Voices of Change: Wisconsin's Spoken Word Movement Speaks
Kris Ugarriza

The lights are dimmed. The crowd waits with bated breath. The show began an hour ago, but time is standing still. The crowd keeps clapping and shouting after the next performer’s name is called. A woman approaches the stage. Her dark curly hair has been wrapped behind her head in a ponytail. Her legs seem to be struggling, pushing through some invisible mass of water as she gets closer to the microphone. Her hands reach over to the black wireless microphone and gently pull it toward her chest. Her eyes face the crowd and a strong, provocative voice fills the room.

Hey baby I’ve got a riddle for you
Who am I?
They say temptation flows like me
And I fuel the tempted
With thoughts of fleeing reality
For a little bit
When they feel like their life ain't shit
And they are ready to quit
Depression descends upon their bodies
And I’m the perfect remedy you best
Believe it…
I’m smooth
I’ll make you feel sexy and sweet

She continued to unveil the secrets of her riddle.

But leave a bitter taste in your mouth
And aches in your head come morning
I’ll cure you when you mourning
Or at least I’ll tell you I will
Why choke back tears
When there is 40 ounces of me
That you could kill?
You can use me for cooking
You can bake me in bread
Or you can chug me at a party
And I’ll make you think with the wrong head.

Her hands and arms dance from side to side. Her hips start swinging left, right, left and right again. The crowd sits in shock, unable to keep their eyes from her alluring appearance. She continues her enthralling performance with the members of the audience anxious to hear the next line until she delivers the answer to her riddle.

I’m that deal baby…
You know who I is baby…
So I guess this ain't much of a riddle now is it baby…
Who am I?
I’m Always Loosing Control Over How
One Lives…
That’s right…
baby I’m Alcohol.
So…
Can I buy you a drink?

Kelsey Van Ert is one of 15 students who make up the first college program in the nation to fuse together arts, community leadership and academic excellence. Through their voices they are catalyzing social change, community empowerment, education and cross-cultural experiences. The First Wave Spoken Word & Urban Arts learning community brings together community leaders from all over the country who excel as poets, DJs, singers, dancers, actors and visual artists.

“We are trying to create great academic artistic and community leaders that can go on to influence their own communities and the society in general in a positive way,” said Willie Ney, director of the UW Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives and creator of First Wave.

This program engages 15 freshmen in college life, the arts and the Madison community. “I never thought something like this would be possible—[to] go to school because you are good at hip-hop," Van Ert said.

The students take one class together each semester, in addition to their normal college classes, and live in the same building freshman year. In addition to learning how to improve their skills, they are also required to take a service learning class. Josh Healey, First Wave program director, explained that the program tries to teach these students to appreciate more than the art itself. “It’s not art for art’s sake. It’s using your art, using your voice for social change, community empowerment, education and cross-cultural experiences.”

Being an excellent artist will not catapult just anyone to the top of the list in this program. Healey said the program is not that easy to get into. “Even if you are a great student and a great artist, but you are just doing it for yourself and trying to get awards and prizes, that’s not what we are interested in,” Healey said. “We want students who are leaders in schools and in communities.”

“We are trying to help change the culture of the campus,” Healey said, “[and] make it a campus that’s much more inviting and exciting to kids, students and the 21st century.”

The First Wave scholars are working with high schools in the area to support this movement.

“Having other kids witness the possibility of finding your voice is really powerful, and that in itself is great contribution to community building,” Ney said. “Nothing is prefabricated, so the ways the First Wave youth take this is going to be interesting in terms of community work, partnership development and programming.”

The Word

People who base their view of this generation on what they see in the street and MTV—skateboarders and apathetic youth who bob their heads to the beat of iPods—miss the others whose minds glide through endless poetic lines. They are also missing those who rapidly jot down their similes right before a class. Today’s hip-hop enthusiasts are not only watching "Pimp my ride," "Inked," or any of the other endless reality shows that appear to have taken over the media thanks to the influence of hip-hop culture. They are writing poetry, and not only that, they are doing it sober, clean and out loud. They have found a way to voice their opinions and be heard. “Underneath of what you see in TV,” Ney said, “you see a very powerful art that has the power to change the world and focus in social justice and community involvement.”

Lines about racism, beauty, alcohol, individuality and death travel from youth’s brains to the paper, from their mouths to the mic; and they have named their efforts Spoken Word. “Youths around the world use the poetry and the art to talk about issues that are important to them,” Ney said. “They are talking about issues of victimization, abuse, drama. It's almost like a catharsis, a healing. They use it as a form to get it out of their system instead of looking for vengeance and violence.”

Spoken Word is not a young art. It can be traced back to Homeric epics, African storytellers and even Shakespeare, all examples of poetry performed out loud. In the United States, however, Spoken Word was reinvented in the past century with the history of the blues and Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s, according to Healey.

Later in the 1990s, youth started picking up on this literary tradition and adding a new flavor with hip-hop. “Hip-hop is the most influential youth culture in the world,” Ney said. “It's a global culture; it’s a force for social change; it’s engaging students of color in other ways that other arts don’t do.”

This generation—which has grown up under the influence of hip-hop, rap, cell phones and the Internet—is re-energizing the Spoken Word movement. Beats, music and acting are also part of their performance. Socially charged lyrics about the street, rape, individuality, appearance, peer pressure, drugs and other youth problems strengthen this movement. "My purpose is to, if not create social change, get people to start thinking about it,” Van Ert said. “[I want to] create ideas in people's heads—food for thought. Get people to think about what they have done and what they could do better and maybe try to make a difference themselves in one way or another." Van Ert, along with most young people involved with Spoken Word and hip-hop worldwide, are trying to make a difference and change the way the world thinks about them—and Wisconsin has already started to take part in this revolution by hosting the first program in the nation to bring the urban arts and education together.

Kelsey Van Ert

Today I’m not only winning the battle
I’m winning the war
The revolution is here
And it's coming in the form of shears
In other words clippers, scissors and blades
Attacking each curl
Each strand
Each wave

Ever since she can remember, Van Ert has been a writer. “I always tried to write, even when I couldn’t spell," she said. "I’d be like, ‘Mom, how do you spell Mississippi? How do you write the letter M?’” Her love for writing and arts led to summer school back in her home state, Minnesota, where she would write poems, plays and perform in front of an audience. "I started out being really shy and really quiet. It was nerve-wracking,” Van Ert said. “Ever since then, I just kept going with it and kept developing and growing. I always wanted little parts, now I like huge ones."

Like many youths in the nation, Van Ert said she wants to make a difference. Her lines express a strong commitment to the improvement of society. "I'm not much of a drinker, at all,” Van Ert said, talking about her piece about alcohol, A Toxic Riddle. “I just see how alcohol can affect the community. It's a drug, but it's legal at the same time.” Van Ert’s relationship with alcohol has not been easy. Her family has struggled with alcoholism and coming to UW-Madison, where binge drinking among college students is the rule, stirred up her feelings toward drinking. “I was thinking all [these] twisted things about alcohol,” Van Ert said. “How it's bad, but it's OK in certain circumstances; and how it can really affect and change a person. I just wanted to expose that."

Van Ert has no intention of putting down people who drink occasionally. "I wanted people to be responsible when they do drink instead of being irresponsible and putting yourself into certain situations,” Van Ert said, “I wanted to get the point out that all this can happen if you are not careful; but I don't want to bash somebody for having a drink or two."

The future of Spoken Word is uncertain, but Ney wants to be sure he is involved in it. “I want to change the culture of the hip-hop industry to be more positive,” Ney said, “and have an agenda that has the purpose of social change and positive change through these kids.” Ney’s next project will bring college students from all over the world to a multicultural arts center in Madison that will develop their skills to make them the most influential force in the world. The world awaits, sitting in a dark, global theater, eyes trained on the stage. Spoken Word, with its endless possibilities, may be just the thing we are waiting for.