'Release' to promote spirit of expression

As long as people are expressing themselves to their fullest when the show begins at 7 p.m. Saturday, Jovan Mays is going to be happy.

Mays is the Chadron State College senior from Aurora, Colo., who is organizing the show for the second year to promote expression and diversity. With music ranging from bluegrass to hip hop, and poetry ranging from cowboy to slam, the event promises a diverse line-up.

“It’s going to be beautiful for a cowboy poet to look into the eyes of a rapper and feel the same thing,” Mays said.

He said some of the artists in the show’s lineup use their talents to express incredible challenges in their lives. The performers will include guitarist and singer Deb Carpenter-Nolting, a breast cancer survivor who is a former CSC language arts faculty member, and the Thunder Valley Dancing Divas, a group of young dancers from the poverty-stricken Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. He said both use art to address their challenges, although they take a different approach.

“The Thunder Valley Dancing Divas don’t have to write some compelling song put to acoustic guitar. They just go out there and dance,” Mays said. “Anybody who knows the region they’re coming from can see the beauty in that youth and vibrance.”

He notes that some of the performers have been recognized nationally for their achievements. One such artist is Martin Gilmore, a bluegrass musician from Arvada, Colo. Another is the Café Nuba Slam Poetry team are at the top of their fields. The Café Nuba group will feature an American Indian, African-American and Hispanic American, each of whom Mays said are nationally recognized, extremely talented and represent their race.

Members of the Café Nuba team perform and compete in spoken word poetry, a form of art revived in the 1990s. Performers of spoken word use rhythm, repetition and rhyme to voice problems and offer hope. Mays often participates in spoken word poetry events in the Denver area and has used the technique to dazzle audiences at Chadron State.

“My skills are sharpened all the time because I go back home and compete against people who are heads and shoulders above me,” he said.

Many of the acts for “Release,” such as Conrad “Cipher” Bravo, a hip hop artist from Scottsbluff, and Emblem Exits, a three-piece Chadron rock band, are becoming increasingly recognized on the local stage, Mays said. He said one of the driving forces behind his effort is to turn up diamonds in the rough.

Mays said he discovered Cipher by completing a regional music search on the popular social networking Web site MySpace. He was immediately impressed with the artist’s skills.

“When there’s a hip hop act in the Panhandle, you have your doubts,” he said. “You expect it to be everything cliché.”

He also was pleasantly surprised the first time he heard Emblem Exits, which consists of Chadron State students Travis Hencey and Kent Kelso, and their friend Alex Keller, a student at Chadron High School.

“The first time I saw them was in a basement here in Chadron and I was blown away,” Mays said. “For three kids to be playing in a three piece band the way they are -- that’s a dying art.”

In addition to Mays and Carpenter-Nolting, performers who will take the “Release” stage for the second time this Saturday are Jessi Doke of Wausa and Ben Treffer of Scottsbluff. New acts include Chadron singer and guitarist Jolana Milburn, cowboy poet Tim Nolting (Deb’s husband) of Bushnell, musician Matt Lentz of Ainsworth, and musician Chris Van Dyke of Benkelman.

Mays said each artist will add something unique to the show, consequently promoting a spirit of social unity.

“It’s not a talent show,” he said. “They’re not going to stand up there and do karaoke like an American Idol type of thing. It’s going to be composed almost like a play. Each set will be a different scene – the scene of someone’s life.”

Related story: 'Release' to promote expression, diversity