Spoken Word

This first video is called "A Blues for Nina", which made its first appearance in the movie Love Jones. This poem was powerful, sexy and deep, written by poet Regie Gibson, whom I have had the pleasure of meeting and watching perform several times at "Da Poetry Lounge" in Hollywood. This very scene in the movie is what intrigued me about spoken word and got me hooked. I love to write and perform it and it has been a passion of mine for many years. It has been a long time since I have performed and hopefully I get enough courage to share one of my pieces with the class.

I had to share another video by a good friend of mine, Shihan, who is also a member of the Hollywood Slam Team, this is my favorite piece of his called This Type Love... so I had to also share:

Whats goin on?

"What's Going On" is a song by American recording artist Marvin Gaye, released in 1971 on the Motown subsidiary, Tamla. Originally inspired by a police brutality incident witnessed by Renaldo "Obie" Benson, the song was composed by Benson, Al Cleveland and Gaye and produced by Gaye himself. The song, which focused on major seventh and minor seventh chords,^[2] and was oriented in sounds byjazz, gospel and classical music orchestration, was mainly viewed as a meditation on the troubles and problems of the world, proving to be a timely and relatable release, and marked Gaye's departure from the Motown Sound towards more personal material. Later topping the Hot Soul Singles chart for five weeks and crossing over to number-two on the Billboard Hot 100, it would sell over two million copies, becoming Gaye's second most successful Motown song to date.^[3]

The song topped Detroit's Metro Times list of the 100 Greatest Detroit Songs of All Time,^[4] and in 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked it the fourth greatest song of all time, in its updated 2011 list, the song remained at that position.^[5] It is also included in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll list, along with two other songs by the singer.^[6] It was also listed at number fourteen on VH-1's 100 Greatest Rock Songs" wikimusic

This is a song I love and still enjoy listening to. When Marvin created this song, you could hear the emotion in his voice that was coming off from what was happening during that time, I felt it relevant to today because even 30 years later, we are still experiencing the same issues, and I one day hope that things will change for the sake of our kids and our future in America.