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Concept
Spoken word
Summary
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. 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.
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. "There were poets long before there were printing presses, poetry is primarily oral utterance, to be said aloud, to be heard."
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. "Speak again, Speak like rain" was how Kikuyu, an East African people, described her verse to author Isak Dinesen, confirming a comment by T. S. Eliot that "poetry remains one person talking to another".
The oral tradition is one that is conveyed primarily by speech as opposed to writing, in predominantly oral cultures proverbs (also known as maxims) are convenient vehicles for conveying simple beliefs and cultural attitudes. "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".
Performance poetry, which is kindred to performance art, is explicitly written to be performed aloud and consciously shuns the written form. "Form", as Donald Hall records "was never more than an extension of content.
Official source
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