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“To This Day

To This Day: by Shane Koyczan

By turn hilarious and haunting, poet Shane Koyczan puts his finger on the pulse of what it’s like to be young and … different. “To This Day,” his spoken-word poem about bullying, captivated millions as a viral video (created, crowd-source style, by 80 animators). Here, he gives a glorious, live reprise with backstory and violin accompaniment by Hannah Epperson. None of this would be possible without the participation of the following people and organizations: Animators: Ryan Kothe, Mike Healey, Will Fortanbary, Brian San, Diego De la Rocha, Gizelle Manalo, Adam Plouff, Mike Wolfram, Hyun Min Bae, Oliver Sin, Seth Eckert, Viraj Ajmeri, Vishnu Ganti, Yun Wang, Boris Wilmot, Cameron Spencer, DeAndria Mackey, Matt Choi, Reimo Õun, Samantha Bjalek, Eli Treviño, Ariel Costa, Caleb Coppock, James Mabery, Samir Hamiche, Waref Abu Quba, Deo Mareza and Clara, Josh Parker, Scott Cannon, Thomas McKeen, Kaine Asika, Marcel Krumbiegel, Teresa del Pozo, Eric Paoli Infanzón, Maxwell Hathaway, Rebecca Berdel, Zach Ogilvie, Anand Mistry, Chase Ogden, Dominik Grejc, Gideon Prins, Lucy Chen, Mercedes Testa, Rickard Bengtsson, Stina Seppel, Daniel Göttling, Julio C. Kurokodile, Marilyn Cherenko, Tim Darragh, Jaime Ugarte, Joe Donaldson, Josh Beaton, Margaret Schiefer, Rodrigo Ribeiro, Ryan Kaplan, Yeimi Salazar, Daniel Bartels, Joe Donaldson, Daniel Molina, Sitji Chou, Tong Zhang, Luc Journot, Vincent Bilodeau, Amy Schmitt, Bert Beltran, Daniel Moreno Cordero, Marie Owona, Mateusz Kukla, Sean Procter, Steven Fraser, Aparajita R, Ben Chwirka, Cale Oglesby, Igor Komolov, Markus Magnusson, Remington McElhaney, Tim Howe, Agil Pandri, Jessie Tully, Sander Joon, Kumphol Ponpisute, James Waters, Chris Koelsch, Ronald Rabideau, Alessandro & Manfredi, Andrea López, Howey Mitsakos.

Just_Words_LogoSpoken word is a performance artistic poem that is word-basic. It often includes collaboration and experimentation with other art forms such as musictheater, and dance. However, spoken word usually tends to focus on the words themselves, the dynamics of tone, gestures, facial expressions, and not so much on the other art forms.  In entertainment, spoken-word performances generally consist of storytelling or poetry, exemplified by people like Hedwig Gorski,Gil Scott Heron and the lengthy monologues by Spalding Gray.

History

spoken-wordThe art of spoken-word poetry has existed for many centuries. The Ancient Greeks included spoken-word poetry in their Olympic Games.

Modern spoken-word poetry originated from the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance and blues music as well as the 1960’s beatniks. 

The term “spoken word” was first adopted to explain the new art coming out of the postmodern art movement.

Modern-day spoken-word poetry became popular in the underground Black community in the 1960’s with The Last Poets. The Last Poets was a poetry and political music group that was born out of the African-American Civil Rights movement.

Black history holds an abundance of speakers with inspiring things to say, and exciting ways to say them. The greatest of these speakers inject their words with meaning by exploiting the musical influence of speech. As with Black preachers, who tend to involve their congregations in sermons through their style of preaching and hearing a response. Great spoken-word artists make their individual performances into communal ones. Words become vehicles for feeling and inspire a sense of shared experience in listeners. Political speech also provides a space for powerful ideas. Though mere words, speeches made by influential men like Dr. Martin Luther King‘s “I have a dream,” Sojourner Truth‘s “Ain’t I a woman?” and Booker T. Washington‘s “Cast down your buckets” have changed and also shaped the course of history.

The artistic utilization of the spoken-word genre in black culture today draws on and reflects a rich literary and musical heritage, and the interaction among these genres, as in the past, has produced some of America’s best-known art pieces. Like Langston Hughes and writers of the Harlem Renaissance were inspired by the feelings of the blues and the black spiritual, contemporary hip-hop and slam poetry artists were inspired by poets such as Hughes in their use of word stylings. Similarly, the experimental and often radical statements of the Black Arts Movement developed a great energy with cutting-edge jazz and funk music that would expand the boundaries of black cultural persona, and thereby provide space for increasingly alternative political ideologies to be raised, discussed, and acknowledged.

230982942_640Spoken-word poetry came more towards the mainstream in popularity a short time later when Gil Scott-Heron released his spoken-word poem The Revolution Will Not Be Televised on the album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox in 1970.

In the late 1970s Los Angeles poet Wanda Coleman brought modern spoken-word poetry into written form with the release of her poetry collection Mad Dog, Black Lady in 1979 on Black Sparrow Press.

Spoken Word was adopted by college circles in the early 1980s to describe a new wave of performing arts that was birthed during the Postmodern Art Movement.

Many artists and poets have not published any of their works in book forms. Some use video and audio recording, the means used exclusively by Hedwig Gorski, who rejected what she called the “dull-drums” of book publishing in the 1980’s.  Spalding Gray‘s film Swimming to Cambodia is a well-known example of spoken word, with Gray sitting at a desk, talking about his experiences during the filming of The Killing Fields. Nevertheless, spoken word today is part of the oral culture movement spreading literary expression that includes all minorities and women, unlike the domination by the white male community as was case with the Beatsin the 1960’s.

The Nuyorican Poets Café on New York’s Lower Eastside was founded in 1973 and is one of the oldest American venues for presenting spoken-word poetry. The Nuyorican Poets Café in 1989 held the first documented poetry slam.

spoken-wordsOn the West Coast Da Poetry Lounge and The World Stage are two of the oldest venues for spoken-word poetry, The World Stage presenting the more literary side of the spoken-word tradition and Da Poetry Lounge embracing the more performance side of it.

The Nuyorican Poets Café and Da Poetry Lounge have a close association with the poetry slam movement that was popularized by Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry Lounge with both main hosts Bob Holman and Shihan appearing several times on the show.

In Media

Before the poetic catalyst of Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry Jam in 2002, musical artists such as The Last Poets, Gil-Scott Heron, The Watts Prophets, and many more, were responsible for infiltrating spoken word into the media. Beginning as early as the 1960’s, spoken word became an outlet to promote political frustrations and ambitions, such as civil rights.

the-spoken-word.mikeTowards the late 1990’s, movies and documentaries such as Slam (1998), and SlamNation (1998) were responsible for highlighting the evolution and implementation of spoken word in America’s society. Both films’ mentioned above feature artists such as Saul WilliamsmuMs da SchemerBeau Sia, and Jessica Care Moore, who were fluent participants in the New York poetry slam scene, as well as members of the 1996 Nuyorican Poetry Slam Team.

Def Poetry catalyzed Spoken Word’s presence in media along with the help of Brave New Voices (2008), a series focusing on the representation of America’s youth in spoken word. The show was brought about after Def Poetry ceased to exist in 2007, in which HBO picked the series up with the help of Youth Speaks Inc., an organization internationally known for its involvement in inspiring and motivating young poet around the world. Directed by James Kass, the show highlighted the annual poetry slam competition at the Brave New Voices Festival, held by Youth Speaks Inc,. The docu-series didn’t survive long; hence it was more of a feature program.

The yielding death of spoken word’s presence on television, media’s relationship with the genre of poetry has henceforth moved to the web. Poets such as Jefferson BethkeKai DavisSarah Kay, and others, are using outlets such as YouTube and Vimeo to display to the world their poetic and theatric talents.

Motivation

mouth-micSince its inception, the spoken word has been an outlet for people to release their views outside the academic and institutional domains of the university and academic or small press. The spoken word and its most popular offshoot, slam poetry, evolved into the present-day soap-box for people, especially younger ones, to express their views, emotions, life experiences or information to audiences. The views of spoken-word artists encompass frank commentary on religion, politics, sex and gender, often taboo subjects in society.

Other alternative venues created for the dissemination of these works included The Virtual Free University and multimedia periodicals like Media Free Times that were the de-design precursors of web-pages and E-zines.

Spoken word is used to inform or make an audience conscious of some human aspect pertaining to life.

Competitions

Spoken-word poetry is often performed in a competitive setting. Also known as slam poetry, these competitions began in 1986 when Marc Smith started a poetry slam in Chicago.

In 1990, the first National Poetry Slam was held in San Francisco, California.  It is now held each year in different cities across the United States. It is the largest poetry slam competition event in the world.

Other more popular poetry reading competitions include the Sunken Garden Readings in Connecticut and the Dodge Festival in New Jersey which brings in over 10,000 people from around the country and globe.

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