But just as each drop of water helps to form a river, (to borrow a phrase), when calling the names of the wordsmiths in the past, it's a drop in the cannon. Many of the stories of Africa, told by campfires and under the shady trees, serve as the fabric of other cultures, influencing religions, literature and politics and contain many of the idioms heard in today’s poetry. From the eighteenth century, through the Harlem Renaissance and into the present, Black poets have appropriated formal versification, using folk traditions, spirituals, blues and jazz expressions to inspire them.
African American Poets Find Their Voices
Despite a crucible of conflicting cultural demands, poets have found their voices. In a 1964 essay on the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party written by Ralph Ellison, these thought-provoking questions were posed about Black Poetry: “What’s inside you, brother; what’s your heart like? What are your real values? What human qualities are hidden beneath your idiom?”
Michael Harper and Anthony Walton, editors of the new Vintage Book of African-American Poetry, suggested: “The centuries-long struggle for identity of African Americans in this country is not just a part of who we are, it is who we are!”
Bandleader, composer and pianist Sun Ra’s poem, “Music the Neglected Plane of Wisdom,” confirmed the belief that music embodied poetry. Music and poetry was a thought-provoking expression. “Poetry is the consciousness, the expression of where we are,” Sun Ra wrote. Poet Louis Reyes Rivera, professor of African-American, Puerto Rican and Caribbean Literature and History adds, “Always there is need for song. And every human has a poem to write, a compulsion to contemplate out loud, an urge to dig out that ore of confusion locked up inside.”
The acridity of Nikki Giovnni’s writing changed one mind at a time at the break of the 70’s. But with the contradictions of privilege and caste, not everyone was permitted to hone the art and take the risk of putting one’s self on paper. “If we don’t tell our stories,” Giovanni expressed, “then the story gets lost!”
Tradition vs. Definition in Poetry
While wanting to be naturally soothed by self-definition, many poets learned to rely on commercial lyricists to reflect joy and pain. “At best, they latched onto committed activists, who took on as social vocation, the work of bridging the human spirit with word made flesh,” wrote Rivera.
With the influx of the Hip-Hop culture in the 80s and 90s, there are artists noted for being proficient in the area of freestyle, including KRS-ONE, Melle Mel, Dres (from Black Sheep), and Treach (Naughty By Nature).
Hip-Hop Adds to Free-style Expression
The practice of freestyling is predominantly an East Coast phenomenon (with the notable West Coast exceptions of Pharcyde, Souls of Mischief and Freestyle Fellowship), in which lyrics tend to be more rapid-fire and complex. Most West Coast rappers tend to have a more laid back approach to delivery and subject matter. These are not steadfast rules, but rather trends in the establishment of regional aesthetic values.
Stylistically, rap still occupies a gray area among speech, prose, poetry and song. Derived from Africa, Caribbean and American roots, rap has developed both inside and outside of hip-hop since the early 70s. With complex cadence and intricate poetic form, along with subjects associated with street life where Hip-Hop originally emerged, rap became an international phenomenon into the 21st century.
The Spoken Word as the Final Emergence
"Today, what was once called poetry is referred to now as Spoken Word Art. Unlike the rappers who have ‘hip hopped’ twenty-syllable couplets into a steadfast beat, spoken word artists have returned to free verse oration exhilarated by internal rhyme schemes and unfettered metaphors that speak directly to inner city blues," further expressed Rivera in his article Inside the River of Poetry, published in Motion Magazine (May 19, 2002). http://www.nathanielturner.com/insidetheriverofpoetry.htm
"The news of the day, testament and affirmation, current and advanced, informs this genre of poetry that outlines the immediate and understudied aspirations of African and Latino Americans caught in the crossfire between skin game caste and an ever-shrinking planet of high tech advances.
"Def Jam poets and 'Open Mic' readings, marathon jams and poetry slams have combined to form the latest battle sites between truth and decadence. Inside the range of this contention are the new poets being pulled by and pushing against a state of confusion in search of clarity. Thus, the birth of the word, the root of every language, taking a single droplet or two out of a river and making those two droplets part of the river of poetry."
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