Yesterday, the world woke up to a much needed surprise: the early release of Dev Hynes’ newest Blood Orange album, Freetown Sound. Among its many strengths is the rich chorus of voices Hynes has orchestrated, which includes contributions from Carly Rae Jepsen, Empress Of, Nelly Furtado, and Debbie Harry. The first voice we hear, though, is Ashlee Haze’s. A sample of the Atlanta spoken word artist’s viral poetry performance “For Colored Girls (The Missy Elliott Poem)” rounds out Freetown Sound‘s soulful opening track “By Ourselves.” Haze’s lines like “feminism says as a woman in my arena you are not my competition, as a woman in my arena your light doesn’t make mine any dimmer” are all the more goosebump-inducing when laced with melodic saxophone arrangements.
This, of course, is not the first instance in which a musician has played with poetry to truly winning effect. It’s not even Hynes’ first time incorporating spoken word in his work (see Cupid Deluxe track “Chosen,” and its Lou Reed inspired interlude). Adaptations of Kenyan-born, London-based poet Warsan Shire’s works are woven as atmospheric interludes throughout Beyonce’s Lemonade. Spoken word poetry emerged from the Harlem Renaissance era, but became more pervasive in American culture following the release of Gil Scott Heron’s The Revolution Will Not Be Televised and the establishment of the iconic Nuyorican Poets Café in the early 70s. Slam poetry refers to competitive spoken word performances. Much like hip hop, these oral performances are often avenues for young creative people to speak on the issues most important to themselves and their communities.
As we keep rewinding Freetown Sound, we explore five other viral pieces of performance poetry. They, like Hynes’ record, interface powerfully with music, beauty, feminism, issues of social justice, identity formation, and the experience of being black in America.
Zora Howard, “Bi-Racial Hair”: Nearly ten years before Amandla Stenberg’s “Don’t Cash Crop on my Cornrows” — a high school history class assignment that’s since received over a million views on YouTube — there was 13-year-old Zora Howard and her powerful poetry piece “Bi-Racial Hair.” The Harlem native performed a gripping and comedic meditation on the discourse surrounding beauty, identity, and cultural appropriation at the 2006 Urban Word NYC Annual Teen Poetry Slam. A decade later, Howard’s beautifully-versed frustrations — especially lines like “I’m not a fucking cookie” — are still sharp and needed.
Kanye West on Def Poetry Jam: Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry Jam featured performances by some of the world’s most heavy-hitting lyricists. Over the course of its five year run on HBO, Nikki Giovanni, Erykah Badu, and Jimmy Santiago Baca all made appearances — a then-upstart Kanye West made three. His first appearance aired in May 2003, almost a year before his debut album The College Dropout arrived. In it, he performed a piece called “Self Conscious,” which would later become smash single “All Falls Down.” Just before he stepped on stage to deliver distinctive and animated bars, Mos Def hailed the young Chigaoan as “the future of hip hop” — turns out he was on to something.
Alysia Harris, “That Girl”: After Def Poetry’s final season aired in 2007, Simmons and HBO turned their poetry focus to emerging teen talent, launching a new series, Brave New Voices, in 2008. One of the series standouts was Alysia Harris, then a 19-year-old student in the University of Pennsylvania’s nationally recognized slam poetry program. Harris’ first appearance on the show was footage of her performance of “That Girl,” a raw and emotional poem about relationships that’s since been viewed on YouTube nearly 2.5 million times.
Philly Youth Poetry Movement, “Sean Bell” and “Hir”: Brave New Voices followed Harris and fellow teen poets’ around the country, culminating in the national Brave New Voices competition. Harris and her Philly Youth Poetry Movement teammates performed two pieces: one “Sean Bell,” was written in response to the 2006 slaying of Sean Bell, in which two undercover NYPD officers killed the 23-year-old Queens resident the morning before his wedding, firing 50 shots into his car. Another, “Hir,” considers the silencing of transgender issues and experiences. Both have sadly only become more relevant in the seven years since they first aired on HBO.
Rachel Rostad, “To JK Rowling, from Cho Chang”: At the 2013 College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational, poet Rachel Rostad got pretty real about everyone’s favorite fictional series, Harry Potter. The Macalester College student took its author J.K. Rowling to task about whitewashing the wizarding world, using love interest Cho Chang’s underdeveloped character as a springboard to explore the narrow representation of Asian women in films and fiction. The apparently controversial performance has been viewed nearly a million times, and even prompted Rostad to make a response video to critics that is itself edging towards two million views.
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Text Emily Manning