UW-Madison students perform at International Youth Poetry Slam Festival

Thirteen UW–Madison students from the First Wave Hip Hop Theater Ensemble will perform in the 12th annual Brave New Voices (BNV) International Youth Poetry Slam today (July 15) in Chicago.

This is the sixth consecutive year the UW–Madison Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives’ (OMAI) youth teams are representing Wisconsin, says OMAI executive director Willie Ney. “The invitation to be one of the headlining acts at the Brave New Voices International Poetry Slam Finals is a great honor, and the artistic work that First Wave will perform there is an evolution and expansion upon the three-minute spoken-word competitive format that the participating youth will be presenting at BNV. The hip-hop theater pieces to be presented by First Wave in Chicago builds upon the narratives of the individual poets and artists within First Wave and develops them into an ensemble format.”

Students performing are Karl Iglesias of Milwaukee; Camea Osborn of Indianapolis; Asia Elliot of Tampa, Fla.; Dianna Harris of Calumet City, Ill.; Andrew Thomas of Minneapolis; James Gavins of Minneapolis; Karlo Martinez of Madison; Niko Tumamak of Chicago; Michael Sherer of Milwaukee; Gabriel De Los Reyes of Miami; Bekah Blocker of Flossmoor, Ill.; Cydney Edwards of Chicago; and Samuel Olutobi Adeoye of Silver Spring, Md.

The performance brings important exposure to the First Wave Spoken Word and Urban Arts Learning Community, a cutting-edge multicultural artistic program for incoming UW–Madison students. Bringing together young artists and leaders from across the nation, First Wave offers students the opportunity to live, study and create together in a close-knit, dynamic campus community. Administered by OMAI, the First Wave Learning Community is the first university program in the country centered on spoken word and hip-hop culture. The majority of students in the 45 students currently in First Wave have been recruited from the Brave New Voices network.

The OMAI Wisconsin Teen Slam Team also will attend the Brave New Voices event in Chicago.

“Hundreds of teens attending Brave New Voices, the very top spoken-word talent in the nation, will bear witness to the cutting-edge quality of the First Wave original pieces and will be exposed not only to this new revolutionary aesthetic of hip hop theater, but to an ensemble that is on full tuition scholarship and based at the UW–Madison,” Ney says. “This will hopefully inspire the students to pursue the objective of deepening and broadening their art and demonstrate the great potential of hip-hop theater, but as importantly, will inspire them to utilize their art form as a tool to go onto higher education.”

At this point, Wisconsin is the only team participating at Brave New Voices that represents a state and not a particular city, Ney adds. Also, a number of students on the teen Wisconsin Brave New Voices team have ended up in First Wave, which serves as a pipeline for the university-based program. Students who have chosen to attend UW–Madison following involvement with the program include Karl Iglesias, Mercedes Pett-Vanko and Angela Thompson.

“This is highly significant,” Ney says. “Only Madison poets were represented at the first four Brave New Voices events. Since 2007, Milwaukee poets have joined Madison poets to compete for the six available slots. Eventually, it is hoped that Wisconsin’s final will be just that, made up of youth from across the state.”

Founded in 1996, Youth Speaks is the leading nonprofit presenter of Spoken Word performance, education and youth development programs in the country. For the second time, the six-day Brave New Voices 2009 is taking place in Chicago through July 19, featuring more than 500 Teen Poetry Slam champions from all over the country and across the globe, together representing more than 50,000 young poets in their local communities.