The spoken word artists

Spoken word artists list, with photos, ranked best to worst by votes. List of good spoken word bands includes a filter so you can sort by the group’s label and what albums they’ve put out. This list of the top spoken word bands in the world includes all musicians who have released recordings that have gotten distribution, and is an up-to-date list. Spoken word groups and artists are shown below along with any additional genres in which their music belongs. If available, you can also see information about where all spoken word bands on this list got started. These are truly the greatest spoken word bands of all time, since the most famous spoken word artists ever are listed, and the order is decided by actual fans of the best spoken word music.

You can click on the spoken word band names to see more information about that particular notable spoken word group. If they’re near the top of the best spoken word artist list, though, then they should have at least some information available. All the top spoken word bands named on the list also have discographies on their pages if you click on the spoken word band names themselves.

This list is made up of many different artists, including Allen Ginsberg and Jim Carroll. Vote for the best artists on the list to see them rise to the top. Which is better for an overall top ranking of this topic, Lydia Lunch or Saul Williams?

All important, significant and iconic names in spoken word music history deserve your votes, so make sure to choose wisely. You can only vote once on this list.

The list includes all new spoken word bands, and if there are any missing on the list, you can always add them yourself. Just make sure they aren’t already on the list and check your spelling, because this is already an accurate compilation of the best examples of spoken word, as well as a good place to start if you’re asking yourself, or friends, exactly how to get into spoken word music. Especially since the bands at the top of the list will at the very least be the best choices if you’re looking for a list of good spoken word bands with which to start out. No point in listening to them if they aren’t actually good or even half-way decent spoken word bands.

This list answers the questions «who are the best spoken word bands of all time?» and «who is the greatest spoken word musician ever?»

If you know enough about the genre, please vote based on the quality of the band’s music instead of just voting for the most popular spoken word bands that you might’ve heard of, but not really listened to closely enough to cast an informed vote.

Re-rank this entire page then share it to see what your friends think. {#nodes}

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about a performance art. For recordings of books or dialog, see Audiobook. For the 2009 film, see Spoken Word (film).

Spoken word refers to an oral poetic performance art that is based mainly on the poem as well as the performer’s aesthetic qualities. It is a late 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, 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.

History[edit]

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 Kikuyu, 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]

The oral tradition is one that is conveyed primarily by speech as opposed to writing,^[7] in predominantly oral cultures proverbs (also known as maxims) are convenient vehicles for conveying simple beliefs and cultural attitudes.^[8] «The hearing knowledge we bring to a line of poetry is a knowledge of a pattern of speech we have known since we were infants».^[9]

Performance poetry, which is kindred to performance art, is explicitly written to be performed aloud^[10] and consciously shuns the written form.^[11] «Form», as Donald Hall records «was never more than an extension of content.»^[12]
Performance poetry in Africa dates to prehistorical times with the creation of hunting poetry, while elegiac and panegyric court poetry were developed extensively throughout the history of the empires of the Nile, Niger and Volta river valleys.^[13] One of the best known griot epic poems was created for the founder of the Mali Empire, the Epic of Sundiata. In African culture, performance poetry is a part of theatrics, which was present in all aspects of pre-colonial African life^[14] and whose theatrical ceremonies had many different functions: political, educative, spiritual and entertainment. Poetics were an element of theatrical performances of local oral artists, linguists and historians, accompanied by local instruments of the people such as the kora, the xalam, the mbira and the djembe drum. Drumming for accompaniment is not to be confused with performances of the «talking drum», which is a literature of its own, since it is a distinct method of communication that depends on conveying meaning through non-musical grammatical, tonal and rhythmic rules imitating speech.^[15][16] Although, they could be included in performances of the griots.

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]

Development in the United States[edit]

Vachel Lindsay helped maintain the tradition of poetry as spoken art in the early twentieth century.^[19] Robert Frost also spoke well, his meter accommodating his natural sentences.^[20] 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.»^[21] «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.»^[20]

Some American spoken-word poetry originated from the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance,^[22] blues, and the Beat Generation of the 1960s.^[23] 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.^[24]

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.^[24] 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.^[25] 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.^[26]

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.^[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.^[28] 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.

International development[edit]

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 the UK, musicians who have performed spoken word lyrics include Blur,^[29] The Streets and Kae Tempest.

In 2003, the movement reached its peak in France with Fabien Marsaud aka Grand Corps Malade being a forerunner of the genre.^[30][31]

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.^[32]

In Nigeria, there are poetry events such as Wordup by i2x Media, The Rendezvous by FOS (Figures Of Speech movement), GrrrAttitude by Graciano Enwerem, SWPC which happens frequently, Rhapsodist, a conference by J19 Poetry and More Life Concert (an annual poetry concert in Port Harcourt) by More Life Poetry. Poets Amakason, ChidinmaR, oddFelix, Kormbat, Moje, Godzboi, Ifeanyi Agwazia, Chinwendu Nwangwa, Worden Enya, Resame, EfePaul, Dike Chukwumerije, Graciano Enwerem, Oruz Kennedy, Agbeye Oburumu, Fragile MC, Lyrical Pontiff, Irra, Neofloetry, Toby Abiodun, Paul Word, Donna, Kemistree and PoeThick Samurai are all based in Nigeria. Spoken word events in Nigeria^[33] continues to grow traction, with new, entertaining and popular spoken word events like The Gathering Africa, a new fusion of Poetry, Theatre, Philosophy and Art, organized 3 times a year by the multi-talented beauty Queen, Rei Obaigbo ^[34] and the founder ^[35] of Oreime.com.

In Trinidad and Tobago, this art form is widely used as a form of social commentary and is displayed all throughout the nation at all times of the year. The main poetry events in Trinidad and Tobago are overseen by an organization called the 2 Cent Movement. They host an annual event in partnership with the NGC Bocas Lit Fest and First Citizens Bank called «The First Citizens national Poetry Slam», formerly called «Verses». This organization also hosts poetry slams and workshops for primary and secondary schools. It is also involved in social work and issues.

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,^[36] Chief Moomen, Nana Asaase, Rhyme Sonny, 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,^[37] 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.^[38]

In Israel, in 2011 there was a monthly Spoken Word Line in a local club in Tel-Aviv by the name of: «Word Up!». The line was organized by Binyamin Inbal and was the beginning of a successful movement of spoken word lovers and performers all over the country.

Competitions[edit]

Spoken-word poetry is often performed in a competitive setting. In 1990, the first National Poetry Slam was held in San Francisco.^[18] It is the largest poetry slam competition event in the world, now held each year in different cities across the United States.^[39] The popularity of slam poetry has resulted in slam poetry competitions being held across the world, at venues ranging from coffeehouses to large stages.

Movement[edit]

Spoken-word poetry is typically more than a hobby or expression of talent. This art form is often used to convey important or controversial messages to society. Such messages often include raising awareness of topics such as: racial inequality, sexual assault and/or rape culture, anti-bullying messages, body-positive campaigns, and LGBT topics. Slam poetry competitions often feature loud and radical poems that display both intense content and sound. Spoken-word poetry is also abundant on college campuses, YouTube, and through forums such as Button Poetry.^[40] Some spoken-word poems go viral and can then appear in articles, on TED talks, and on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

See also[edit]

References[edit]

Further reading[edit]

• «5 Tips on Spoken Word». Power Poetry.org. 2015.

External links[edit]

• Poetry aloud – examples

Spoken word poetry can be loosely defined as ‘poetry intended for performance’. Though it may also be published on the page, the genre is rooted in oral traditions. In India, it has gained popularity in urban college and cafe spaces.

Increasingly today, poetry is becoming a striking method of self-expression. Spoken word poetry especially, reaches out to a wide audience base and builds a powerful platform for artists to speak on various social issues through their own identities and experiences.

Here’s a list of performers every spoken word enthusiast must listen to.

1. Alok Vaid-Menon (Preferred pronouns: they/them)

“… To live in America is to already attend a funeral with complete strangers/ How many ghosts does it take before a cemetery can call itself a country/ To live in America is to blame the dead for their own death…”

Alok Vaid-Menon is a writer and performer. Born in an Indian American family, their work talks about shame, trauma, and violence against trans and gender non-conforming people of colour. Vaid-Menon was recently the youngest recipient of the prestigious Live Works Performance Act Award, granted to 10 performance artists across the world. In 2017, they released their inaugural poetry chapbook, Femme in Public.

2. Uppa Tsuyo Bantawa (Preferred pronouns: he/him and she/her)

“… I guess in the end, we’re just trying to be true to our own identities/ the conflicts of body and soul is something impossible to explain but my body/ my body ain’t a universal war. I don’t have to pick sides for it. Somedays, I wake up a man/ Somedays, a woman/ and somedays nothing…”

Uppa Tsuyo Bantawa is an Indian spoken word artist who combines gender conflicts, LGBTQIA+ experiences, love, and feminism with a poetic rhythm unique to them. He calls himself a page and stage poet, flitting between two forms and also two languages (Hindi and English) eloquently.

3. Andrea Gibson (Preferred pronouns: they/them)

“… It’s true, what they say about the gays being so fashionable/ Their ghosts never go out of style/ Even life, it’s like funeral practice/
Half of us are already dead to our families before we die …”

Andrea Gibson is an American poet and activist. Their poetry focuses on gender norms, politics, social reform, and love. A four-time Denver Grand Slam Champion, Gibson finished fourth at the 2004 National Poetry Slam, and third at both the 2006 and 2007 Individual World Poetry Slam. Pole Dancing To Gospel Hymns, The Madness Vase, Pansy, Take me with You, Lord of the Butterflies are some of their published work.

Also read: Spoken Word Poetry and Resistance: Teaching Life, Sir.

4. Dr Abhijit Khandkar (Preferred pronouns: he/him)

“… And every time I don’t hate you enough, they think I don’t love my land enough as if that’s a prerequisite for anyone/ Every time I say something in your favour, I get told “You’re such an anti-national. You better go to Pakistan.” Hate is always easy/ It’s peace that takes a lot of work…”

Dr Abhijit Khandkar is the co-founder of The Rhyme Republic, a poetry and arts initiative. Born and brought up in a Buddhist household in Mumbai, he writes in English, Hindi, and Marathi. His work has been published in The Bombay Literary Magazine, New England Review of Books, Bookay literary compilation, amongst others. He traces his roots back to the rich Dalit, Bahujan cultural diaspora and tries to explore his identity in his works.

5. Safia Elhillo (Preferred pronouns: she/her)

“… Did our mothers invent loneliness or did it make them our mothers? Were we fathered by silence or just looking to explain away this gaping quiet? Is it wasteful or wistful to pray for our brothers in a language they never learned? Whose daughters are we if we grow old before our mothers …?”

Safia Elhillo is a Sudanese-American poet featured in TEDxNewYork, the BBC World Service, the South African State Theatre, and Red Bull’s Frontiers. Safia is a Pushcart Prize nominee, co-winner of the 2015 Brunel University African Poetry Prize, and winner of the 2016 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets. In 2018, she was also listed in Forbes Africa’s 30 Under 30 in the category Creatives. Her work has been translated into Arabic, Japanese, Estonian, and Greek.

6. Ocean Vuong (Preferred pronouns: he/him)

“because you were never holy/ only beautiful enough to be found with a hook
in your mouth
     water shook
like sparks
     as they pulled
you up
   & sometimes your hand
     is all you have
to hold
     yourself
to this world…”

Ocean Vuong is a Vietnamese-American poet, editor, essayist and the author of Night Sky with Exit Wounds, which was a New York Times Top 10 Book of 2016, winner of the Whiting Award, the Thom Gunn Award, and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Vuong writes about queer desire, the body and personal transformation with near-spiritual grace and exquisite attention to detail.

7. Bharath Savithri Diwakar (Preferred pronouns: they/them)

“… Zero. Stop telling me what my gender is! Zero. Stop telling me what my gender looks like! Zero. Stop using my body as evidence against my own gender.”

Bharath Savithri Diwakar is a Bangalore based poet and storyteller. They write about not subscribing to gender norms, sexuality, mental health and body image issues. They were a mentor for India’s first National Youth Poetry Slam and frequently feature in Airplane Poetry Movement events. After the success of their solo show, Fluid, they performed at Spoken Fest in Bombay.

8. Emi Mahmoud (Preferred pronouns: she/her)

“… our parents came home with broken collarbones and a taste of fear carved into their skin and it was impossible to believe in anything/ Fear is the coldest thing in the desert and it burns you, bows you down to half your height and owns you and no one hears you because what could grow in the desert anyway?”

Emtithal “Emi” Mahmoud’s family was driven from Sudan by war when she was a child; most of her work revolves around the traumatic history of her country. She is the reigning 2015 World Poetry Slam Champion and 2016 Woman of the World Co-Champion. A UNHCR High Profile Supporter, a Yale Global Health Fellow and Leonore Annenberg Scholar, she dedicates her time to spreading understanding through poetry and advocacy, particularly for the cause of refugees and disadvantaged communities the world over.

9. Swastika Jajoo (Preferred pronouns: she/her)

“…See, the word ‘misfit’ does not fit too well with me/ These exercises of fitting in that you pass down as grammar books to ensure correct usage of pronouns are self-defeating. I’m comfortable in my own skin, sir. I don’t need you to stitch me another …”

Swastika Jajoo is a writer and poet. She worked enthusiastically for gender equality through a program called Gender Bender Aurangabad that she runs with her friend Meera where they exclusively designed sessions for high school children on feminism. She featured in The Bombay Review, Bangalore Review and more recently worked with Unerase Poetry. She has performed at multiple venues across India including an independent show called A Flower Behind My Grandfather’s Ear.

10. Chrysanthemum Tran (Preferred pronouns: she/her)

“… I’ve never recognised the boy in photographs. I stared at myself in mirrors and only saw where the scalpel’s touch could improve. I loved my body only in the language of dissection …”

Chrysanthemum Tran is a Vietnamese-American poet, performer & educator. She made history by becoming the first trans woman finalist of the Women of the World Poetry Slam. Chrysanthemum is a 2016 Rustbelt Poetry Slam Champion and 2017 FEMS Poetry Slam Champion. Her work has been featured in various publications including The Offing, The Blueshift Journal, Muzzle Magazine, and the Bettering American Poetry Vol. 2.

11. Angana Sinha Ray (Preferred pronouns: she/her)

“… We’ve begged for space so much, it might just put an astronaut to shame. But sometimes, sometimes I think I came out of the closet only to make space for your underwear…”

Angana Sinha Ray is a Delhi based performance artist. Currently working at NDTV, she is known to talk about love, family, gender and politics with an array of pop culture references. Katyayini, When your Daughter Brings Home a Dyke and Personally, I am political are some of her well-known pieces.

12. Danez Smith (Preferred pronouns: they/them)

“… I tried, white people. I tried to love you, but you spent my brother’s funeral making plans for brunch, talking too loud next to his bones. You interrupted my black veiled mourning with some mess about an article you read on Buzzfeed. You took one look at the river, plump with the body of boy after girl after sweet boi & asked ‘why does it always have to be about race?’ Because you made it that way!…” 

Also read: The Poetry Of Meena Kandasamy: A Tool of Political Dissent

Danez Smith is an American poet and the author of the poetry collection [insert] Boy, which won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry and Don’t Call Us Dead: Poems, a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award for poetry. Smith presents an unflinching vision of what it means to be marginalised in America. Carefully handling complex topics including their HIV-positive diagnosis, police violence and race, they are also the founding member of the multigenre, multicultural Dark Noise Collective.

Featured Image Source: British Pakistan Foundation

A list and description of the spoken word music genre

The Music Genres List site covers many of the most popular styles of spoken word music, we hope this becomes the definitive list of spoken word music genres on the Internet, send an email to add @ musicgenreslist dot com if you feel any spoken word genres are missing and we’ll add to complete the music list.

Spoken Word

Spoken Word Music
Spoken word is a literary and performance art in which lyrics, poetry, sketches or stories are spoken instead of sung; it is a catch-all category for anything that doesn’t fall into the other established categories of performance. Rising in popularity in the late 1980s and early 1990s, spoken word records and spoken word music can use a musical background, but the emphasis lies on the speaker and his/ her word-based performance. Spoken word artists are often either performance poets, actors, and musicians, such as William S Burroughs, Ani DiFranco, Allen Ginsberg, Lauryn Hill, John Hall, Dana Bryant, William Shatner, Henry Rollins, Maggie Estep, Steve Martin, Alan Kaufman, Tom Waits, Paul Robeson, John Most, George Lopez, Paul Beatty, Ray Romano, and Bob Holman, among many others.

Spoken Word Performances
The spoken word genre can be used to recognize any word-based performance that takes on such forms as poetry reading, poetry slams (where artists duel each other in cabaret-style performances), political/ social commentary, storytelling, jazz poetry, sound-emphasis poetry, African-American toasting, reggae riddims, and other similar practices that do not rely exclusively on music, theatre or dance. Lyrics, poetry, sketches or stories are spoken rather than sung. The spoken word movement is popularly characterized by coffeehouse performances, improvisation, confessional and stream-of-consciousness styles, and liberal themes. These are usually performed by poets, actors, musicians, prose writers, commentators, and even comedians.

A History of the Spoken Word Genre
Spoken word as an oral tradition has always been around, since poetry after all has been in existence since the beginning of the civilization. One can go back in history to the time when Homer was reading The Odyssey. One can also examine the 1950s and 1960s when the politically-driven Beat poets like Jack Kerouac, William S Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg began to use the spoken word to express themselves. But as a genre of performance art, spoken word found its origins in the late 1980s and early 1990s, during which time America saw an increased interest in spoken poetry. It is at this time that spoken word was assigned as the term for a new consciousness that sprung out of the Postmodern Art Movement.

Artists like Dana Bryant, Henry Rollins, John Hall, and Maggie Estep were among those who had spurred the spoken word movement, and it became so popular that MTV took notice of it and showcased spoken word performances in a show called “Spoken Word Unplugged”. The art and entertainment form thus made it to the television screen – and the mainstream.

Now, the spoken word has become as diverse as the people who perform them. Top-selling spoken word artists today include John Most, George Lopez, Ray Romano, and Paul Robeson, as well as Beat poets like Allen Ginsberg, William S Burroughs, and Jack Kerouac.

Music Stack: https://www.musicstack.com/