A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF KEVIN COVAL

For decades the cofounder of Louder Than a Bomb has nurtured young voices and built vital communities in Chicago’s poetry, spoken- word, and hip- hop scenes. Now people whose lives he’s touched help tell his story.

On the night of Saturday, March 4, a multigenerational crowd wrapped halfway around the block outside the Harold Washington Library; teenagers with braces waited in line alongside silver- haired senior citizens. Everyone had come to celebrate A People’s History of Chicago ( Haymarket Books), a new collection by Chicago poet Kevin Coval. It was Coval’s show, but he spent more time talking about other people than he did reading his poems. Many of them spoke, read, sang, or rapped on his behalf, including poet and Third World Press founder Haki Madhubuti, poet and playwright Angela Jackson, radical writer and activist Bill Ayers, poet Nate Marshall, journalist Alex Kotlowitz, poet and soul singer Jamila Woods, and rapper Mick Jenkins.

Coval puts community first, and he walks the walk. He’s the creative director of Young Chicago Authors, the Wicker Park youth writing center founded by Bob Boone in 1991. He’s been working for the organization since 1999, and in 2001 he and his colleague Anna West ( later YCA’s executive director) founded Louder Than a Bomb, which now calls itself the largest youth performance- poetry competition in the world. This winter about 120 teams, each of which selected on average six to eight performers, competed in the 17th LTAB, which also paid tribute to iconic poet Gwendolyn Brooks in her centennial year. LTAB wrapped up its monthlong season with the team finals at the Auditorium Theatre on Saturday, March 18, but Coval hasn’t stopped working with the participants; at a recent People’s History of Chicago event at Volumes Bookcafe in Wicker Park, he invited a handful to read.

Coval, 42, understands the importance of mentoring young people and elevating the voices of the marginalized. With YCA and LTAB he’s helped foster a community of artists he says have “really set the course for how music is for the world.” YCA’s website lists several musician alumni on its page for the open mike Wordplay: Mick Jenkins, Jamila Woods, Noname, Saba, Nico Segal, and Chance the Rapper, who wrote the introduction to A People’s History of Chicago.

Coval’s new collection grew out of research he did for a different book on the gentrification that beset Wicker Park in the 90s. He kept digging, finding stories of other gentrifying neighborhoods further and further back in time. “I was examining the history of globalization and the global economy, and how it had an effect in people’s movements and migratory patterns in, around, and to Chicago,” he says. “It unveiled this really rich Chicago history.”

Because Coval is so invested in nurturing communities and amplifying the voices of others, I decided it’d be appropriate to tell his story by talking to people in the communities that helped nurture him. I’ve edited together the testimony of 13 friends, relatives, and colleagues to create an oral history of his life— a people’s history, if you will.

KEVIN COVAL My aunt Joyce [ Sloane] was the producer at Second City for a long time, so I grew up t here. I started working i n restaurants that my dad had at 12. Most Saturday nights— before I started to play varsity basketball— we would go down to Second City. I was very young and staying out very late.

DANNY COVAL We go down to Second City to see t he show at E.T.C. At intermission, Michael McCarthy and Mark Beltzman come and sit with us. They ask me if I wanted to do the improv stuff with them. I said, “Are you kidding? I’m not getting up on the stage.” They ask Kevin. I thought he’d say no— he was 12 years old. And he said, “Sure.” They took him back into the green room, and they come back and t hey do a skit similar to Two and a Half

Men. Kevin is the son, Mark Beltzman is the si ngle parent, and Michael McCarthy is his roommate— they do a skit, and Kevin was terrific. KEVIN COVAL Jeff Garlin performed at my bar mitzvah.

DANNY COVAL I knew he was expressing himself in many ways. I saw it mostly on the basketball court.

KEVIN COVAL KRS- One called himself a poet and a teacher. So I wanted to be a poet and a teacher. He probably has had the single biggest influence in some ways on my artistic, creative, educational life. Him, Chuck D, Big Daddy Kane, Rakim, MC Lyte— they sent me to the library to understand who they were referencing. There was a lot of references in hip- hop that I didn’t understand because I was in public education in America.

I read The Black Poets, edited by Dudley Randall. It’s an anthology that came out from his press in Detroit [ Broadside Press], where I read for the first time the Black Arts poets— Nikki Giovanni, Jayne Cortez, Amiri Baraka, and Don L. Lee, who later became Haki Madhubuti. That was the first time I felt like that was something I wanted to do. DANNY COVAL At that point I know he was writing.

KEVIN COVAL I was taking in all this music, all this new poetic. I started to write battle- rap essays my junior year to my teachers.

DANNY COVAL I don’t know t hat he ever got i n trouble at school.

KEVIN COVAL I was i mmature, and I didn’t have all t he language. I was very mad and let t hem know t hat. It was also some personal attacks against them, because I thought that they were intentionally trying to miseducate us. I spent a lot of time in the principal’s office. DANNY COVAL If he got in trouble, it was nothing that they came to a parent about.

KEVIN COVAL I went to the Green Mill probably for the first time in ’ 96. I signed up for the Slam, and I lost, but I advanced in the round. What I was doing, in that space especially, seemed not typical— I was rhyming and very political. But [ Uptown Poetry Slam founder] Marc [ Smith] was an old socialist, and so it also resonated with him. I remember it was me and another woman, who beat me. He was like, “This is a new generation.”

LUIS RODRIGUEZ There was a whole lot of young people coming around. We were kind of mentors to them in many ways— they took it to new levels. That’s one of the things that Kevin did, as far as making poetry slams a bigger, more powerful thing.

KEVIN COVAL Luis Rodriguez was somebody who helped mentor me as an educator and as a writer. I was his teaching apprentice in a summer program that he did called Prism at the Guild Complex. LUIS RODRIGUEZ The Guild Complex at one point was instrumental in everything that we were doing. I was one of the cofounders, but Michael Warr was really the visionary director of it. We connected with almost every community i n Chicago, took poetry and literature all kinds of ways— including Tia Chucha Press. We were the publishing wing of Guild Complex. People could also see you can create institutions and amazing projects that can last. KEVIN COVAL Luis was teaching high school students. I was probably 20, and I was one of his teaching assistants— which just meant I made photocopies, got to sit in on his classes and see him teach. LUIS RODRIGUEZ Kevin was one of those people that, when he was onstage or organizing the youth, people respected it. There’s an authenticity that you look at with people, just like Patricia Smith or David Hernandez. There’s so many oth-

ers that came through— they just knew how to bridge all those gaps that exist in our societies. Kevin was one of those people.

KEVIN COVAL The Mad Bar, which was on Damen Avenue— they had an open mike for poets, and they had an open mike for MCs the same night. So there was a literal blend, and I stayed throughout. In that space was where I met a lot of folks who became my peers. Right down the street on Damen was Lit X, which was an Afrocentric bookstore. TINA M. HOWELL It was a little bookstore where Underdog is. We had an open mike.

KEVIN COVAL They had a Saturday- night openmike set, which was like church. It was where I met Avery R. Young and Dennis Kim. Mario [ Smith] and Tina [ Howell] hosted.

TINA M. HOWELL I wanted young people to come, ’ cause we didn’t sell alcohol or anything. People could come in and express themselves. Not only did we do the open mikes, we had parties.

DENNIS KIM Even if you were underage, someone like Anacron at the Mad Bar would sneak you in, and you could do your thing. There was a DJ there. If you were young, you were broke, and you had bars, sometimes a poetry spot was the best place to go. TINA M. HOWELL I had never seen a white Jewish kid with skill like Kevin had. Never.

AVERY R. YOUNG Kevin learned that lesson that young men learn in mentoring programs: speak to someone and look ’ em in the eye while you’re talking to them. He’d look me in the eye. I’d be like, “Why is this guy looking at me in my eyes like this?”

DENNIS KIM I remember there was a time where we were trying to get him to put out a record with Galapagos4. I think I put him and Jeff [ Kuglich] at Galapagos in touch. KEVIN COVAL I don’t remember that conversation. I would’ve put out a record if I would’ve been asked. DENNIS KIM

Studs Terkel I’vein a never freestyle heard before— anyone except referenceKev. So he was definitely coming from left field.