doing up there?’ How are they talking like that? How did they write their poetry like that?’ And so that’s kind of what got me into spoken word poetry and made me dive into it a lot more, for sure.”
I relayed that I had a similar experience covering a Slam poetry competition for GetLit earlier in the year, which was my first introduction to the format; I was curious how Togun came to find his voice in the existing scene from there. His eyes lit up.
“So for me, I feel like anytime you go to an event, it’s all about the experience. You know what I mean? I think that when you go to a Slam, you kind of already have these things kind of decorated in your mind or whatever the case may be,” Togun folded his arms. “Like, ‘oh, it’s gonna be poet after poet after poet.’ And so for me, I never wanted to be what your expectations are. I always wanna find a way to create a full experience. Why? Because I feel like it puts you in a place where your mind can actually be a little bit more open.
“The minute I surprise you with something’s like, ‘oh, this isn’t what I expected.’ So now you’re kind of like wondering ‘what else should I expect?’ And so with creating a full experience, I feel like it really allows us to talk about real stuff, to have laughing moments, to have fun with each other and not just with the poets that are on stage.”
Indeed, Togun cultivates a unique experience to the world of live poetry, incorporating musical trivia, dance contests and crowd participation with the classic three-round Slam rules, live music and, often times, either a personal testimonial, a recitation of his own poems or both. And when he takes to the stage, his presence is instantly magnetic: equal parts rap MC and hype-man, baptist preacher and philosopher, KeiRock, the persona, is a special breed of entertainer within the scene. Such a combination had to have come from a peculiar source, I figured. Before the show officially began (but during the introduction, as Togun got the crowd’s blood flowing through chants over hard backing beats and acoustic bass lines to introduce Christian Perfas as the ‘Sacrificial Poet,’) he got a FaceTime from his mother. And then incorporated her into the show. I had to ask.
“So I always tell people I wasn’t one of those people who grew up with people telling me I wouldn’t make it. Which was — you would think that that’s a great thing — which a part of it is. But I almost felt the pressure of feeling like I had to make it,” Togun explained. “And so I have a wonderful, wonderful mother and a wonderful, wonderful family that always told me like, ‘we know you’re gonna be great.'”
“So I call my mom,” he laughed, “I don’t always FaceTime her, but I call her every day I have a show. And we don’t always talk for a long time, but I tell her all the time, like, ‘I just wanted to hear your voice.’”
Togun paused, his voice quieting down a bit, “And after a while she was like, ‘you really don’t need these phone calls ’cause you know, you gonna kill it.’ So me and my mom in the creative world, I look up to her. I love her. I adore her and it was the way that she nourished my seed when it was small, when it was young, to where I am today.”
Moving into a world where the gears were already turning, before he could be a leader in the space, Ahkei Togun first had to find his own tribe — in the city and within the poetry scene. Community is something you get a strong sense of as soon as you walk in to any of the “Sippin’” events, and there’s a reason for that.
“So I started with my family. I went to a performing art school, so I was around a bunch of creatives that I felt like were great,” he said. “And I felt like we were all sitting on greatness. We were all just sitting on art that’s just sitting in notebooks or sitting in our phones or whatever the case may be.”
“And when I thought of my event, I went to my whole family and I said ‘I want y’all to be a part of this. I want y’all to do this.’ And so my first couple events was just everybody that was in my family or friend group that I thought was great. And those are my first poets. Those are my first musicians,” he continued… “Those are my first everything. Starting from there, it really gave a chance for the platform to realize how great it could actually be, because I started it with greatness, rooted in family roots, and love… This is somewhere where community can come together.”
The conversation was starting to feel very full circle; we returned to the topic of faith. Each show, he’d precede a brief intermission or close out a successful night with a passionate testimonial. Partially witnessing for God and maybe more covertly expressing his innermost turmoil at the moment, Togun takes a moment to talk his fellow poets through his own personal tests of faith and breakthroughs, whatever those look like. This section is raw and unfiltered and he holds nothing back. It ties in with struggles of mental health, heartbreak, love and inspiration. Universal truths, but ones deeply personal to Togun and, he hopes, to those he speaks to each event.
“I fast a week before these shows,” he said, when I asked about the correlation between God and poetry. “I think that as a believer — I believe that as a creative — I’m a vessel, you know? And so it’s like when I write my poetry, sometimes I get to the end of my poems and I’m like, ‘I don’t even know how I wrote that thing.’ And it’s such a godly thing. Being a creative in general is such a godly thing. ‘Cause it’s such a blessing that we don’t even realize until we see the finished product.”
Togun’s voice arose and he became more animated: “I want everything to be whatever God wants it to be. I don’t care about the numbers, I don’t care about the money in it. I care about whatever God wants to happen in that night. So it could be two people in the audience, it could be 27,000. It doesn’t matter if what God wanted to happen didn’t happen.” He paused. “So for me, I think poetry just created a platform where now people are already listening to you. What are you gonna say with the words that they’re listening to? So in the midst of my prayers, in the midst of being a believer and mixing that with poetry, it allowed me to put being a believer on a higher platform. On a platform where people are allowed to listen and say, ‘Hey, what is that thing?’ And I think it’s been beautiful thus far.”
What surprised him and what would he tell his younger self?
“I think just the amount of people who actually do poetry,” Togun smiled quickly. “I think the world is limitless with what you’re capable of because there’s so many people out there that you can connect with and keep your passion going. I just told somebody the other day what surprised me was the fact that the lessons that you have to learn along the way; I feel like in the creative world, we feel like, ‘oh, I’m the best, I’m always the best.’ Whatever the case may be. But part of being that is like, sometimes you’re not the best in the room. How do you learn from the best in the room?”
Bringing it back to the night’s Food Drive — the event was just some days before Thanksgiving Day — I was curious how it all tied together. Given his propensity to highlight the communal, creative aspects of his position, was it safe to say this was another extension of that? Togun’s voice began to shake and his body tensed up.
“I don’t care about me,” he said, fighting back tears. “And it’s making me emotional right now. Like, I’ve always told myself, ‘if I make it, I wanna bring everybody with me.’ You know what I mean? So to have a platform I want to — I’ve been trying to figure out every which way to use it as possible. And I’m not rich or anything, so I can’t be out here handing people money, but I can use it in a way that still can affect people in a positive way and more than just poetry.”
“So how do I use this positive community platform in order to do something bigger? I wanted to… One of my favorite quotes is, ‘I may not change the world, but I guarantee I’ll spark the brain that will.’”
A famous quote from perhaps one of the most famous modern poets, Tupac Shakur — and one that’s still largely relevant today. Togun continued: “And I think the food thing for me is like, I’m always trying to think about the people who are forgotten. My platform has kind of been a platform for poets who either haven’t performed in a long time or haven’t performed ever. So a lot of those people have come through [for the food drive]. So for me that rings my brain as far as like what other aspects of life does that pertain to? Who else is sitting on this? Who else is sitting on that? And I immediately thought about family.”
“So it’s actually an idea that I wanted to do last year and didn’t get a chance to execute. So this year as the platform built up, but even more, I was like, ‘I have to, I wanna bring these people with me and I wanna feed families with the impact that I have.’”
And with that sense of self and consciousness for others in full view, I had to wonder what was the one thing he thought the general public should know about poetry? The layman probably knows about Maya Angelou at the most, Pablo Neruda if they’ve done their studies. How would Togun broaden the scope for the public consciousness?
“I think that there’s something for everybody,” he replied. “Poetry is just like music. There’s so many poets out here and everybody has their own style, their own way of doing it. And I think that poetry is literally once you find some of your favorite artists and once you open your ears to it, like it literally can be like reading a scripture or… like going to church — and not to match it with God in a sense. But at the same time, I’ve seen a lot of people get delivered in a sense, or a lot of people’s lives get changed. I think we should definitely be more open to all these creative vessels.”
What’s next for Ahkei “KeiRock” Togun and the “Sippin’” brand from here on out?
“Everything. We’re doing everything in our power to take ‘Sippin’ to more cities next year. Which I’m very excited about. We’ve reached out to people in different cities already and we have some things in the works for that. Next year is just gonna be bringing more stuff to the community, you know what I mean? Like every way possible. We wanna do more open mics, ’cause we were doing that last year.”
“I wanna do more poetry workshops. I’m just more so trying to build this community and stretch that out as much as I can. Connect as many people as I can. So that’s pretty much what’s next to me. And keep elevating and keep praying and keep building towards that.”