The Spoken Word Project

'From Bamako to Nairobi, Antananarivo to Yaoundé, the spoken word scene
is highly active and full of artistic innovation. It is a phenomenon of recent
years that continues to grow despite many constraints. In cafés and bookshops,
at literary festivals and even on the steps of buildings on university
campuses, young people often gather to rhyme their truths and hear others
breathing the fires that burn inside their bellies about injustice in their societies,
racism, police brutality, corrupt leaders, poverty, or the lack of career
opportunities. Ideas, themes, story lines or even concepts and phrases are
taken up by a listener at one event who turns performer at the next event
because they capture her or his truth, too. And so words, stories, gestures
and intonations travel as they pass from one mind, mouth and body to
another.'
This book documents the spoken word scenes in South Africa, Madagascar,
Cameroon, Mali, Kenya, Côte d'Ivoire and Uganda, where The Spoken Word
Project, initiated by the Goethe-Institut in 2013, took place. The authors provide
fascinating insight into the old tradition of story-telling and oral history,
which during The Spoken Project, was taken up by a young generation of
poets and transformed in a powerful new way.