I. Am. Fucking. Exhausted, PEOPLE! Woke up at 4am in Brooklyn yesterday for Nico to drive my ass to LaGuardia to catch a 6am flight, only to have a “strange smell” in my connection flight from Atlanta which caused the entire aircraft to turn around (well of course it was the entire aircraft, this isn’t Lost). When I actually got on my LA-bound flight, I had to sit next to this old flexible dude who kept doing pliés to impress the girls on the flight. When I finally tuched down, I hightailed it to Occidental College to facilitate a workshop at Brave New Voices, the world’s largest youth poetry festival.
There’s something about BNV that keeps me coming back, even after my teen years, and even amidst my somewhat jaded perspective of spoken word. There’s something about seeing brilliant young people in cypher that never ceases to inspire me. BNV is like a ritual…a recharge. Tonight I attended the MC Olympics Qualifier, a subdivision of BNV’s signature slam competition that allowed for the emcees to share their hottest 16 bars. 50 spitters in 3 hours. Hot fiyah. I definitely got my fill.
And I took some purdy pictures. More to come all week long.
It’s that time again! Brave New Voices, the international teen poetry slam, was where all of us at iLL-Lit started off. And although it wasn’t the big HBO-sponsored behemoth that it is today, it provided the stage for our teen-selves to be inspired enough to pursue this for life. This year it hits LA, and HBO’s filming a second season.
Above is a piece from Mahaliyah, one of my favorite writers from Youth Speaks – the founding organization of BNV and the training grounds where we developed as artists and educators. Always great to see these rare moments when the young and truly talented are given some shine.
Ooooooooh it’s that time of the year again! This week the Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam Festival hits Chicago, bringing in hundreds of young spoken word artists together from across the continents. It’s like the Earth Shake in A Land Before Time, except backwards.
I myself am quite devastated, for this will be the first BNV (that’s what the poets who are “with it” call it) that I’ll be missing since ’04! Oh shit, did I just poet all over myself? Geeeeeeeeeeek. Oh, but speaking of Eritrea, Dahlak jets out to the Chi today, where he’ll be coaching the Sacramento team for their very first competition! Woot wooot!! Here’s the first episode of HBO’s Brave New Voices, which covered last year’s festival in Washington DC. So I guess just imagine all the Obama pictures everywhere are replaced by Twista, and all the McCain pictures are replaced by hot dogs with a lot of shit stuffed in the bun.
Yeah, I know…hella long and you’re just skimming this blog while waiting for your Facebook page to load. All good, watch this 1 minute video about this year’s festival then, and save the episode above to cuddle with your loved one on a polar bear rug later on this Tuesday evening! Youth poetry….rawrrrrrr!
Here’s the first episode of HBO’s Brave New Voices which premieres Sunday night at 11pm EST/PST. We’re juiced to see Youth Speaks (the organization that raised us as young’un spoken worders) getting some shine on the national scale, and young spoken word artists in the spotlight! Check out the series, and watch for appearances from Dahlak, who coached the Bay Area Brave New Voices team during the taping!
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