As we enter May, we officially concluded the LA Get Down festival here at Greenway Court Theatre. The annual month-long celebration of Hip Hop and Spoken Word held every April in honor of National Poetry Month is a testament to our core values; to uplift underrepresented voices and shine a light on the artists in our community.

This year featured diverse programming from our first annual Wordsmith Achievement Award ceremony with special guest Gia Scott-Heron and poets from the World Stage Press as they paid homage to the late Gil Scott Heron, considered the Godfather of Hip Hop and Spoken Word, to Palms Up Academy’s Gold Standard – a night of poetry and music in tribute to the AAPI diaspora. We also held the Trans Conversation Project workshop series where trans and nonbinary artists got a chance to develop and perform personal monologues. Dante Basco did a workshop performance of his one man show From Rufio to Zuko and of course the festival culminated in the InkSlam Invitational – a poetry slam of the highest caliber from the hosts of the Nation’s largest weekly open mic, Da Poetry Lounge.

It was an honor to see faces old and new come to the festival and get down! We can’t wait for next year.