Wayde Compton
The Contact Zone Crew | 2008 | 30:00mins | Turntable Poetry Project | Canada
Wayde Compton is a Vancouver writer whose books include 49th Parallel Psalm, Performance Bond and Bluesprint: Black British Columbian Literature and Orature. He and Jason de Couto perform turntable-based sound poetry as a duo called The Contact Zone Crew. Compton is also a co-founding member of the Hogan’s Alley Memorial Project, an organization dedicated to preserving the public memory of Vancouver’s original black community. He is also one of the publishers of Commodore Books. Wayde Compton teaches in Simon Fraser University’s Writing and Publishing Program, where he is a creative writing instructor in The Writer’s Studio; he also teaches English composition and literature at Emily Carr University of Art + Design and Coquitlam College.
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The Contact Zone Crew is Wayde Compton and Jason de Couto’s turntable poetry project. Genetically representing three continents on four Technics 1200s, The Contact Zone Crew performs live mixes of original dub plate poetry with crate-dug hip-hop, jazz, and spoken word vinyl. A performance history was recently published in Event 32.1 (Spring 2003). To read an essay on the project, go to Horizon Zero; when there, click “view this article in flash” to hear an audio file of The Reinventing Wheel: Rolling Wave Mix.
Featured in: The Contact Zone
