Hey everyone, I wanted to rant about spoken word poetry and poetry slams, as well as their place in the history of hip-hop music. It might be interesting.


First, I think we should talk about spoken word and its function. Spoken word is, as we all know, a form of poetry that is meant to be read aloud and heard, rather than read. There are no limitations to the content that can be used in them because that would be ridiculous since it is in fact poetry; and as a form of poetry it is meant to evoke some kind of emotion to the listeners, being, in a way, more successful in relaying/delivering its message(s) because its listeners are receiving a direct issue and direct emotion to respond to. If we go back to the idea of poetry itself as a text (meaning, just "words" rather than a "meaning-directed work of art"), we can note that there are literally a bunch of words juxtaposed and the reader's job is to interpret it based on their own thoughts and experiences -- making the amount of possible interpretations hypothetically infinite. In spoken word, however, even though it itself is free in concept, the poems have limited interpretations because they are emotionally-driven and directed by the speaker -- meaning, you are supposed to think and hear exactly what is being said/heard.

Some say spoken word started back in the of the beat poets back in the 1950s, which supposedly started the "new", modern-day Spoken Word as well as hip-hop. There was usually some kind of overlay of music in the background, but that was just there for aesthetics. I guess that's what eventually gave way for hip-hop. Spoken word poems usually had some kind of important meaning to them and were presented to crowds of people that usually actively responded in a positive way (because, well, if someone was talking about how much their life growing up sucked, out of respect you wouldn't just respond with "hey, it’s because you suck", after all). I don't know too much about what kinds of things were said as a common issue in spoken word, but I do know that from my own experiences through live performances and in my English classes that they are, for the most part, about negative experiences in life. This found itself a public forum to discuss various social and/or political issues. The early rappers used this in creating their music: slap on a catchy beat and you have yourself a hit, right? And so that's how things were for a while and that was good and all, and then poetry slams and greed came along.

Spoken word is to Poetry Slams as hip-hop is to "the game". It's too bad they don't have analogies on the SAT anymore, as much as I hated them, but I think kids are getting it kinda easier for the test now. But anyway... The "game" that I'm referring to is money. Just to be clear, I am making a comparison of poetry slams as being just as bad as rappers who make crappy music just to make money. So, let’s start. At the beginning, spoken word was there to get your message out to the world, to let people know about something you really cared about that related somehow to common struggle and life to certain groups of individuals. As popularity had risen it could be figured just as much that this would be another thing to try to capitalize on, so of course there were competitions for it – some with prizes, others without. The better you were, the more fame you got from it. However, when slams came along, there was a problem soon to occur. As we read from Justin Chin’s “SLAMMED”, the discussion about the loss of the heart of spoken word is touched upon. I personally think it’s just a stupid idea to even be able to score someone’s experiences relative to another’s. No two people’s experiences will ever be the same, but that doesn’t make one more legitimate than the other. Something that’s easy or difficult for one person to deal with might not be the same for someone else. Chin talks about how in poetry slams that basically there’s this degradation in the true goal of the spoken word poetry because people are just fighting each other for points. This in inevitably led to people using common themes such as the “race card” and other political bashings as fuel to gain these arbitrary points, rather than trying to get some kind of personal discourse out. Now, whether or not they honestly felt what they spoke about is not something that I cannot speak for, but what I am going to say is that these slams were constructed in such a way that who ever had that one poem that talked more crap about something that anyone else, they won.

There was this critique in another one of my classes that we heard on tape. It was criticizing “modern” spoken word and poetry slams as being bastardizations of poetry that were limited to just talking bad about the government and repeating the last line of the poem about three times. If you take a look at certain poetry, that man was right. I want to use this imagery to talk about how the quality of hip-hop has lowered in the same way. Sure, there are artists out there in the world today who make music for the love of making music and there are probably just as many of those that we just don’t know, but for the ones that we do know, there’s the issue of “selling out” and things like that. I personally think that music (at least in America) has really gone horribly down hill in the past few years (and many of your probably agree). The artists of the previous decade who once talked about rapping from the heart are now those guys you always see wearing flashy things and talking about how they’re richer, “more legit”, or just somehow better than so-and-so. It’s the same thing every time – and it pisses me off. I want to hear good music! But I have to admit that maybe it’s not all their fault; maybe there was some kind of system setup to make these artists to have to fight to make as much money as possible… oh but then you have all the Bentleys, Mercedes and all that shiny stuff from Jacob – what’s that all about? Rapping from the heart? I didn’t know hearts needed diamonds and Ferraris to function. Forget that.

What I want to say on the last note is that all forms of writing and art are constantly changing; and poetry is not an exception. While there are those who would use their art as a medium to get money or fame (which kind of undermines the original meaning of art for most), there are still those few unrecognized individuals out there who do what they do just for the sake of doing it. It’s unfortunate that we need money in the world to survive otherwise we’d get some really “legit” art in the world. Well, that’s just my two cents. You can hate me if you want, but I’d prefer that you didn’t. Hope you enjoyed! -David Saetang