Spoken for the Culture

By Veronica Golden, LMSW

Veronica Golden, LMSW

Throughout time, African Americans have shown how resilient we are via spoken word. The words and how we create love and life through our words transcend color lines.

There is a quote by Philip Freelon, the lead architect of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, that says: “I always say African American history is the quintessential American story. It’s about perseverance and resilience something everyone can relate to.”

Resilience can be defined as the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties or adversity. Young and old can develop resiliency by practicing gratitude to gain perspective and reframing struggles as opportunities to grow.

Spoken Word is a mode of expression to address issues that affect society such as education, employment, empowerment, entertainment, and emotional intelligence. Spoken Word is also an oral art that focuses on the aesthetics of word play and voice inflection. Spoken Word can include poetry, hip hop, jazz, and R&B.

Sometimes young people struggle with how to verbalize their feelings and so listening to someone else with a more expanded vocabulary helps them to identify and release what they are dealing with internally.

Two examples of well known spoken word artists are Maya Angelou and Lauryn Hill. Maya Angelou is an author, poet, and civil rights activist. She has a poem called The Mask about someone’s survival mechanism of smiling and laughing to get through hard times: “My life has been one great big joke, a dance that’s walked, a song was spoke, I laughed so hard I nearly chocked when I think about myself…they kept my race alive by wearing the mask.”

Lauryn Hill is a rapper, singer, and songwriter that is known for expressing herself over a beat. In her song “Everything is Everything,” she says “after winter, March comes spring, change will come eventually, sometimes it seems we’ll touch that dream but dreams come slow or not at all….tomorrow our seeds will grow, all we need is dedication.”

In a world that is continually evolving with technology, its good to know that human experience and our resiliency cannot be taken over by robots.