TED Talks on Spoken Word Poetry
Search for “spoken word poetry” on the Ted.com website and you’ll find 79 results. The offerings run from performances and playlists to complex wordplay and thought-provoking blog posts.
It’s no surprise that TED Talks — a series of videos created to present interesting ideas in 18 minutes or less — are great places to learn about spoken word. After all, this platform covers every topics from “Do schools kill creativity?” to “The Power of Vulnerability.” The complete list of viewable TED Talks is 162 pages long and dates to June of 2006 — though Ted began in 1985 as a conference on Technology, Entertainment, and Design (hence the name).
Because the NSD Podcast is about collaborations between spoken word artists and musicians, we’re taking this opportunity to explore three profound poetry-meets-music / musicality presentations shared through the Ted platform
Poet Ise Lyfe / Cellist Michael Feckses
In this performance from TED@IBM in 2016, “Lyfe challenges those in Silicon Valley to reflect and embrace humanity as technology progresses,” according to the video description.
Ise Lyfe is a spoken word artist and performer, educator, community organizer and activist from Oakland, California. His conceptual art project, Brighter Than Blight, transformed a blighted condemned housing project into a life-sized exhibition and artistic narrative on housing as a human right. His one-man show based on his book, "Pistols and Prayers," addresses American apathy and resilience through the lens of the generation born into the crack epidemic.
Michael Feckses is a renowned master cellist. He’s also an educator, teaching 3rd-8th grade at Live Oak Charter School in Petaluma and directing ViVO, the after school music program at El Verano Elementary in Sonoma, working with more than 300 students across Sonoma County. He composes original music and contributes cello the recordings of artists such as Shannon Bryant, Kate Burkhart, and MC Yogi.
Climbing PoeTree / Claudia Cuentas and Tonya Abernathy
From TEDWoman 2018, “Alixa Garcia and Naima Penniman of Climbing PoeTree combine impactful poetry and sharp beatboxing in a spoken word performance of ‘Being Human.’ They're joined by the captivating vocals and instrumental melodies of Claudia Cuentas and Tonya Abernathy for ‘Awakening.’"
Climbing PoeTree is the combined force of two boundary-breaking soul sisters who have sharpened their art as a tool for popular education, community organizing, and personal transformation. Alixa and Naima interweave spoken word, hip hop, and award-winning multimedia theater to expose injustice, channel hope into vision, and make a better future visible, immediate, and irresistible.
Claudia Cuentas is a Peruvian immigrant, a bilingual and bicultural artist, a license marriage and family therapist, a researcher and an educator, specializing in the intersectionality of art, healing trauma, trauma recovery, cultural identity, indigenous knowledge and decolonization of healing. Claudia also leads workshops in cultural diversity and art as healing, as well as bilingual song circles for the community. She collaborates with organizations as Native American Youth Association, MILPA (Cultivating Change Makers for The Next Seven Generations) and Adelante Mujeres on developing curriculum about trauma recovery and Indigenous ways of healing.
Tonya Abernathy is passionate about community healing work and voice embodiment. She is also a professional singer and has toured with Taina Asili and Climbing Poetree. She feel specifically called to work in collective grief settings. She has a trauma-informed, social justice, and cultural awareness approach and is committed to supporting her BIPOC communities.
Marc Bamuthi Joseph
From 2019, “TED Fellow Marc Bamuthi Joseph shares a Black father's tender and wrenching internal reflection on the pride and terror of seeing his son enter adulthood.”
Marc Bamuthi Joseph is a 2017 TED Global Fellow, an inaugural recipient of the Guggenheim Social Practice initiative, and an honoree of the United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship. He’s also a spoken-word poet, dancer, playwright, and actor who directs stand-alone hip-hop theater plays. In 1999, he became National Poetry Slam champion as part of the San Francisco team. He went on to work with Katherine Dunham, Joe Hahn, Mos Def, and Bonnie Raitt. He co-founded the Life is Living Festival for Youth Speaks and created the installation “Black Joy in the Hour of Chaos” for Creative Time. Joseph became the Vice President and Artistic Director of Social Impact at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., in January 2019.
Find the complete list of Ted Talks on spoken word poetry here.