Critics' Pick Staff Pick
Go Marching In

When: First and Third Tuesday of every month, 7:30-9 p.m.
Phone: 510-482-2933
Price: free

East Oakland poet Mark G. was born Mark Gregory, but he changed the "Gregory" part to "G" because people said he needed a cool performance name. ("It seems to play real good with the young guys," he explains.) In addition to his spoken-word career, Mark G. coached soccer at the Oakland Soccer Club for 22 years. A little over a decade ago, a ten-year-old named Miguel came to play on his under-12 team, the Saints. Miguel continued playing up through the under-19 level. At age 19 Miguel witnessed a murder in front of his house on Macarthur Boulevard. After a couple of days of talking about it, he developed a spoken-word piece to talk about the experience. Miguel dubbed himself Muteado, a made-up Spanglish name. "It's ‘mute,'" he says. "‘Ado' is a Spanish addition." Apparently, Muteado asked too many of the wrong questions in high school. They always told him to be quiet, hence the "mute" part.

Shortly after Muteado penned his first poem, he and Mark G. decided to perform as a duo. They christened themselves Los Santos, in honor of the team. The dos Santos met Chokwadi, a second-generation East Oaklander who'd started hosting the Poetry and Music Diversified open mic at World Ground Café in December 2000, replacing former host Erika Mailman. Chokwadi gravitated to poetry while grieving the 1994 death of her father Arthur Fletch, a locally known pianist who played cocktail hours at Solomon Grundy's restaurant (now Skates) for nearly two decades, Chokwadi says. Chokwadi made an excellent candidate for the third Santo, given that she opened a space for tenderness within the group. She sings in addition to writing poetry, and she's trying to get the guys to add some more personal poems to their staunchly political repertoire. Tuesday, Tres Santos performs at World Ground Café's semi-monthly open mic. The Ohio poet Da Boogie Man will open. 7 p.m. Free. MySpace.com/Chokwadi

— Rachel Swan