JUST BUST!

[00:00:00] Just Bust! is an open mike series that First Wave has been running for about ten eleven years. It’s the longest running open mike series in the Madison community and it is an event that happens every first Friday of the month throughout the academic year.

[00:00:21] You sign up and you get on the mike and you do what you do.

[00:00:33] Just Bust! came out of the Marc Bamuthi Joseph residency. But it’s an open mike for the campus community and the local community. Really accessed strongly by the local community. And it took on the name Just Bust! Which was at the end of Bamuthi’s residency he created these T-shirt that said Just Bust! as a way to motivate and encourage h is students in the class to just go on stage and bust. Just perform that’s what it means. Just do your best.

[00:01:06] It’s absolutely free. It usually takes place in the on Wisconsin in the red gym.

[00:01:14] And is a space for you know First Wavers but also the Madison community to come out and have a time to to engage and share art and share poetry and share songs and share dance.

[00:01:30] And then each month at the Just Bust! We have a twenty to thirty minute featured artist. And these are artists that the year prior are kind of chosen or names are thrown out by students that are in the program and we pick those featured artists. Each one comes flies in each month and does a feature set for our poets and our audience. So it’s really great.

[00:02:00] And more recently we’ve really connected with academic departments on campus to get more students. UW Madison students to come attend. We’ve had teachers from the Madison community come into poems about the education system and how they feel about being a teacher and how it’s impacting their students.

[00:02:19] It’s always a loving open audience and it’s packed. It really gets great attendance.

[00:02:26] We’ve had people who drove from Milwaukee to come because they’ve enjoyed the space so much they were somehow at one event and would continue to drive from other places on that first Friday of the month it’s really a space where you can come out and. Share. And receive so much love and encouragement in the fact that you have taken a step to use your voice your your body your gifts as a way to set yourself free and as a way to really set other people who are in the audience who may be feeling the exact same way.