Spoken word is enigmatic. An umbrella term that refers to a hybrid genre that includes forms such as storytelling, dub, jazz, cowboy poetry and hip-hop, each branch of spoken word has its own historical lineage and as such reflects the diversity of our oratory heritage. While some spoken word artists use traditional elements of literary verse, this adherence to poetic norms is not required in order for a spoken word piece to be successful. Many spoken word artists draw inspiration from a different well – blurring the lines between poetry and performance art, theatrical monologue, stand up comedy and sermonic rhetoric. Most spoken word artists use a blend of influences, creating their own unique aesthetic – the common denominator being that each artist writes and performs pieces that are focused on creating a sense of heightened, theatrical, yet intimate engagement with an audience.
Spoken word is a paradox. While some audiences are just beginning to become acquainted with this dynamic ‘new’ art form, spoken word is one of the oldest manifestations of creative expression. A natural evolution of the oral tradition, with an ancestry deeply rooted in pre-print literature, spoken word is as primordial as prehistoric petroglyphs. This ancestry can be traced back past the European troubadours of the 11th century, Beowulf and the Homeric epics, to the poetic oratory of the West African Griot, and other cultural traditions that use oral literature as a central part of the development and continuity of community.
The history of spoken word across Turtle Island consists of many creative and cultural streams feeding into the sea of communal language. The Indigenous peoples of this land had deeply rooted traditions of orature, expressed through stories passed down through generations. Following these initial foundations, subsequent cultures that arrived in what was to be called North America, carried their own ever unfolding oral literary traditions with them. Of these cultural contributors, the influence of the Black Diaspora has had a deep and lasting impact on the evolution and revolution of contemporary spoken word.
Displaying a dismissive literary ethnocentrism, many critics of spoken word have overlooked the sociopolitical influences on the genre’s roots. The Harlem Renaissance of the 20s and 30s and the Black Arts Movement of the 60s have had a profound influence on dub, hip-hop and jazz poetry. These movements emphasized the upliftment of the Black community by encouraging a literature that was both cultural vessel and vehicle for social justice and equality. As Modernist poets of the early 20th century experimented with fragmentation and a desire to “make it new” rather than emulate traditional forms of realism, poets and writers of the Harlem Renaissance, such as Langston Hughes, were creating an aesthetic that emphasized inclusiveness and strove to bring the traditions of the past forward.
This revolutionary, populist philosophy became an expression of a Black postmodernism that expanded upon the modernist theoretical foundations of the Harlem Renaissance. Didacticism, a dirty word in traditional poetry, furthered this political agenda and was encouraged in both content and delivery as an extension of what Gwendolyn Brooks referred to as “preachment”, a sermonic oracular style rooted in the history of Black sermons, gospels and spirituals. The immediacy of performance was often punctuated by a call-to- action, or the use of dialect to further the imperative of audience accessibility and engagement. Colloquial speech, slang and profanity served to challenge traditional syntax, spelling and grammar, while representing the rhythmic patterns of the Black vernacular.
The historical development of the Black aesthetic in North America encouraged a cross-pollination between all forms of creative expression, but particularly between music and poetry. During the Harlem Renaissance, the evolution of blues into jazz was documented through poems that mimicked the musical cadence and phrasings of both forms, such as in Langston Hughes’ “The Weary Blues” which explores the subject of a blues pianist using the cadence of early jazz. During the Black Arts Movement, the jazz-infused Black Nationalist poetry troupe the Last Poets, and poet/musician Gil Scott-Heron not only continued the tradition of adopting musical rhythms and phrasings in their poetry, they also helped contribute to the initiation of the next significant leap in popular Black music.
Rap (most commonly believed to be an acronym for rhythm and poetry) often uses the technique of ‘signifying’, which is the practice of using devices such as homonyms to explore the complexity of allusion that arises from the use of common vernacular to imply a deeper meaning, or what Louis Henry Gates, calls a “verbal strategy of indirection that exploits the gap between the denotative and figurative meanings of words.”
In spite of the profound influence Black poets have had on the evolution of both spoken word and literary arts in general they have been historically underrepresented in the elite circle of celebrated poetic artists. Scholar, Joyce Ann Joyce, unpacks this regrettable legacy in her book, Black Studies as Human Studies. In her critical essay, “Sonia Sanchez and the African/African-American Literary Tradition: An Anxiety of Confluence”, Joyce writes: “African-American writers and poets, such as Sonia Sanchez, remain on the margins of American intellectual history. Nothing testifies to this fact more than Harold Bloom’s 1998 edition The Best of the Best American Poetry: 1988-1997. This volume contains thirty-three White men eighteen White women, three Black men, and one Black woman. [...] And even more disturbing is the fact that Sanchez is glaringly omitted from the important Norton Anthology of Literature by Women (1984).“
I know... this is a whole lot of extra-curricular material here at the end of this poetry book. Early drafts of the manuscript included an introduction, which my editor, Micheline Maylor, wisely suggested I turn into an epilogue – so the reader could engage with the poems on their own terms. Others suggested I cut the endnotes as well, as they found them a bit prosaic, bulky and distracting. I don’t entirely disagree, but I also think they’re necessary in order to contextualize some of the references I drop. My hope is that in the future many of these notes won’t be needed at all. But this ‘bonus reading’ section also gives me the opportunity to share a bit more about some of the folks who have inspired me, who have helped me develop my own style of soul speak.
Each spoken word artist is an explorer of a new literary landscape – on a soul-fueled journey which will hopefully take them beyond the bondage and limitations of categorization, into a territory of experimentation, not restricted by tradition – but informed by it as a compass point. Our elders are our North Star, guiding us towards the Promised Land of self-sovereigned creative expression. Spoken word is a fluid, ever-evolving form – it is poetry politica, guerilla literature, a verbal transmission of culture. It is an organic, breathing document and testament to the enduring resilience of both the Black Diaspora and the individual human soul – transferred from performer to audience, word by word.
