Jorge Figueroa

My name is Jorge Figueroa. I wanted to be a rapper since I heard Vico-C’s underground tapes in the mid 80’s. Shortly after, I read Pablo Neruda, and then and there knew that I wanted to be a poet. My art is intimately intertwined with music & community advocacy & social justice. Vedanta, Rap, Blues, Salsa, Folk, Beat poets & Nuyorican & contemporary spoken word poets have been my main influences.

In 1998, the pro-statehood ruling party in Puerto Rico imposed a status defining plebiscite of significant historical importance to the island. I felt very frustrated with how the ruling party abused its power & irresponsibly rushed such an important process. While taking a shower, I was so mad at this that I started crying, feeling frustrated & completely helpless. Then, in that instant, I had an epiphany: you can give to your country the best that you have right now: your art. Literally about a minute after this realization, Pablo Zulu was on the phone: “the Committee for Puerto Rico wants us to record a rap against the plebiscite.” As the rapper of Tripulacion Central, I wrote and performed an anti-plebiscite public service rap-announcement (for non-of-the-above category), aired in the highest ratings radio show at the highest ratings time slot, the day before the plebiscite.

In 2001, the country of Puerto Rico rose up as one in order to fight the strongest Navy in the history of the world. To support the cause, I Co-founded the Terrapoets poetry collective, an underground performance troupe with some of the best performance poets of my generation. It was kind of a guerrilla-civil disobedience-poetry experience against the U.S. Navy practices in Vieques Island…in the public bus system, malls, and even the Puerto Rico International book fair. I then organized a delegation of Puerto Rican poets and rappers & travelled with them to New York’s Puerto Rican Day Parade of 2001 (dedicated to Vieques); where I co-produced, as part of the Parade activities, the Stop-The-Bombs Hip Hop concert in Martin Luther King Jr. auditorium, which brought together for the first time established & emerging Puerto Rican & Nuyorican poets and hip-hoppers.

In 2004, as a bona-fide member of Tripulacion Central, I was a featured Puerto Rican poet-performer in Chile’s Presidential Medal of Honor Award Ceremony given by Ricardo Lagos, then-President of the Republic of Chile, to Ricardo Alegria, founder of Puerto Rico’s Institute of Culture.

My work has been featured in television and radio cultural magazines (Cultura Viva, Canal Seis; Canta Pueblo, Radio Universidad de Puerto Rico); and I have shared the stage in Puerto Rico with: Mapeye, Cachete Maldonado and sus Majadero's Band, Roy Brown, Danny Rivera, Cultura Profetica, Fiel a la Vega, Manjar de los Dioses, rappers Siete Nueve, Luis Diaz, Welmo, Gallego, Pablo Zulu, Tekone, and others. I have also performed during these past years, while studying in the US, as the New Haven Farmer’s Market’s poet, & with musicians from the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, the Balcan Brass Band Zlatne Ustne, the Eastern European Zoyres Kletzmer Band, & rappers Ivan Andino a.k.a Freddy Skitz, and Zol Naciente-Inti, among others.

“yes”

I want to will you into my existence

yet such willing seems

but an inevitable involuntary act of the world

even if whatever I say

will not add anything

even if all that I can offer right now

to you

might seem to be mere words

I have to sing

there is no way to hold this morning shower

from falling on the earth

for I have found the awesome lotus of your presence

blooming in my epicenter

and the Immaculate Song

tells me

i will be with you again