‘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.weiterlesen