Lence on celebrating 'grassroots creativity' at his Blur The Lines event
Rapper and spoken word artist Lence is excited to be bringing back his popular showcase for jazz, hip-hop and poetry – this time as part of Leeds Jazz Festival. Called Blur The Lines, it has staged various venues in Leeds, but this year moves to City Varieties.
“I’ve done two events at the Playhouse – one in 2019 and one in 2023 – and they were both sold-out,” says the Leeds-based rapper otherwise known as Laurence Inman. “It’s an event that celebrates grassroots creativity in Leeds and it features poets, rappers, singers, live musicians and artists from all different backgrounds and different scenes from across the city performing on the same line-up. They’re performing in places they haven’t shared their work in before, so that’s one of the really interesting things about it.”
The night actually launched at Hyde Park Book Club as part of Leeds Lit Fest. “That began with me putting together a line-up of all the people that I’d met at open mic events and throughout the local performance scene in Leeds through music and poetry,” says Lence. “I had this idea to feature a crossover of poets with rappers that I knew, celebrating the different worlds and different scenes I’d been going in and out of in my creative journey.”
The Jazz Festival event will be the 11th edition of Blur The Lines. Others have been staged at Slung Low’s Warehouse space in Holbeck as well as another in association with the music platform Come Play With Me. “We’ve kept our relationship going with the Lit Fest, so every year we’re appearing there in some capacity. We did an event at Leeds Library and last year we made our debut at the Jazz Festival at the Howard Assembly Room. It’s really been growing and developing as much as possible.”
As the event’s curator, Lence says he’s enjoyed “not being set to one pathway and seeing what happens when you merge different pathways together”, adding: “I think overall for me it’s about blurring the lines for the different artforms involved...and also blurring the lines for what’s possible in the North, especially in Leeds, and changing the creative landscape going forward – that’s something I’m driven to do and inspired to keep on with.”
The event on May 22 will be hosted by poet, educator and activist Matt Abbott and the line-up includes Lence, rapper Oliver Rees, poets Simone Yasmin, Jack Collins and Talie, and spoken word artist Molly Fasc, as well as a collaboration between singer-songwriter and guitarist Blaze Hamle t and multi-instrumentalist Emma Johnson.
Meanwhile, Lence is also continuing his music career. His latest track, Explain It All Away, was written for a project organised by Professor Denis Flannery of the University of Leeds where Lence was asked to write a response to the poetry of Emily Brontë. “Dennis saw some similarities between me and Emily Brontë in how the writing was presented and what we’re talking about. It was the reference to a voice inside and in Emily Brontë’s work talking about ‘I walk where my own nature will be leading’. It’s the idea of that inner voice and that instinct,” he explains. The beats were written and produced by Chills Myth.
Blur The Lines takes place at Leeds City Varieties on May 22. Leeds Jazz Festival runs from May 21-26.