Spoken Word Matters

“And by the time we said Amen, they had our land and we had their Bible.”

I used to maintain a shaky relationship with Spoken Word. Beyond accepting it as a form of creative expression, I sometimes struggled to acknowledge it in the same mode as poetry forms that devote to more penetrating and more elegant use of language. Indeed, there exists the distinction between poetry made for Reading and those made for Performance. In my estimation, the distinction seemed like a ploy, a clever copout indeed, to give it a space in the same room as works of high aesthetic quality. And its historical relationship with hip-hop and all things mainstream tend to reinforce this stance.

But I’ve come to accept it. Language is not static. So is culture. More so, vehicles of creative expressions. Even more, the world, oriented towards fast-food, tends to favour works that offer easy access to meaning. Add playfulness and style, then there’s enough to satisfy the hunger for creative nourishment. It’s hardly a bad thing. High culture has its place. So is mainstream culture. The reader or listener should gravitate towards anything that offers fulfilment to the senses.

I’ve listened to some Spoken Word albums over the years. In fact, I’ve proposed to use some in advertising campaigns. I may yet be lucky to record the coolest campaign with the best use of Spoken Word.

Maybe it will feature Ndukwe Ifeanyichukwu Onuoha, easily one of the finest merchants of the genre out there.

His latest album “Nwachukwu” is great in every way. And these two works are specially beautiful in language and presentation.