Download Free Spoken Word Instrumentals ~UPD~
Alexander Rodriguez
Recently I've been getting into spoken word music like Listener, Levi the Poet, and La Dispute. They make me wonder, where does the line start between poetry and music as an art form? The only "popular" artist who I can think of who uses spoken word at all would be Johnny Cash, so what prevents these genres from being embraced by a wider audience?
I'm not a singer at all, but feel like I'm too limited remaining a purely instrumental act. I've tossed the idea around in my head of writing lyrics and just speaking them over the music to get around that, but eventually tell myself that it's way too easy to do it wrong and come across as cringey. Part of it is probably due to not being familiar with any good spoken word music to learn from, but I'm sure vocal delivery goes a long way in not sounding like Captain Kirk "singing" Rocket Man.
"In her fascinating and long-needed study, Wilson Kimber reconstitutes and interprets a set of pervasive but neglected practices that include not only elocution but also melodramatic performance, recitation in combination with music, and the activities of the verse speaking choir. In so doing, she helps to recover an elusive but crucial element of cultural history: the sound of women's lives."--Joan Shelley Rubin, author of Songs of Ourselves: The Uses of Poetry in America
"A century ago, popular literature reached many Americans through the interpretive voices of women, women who--typically barred from the men's world of political oratory--cultivated a performance art in the home, the theater, on the traveling circuit. While revealing the huge variety of music used to accompany spoken narration, Wilson Kimber brings alive again the forgotten art of elocution through a close examination of the 'sentimental keepsakes' and pedagogical traditions it sought to preserve."--Michael V. Pisani, Vassar CollegeSupplemental LinksSupplemental LinksAuthor's websiteAuthor's tumblrEssay on American Musicology Society blogAuthor performance on YouTubeAn interview with the author on Iowa Public Radio Book Details Pages: 352 pages Dimensions: 6.125 x 9.25 in Illustrations: 18 black & white photographs, 10 line drawings, 25 music examples MusicWomen & Gender Studies Related Titles google.books.load();function initialize() var viewer = new google.books.DefaultViewer(document.getElementById('viewerCanvas')); var canvas = document.querySelector('.viewer-bg'); var previewBtn = document.getElementById('preview-button') previewBtn.addEventListener('click', ()=> canvas.classList.add('active') //alert(res); //viewer.load('ISBN:'+res, alertNotFound); //var viewer = new google.books.DefaultViewer(document.getElementById('viewerCanvas')); var a = Array('ISBN:9780252040719','ISBN:9780252082221','ISBN:9780252099151'); viewer.load(a, alertNotFound); ) var closeBtn = document.querySelector('.close-viewer'); closeBtn.addEventListener('click', ()=> canvas.classList.remove('active') )function alertNotFound() var canvas = document.querySelector('.viewer-bg'); var error = document.createElement('h2'); error.innerText = 'No Preview Available For This Title.'; error.style.color = 'white'; error.style.textAlign = 'center'; canvas.appendChild(error)google.books.setOnLoadCallback(initialize); X function OptanonWrapper() Stay Connected Join Our Mailing List Copyright 2023
Spoken word is an oral poetic performance art that is based mainly on the poem as well as the performer's aesthetic qualities. It is a 20th-century continuation of an ancient oral artistic tradition that focuses on the aesthetics of recitation and word play, such as the performer's live intonation and voice inflection. Spoken word is a "catchall" term that includes any kind of poetry recited aloud, including poetry readings, poetry slams, jazz poetry, pianologues, musical readings, and hip hop music, and can include comedy routines and prose monologues.[1] Unlike written poetry, the poetic text takes its quality less from the visual aesthetics on a page, but depends more on phonaesthetics, or the aesthetics of sound.
Spoken word has existed for many years; long before writing, through a cycle of practicing, listening and memorizing, each language drew on its resources of sound structure for aural patterns that made spoken poetry very different from ordinary discourse and easier to commit to memory.[2] "There were poets long before there were printing presses, poetry is primarily oral utterance, to be said aloud, to be heard."[3]
Poetry, like music, appeals to the ear, an effect known as euphony or onomatopoeia, a device to represent a thing or action by a word that imitates sound.[4] "Speak again, Speak like rain" was how a poet of the Kikuyu people, an East African people, described her verse to author Isak Dinesen,[5] confirming a comment by T. S. Eliot that "poetry remains one person talking to another".[6]
In ancient Greece, the spoken word was the most trusted repository for the best of their thought, and inducements would be offered to men (such as the rhapsodes) who set themselves the task of developing minds capable of retaining and voices capable of communicating the treasures of their culture.[17] The ancient Greeks included Greek lyric, which is similar to spoken-word poetry, in their Olympic Games.[18]
Vachel Lindsay helped maintain the tradition of poetry as spoken art in the early twentieth century.[20] Composers such as Marion Bauer, Ruth Crawford Seegar, and Lalla Ryckoff composed music to be combined with spoken words.[19] Robert Frost also spoke well, his meter accommodating his natural sentences.[21] Poet laureate Robert Pinsky said: "Poetry's proper culmination is to be read aloud by someone's voice, whoever reads a poem aloud becomes the proper medium for the poem."[22] "Every speaker intuitively courses through manipulation of sounds, it is almost as though 'we sing to one another all day'."[9] "Sound once imagined through the eye gradually gave body to poems through performance, and late in the 1950s reading aloud erupted in the United States."[21]
Some American spoken-word poetry originated from the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance,[23] blues, and the Beat Generation of the 1960s.[24] Spoken word in African-American culture drew on a rich literary and musical heritage. Langston Hughes and writers of the Harlem Renaissance were inspired by the feelings of the blues and spirituals, hip-hop, and slam poetry artists were inspired by poets such as Hughes in their word stylings.[25]
The Civil Rights Movement also influenced spoken word. Notable speeches such as Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream", Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?", and Booker T. Washington's "Cast Down Your Buckets" incorporated elements of oration that influenced the spoken-word movement within the African-American community.[25] The Last Poets was a poetry and political music group formed during the 1960s that was born out of the Civil Rights Movement and helped increase the popularity of spoken word within African-American culture.[26] Spoken word poetry entered into wider American culture following the release of Gil Scott-Heron's spoken-word poem "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" on the album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox in 1970.[27]
In the 1980s, spoken-word poetry competitions, often with elimination rounds, emerged and were labelled "poetry slams". American poet Marc Smith is credited with starting the poetry slam in November 1984.[18] In 1990, the first National Poetry Slam took place in Fort Mason, San Francisco.[29] The poetry slam movement reached a wider audience following Russell Simmons' Def Poetry, which was aired on HBO between 2002 and 2007. The poets associated with the Buffalo Readings were active early in the 21st century.
Outside of the United States, artists such as French singer-songwriters Léo Ferré and Serge Gainsbourg made personal use of spoken word over rock or symphonic music from the beginning of the 1970s in such albums as Amour Anarchie (1970), Histoire de Melody Nelson (1971), and Il n'y a plus rien (1973), and contributed to the popularization of spoken word within French culture.
In Zimbabwe, spoken word has been mostly active on stage through the House of Hunger Poetry slam in Harare, Mlomo Wakho Poetry Slam in Bulawayo as well as the Charles Austin Theatre in Masvingo. Festivals such as Harare International Festival of the Arts, Intwa Arts Festival KoBulawayo and Shoko Festival have supported the genre for a number of years.[33]
In Ghana, the poetry group Ehalakasa led by Kojo Yibor Kojo AKA Sir Black, holds monthly TalkParty events (collaborative endeavour with Nubuke Foundation and/ National Theatre of Ghana) and special events such as the Ehalakasa Slam Festival and end-of-year events. This group has produced spoken-word poets including Mutombo da Poet,[34] Chief Moomen, Nana Asaase, RhymeSonny, Koo Kumi, Hondred Percent, Jewel King, Faiba Bernard, Akambo, Wordrite, Natty Ogli, and Philipa.The spoken-word movement in Ghana is rapidly growing that individual spoken-word artists like MEGBORNA,[35] are continuously carving a niche for themselves and stretching the borders of spoken word by combining spoken word with 3D animations and spoken-word video game, based on his yet to be released poem, Alkebulan.
In Kumasi, the creative group CHASKELE holds an annual spoken-word event on the campus of KNUST giving platform to poets and other creatives. Poets like Elidior The Poet, Slimo, T-Maine are key members of this group.
In Kenya, poetry performance grew significantly between the late 1990s and early 2000s. This was through organisers and creative hubs such as Kwani Open Mic, Slam Africa, Waamathai's, Poetry at Discovery, Hisia Zangu Poetry, Poetry Slam Africa, Paza Sauti, Anika, Fatuma's Voice, ESPA, Sauti dada, Wenyewe poetry among others. Soon the movement moved to other counties and to universities throughout the country. Spoken word in Kenya has been a means of communication where poets can speak about issues affecting young people in Africa. Some of the well known poets in Kenya are Dorphan, Kenner B, Namatsi Lukoye, Raya Wambui, Wanjiku Mwaura, Teardrops, Mufasa, Mumbi Macharia, Qui Qarre, Sitawa Namwalie, Sitawa Wafula, Anne Moraa, Ngwatilo Mawiyo, Stephen Derwent.[36]
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