This night will kick off the competitive section of Hullabaloo. Ostwelve from Beat Nation will warm up the crowd with a feature set in the beautiful rotunda of the Vancouver Art Gallery. Then everyone will move upstairs to the heritage courtrooms where we will hold four poetry slam bouts of four teams each.
Schedule for the Evening
4:30–4:50pm – Feature by Ostwelve in the rotunda (downstairs)
5:00–6:30pm – First slate of preliminary team bouts in the heritage courtrooms (upstairs)
7:00–8:30pm – Second slate of preliminary team bouts in the heritage courtrooms (upstairs)
Every team in Hullabaloo will perform in one bout this night, either the first or second slate of prelims. The bout draw, determining the time for each school’s bout, will be conducted before the tournament begins. All teams are encouraged to attend the entire evening.
The poems will be judged by five random members of the audience who are not directly affiliated with any of the poets or schools. They will give each poem a score between 0 and 10. We will drop the high and low scores, and each poem will receive a total score out of 30. Each bout has five rounds (four rounds of solo poems and a group piece round) so the highest possible score is 150.
About Ostwelve
Ron Dean Harris (Ostwelve) was born in the Sto:lo Territory of BC (Fraser Valley) in 1979. He grew up with grandparents until he was 13, when he took his journey from his small town home into the city of Vancouver to find hip hop and himself. His path led him to various hip hop jams, after-hours parties and street ciphers at an early teen age. Before moving into the city, music was always an integral part of his life, with a mother who played percussion, a father who played guitar and many uncles and grandparents with musical love and talent.
Ostwelve is part of the Beat Nation collective, which has an exhibition featured at the Vancouver Art Gallery (February 25th– June 3rd).
Ron has appeared as himself on APTN/Forcefour Productions children’s show Wakanheja on three occasions and on other APTN shows like First Story, Beyond Words and Much/Chum’s Smartass: The Ed the Sock Report. More recently Ostwelve has been acting, rapping, and film-making, landing a principal character role on the APTN/Showcase drama Moccasin Flats and the Moccasin Flats: Redemption movie of the week. Ron has also been traveling the world showcasing his talent, performing at large international showcases such as the Nokia Jam 2006, Global African Hip Hop Summit 2005 in Johannesburg, opening for Snoop Dogg in 2003 and Coolio in 1999.
This is a public free event.
No advance tickets or reserved seats are available.