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Mic Check: Snap Your Fingers to Africa’s Spoken Word Artists

Here are seven of Africa’s emerging spoken word poets whose powerful voices are speaking truth to power, telling their stories and painting a thousand, sometimes fewer, words which burn and soothe their beloved continent with poetry.

Njeri Wangari

Read when you’ve got time to spare.

Modern spoken word poetry, popularised by America’s Rap & Hip-hop music genres, can be traced back to Griots originating in the 13th century Mande empire of Mali. They were living, breathing historians of the people’s traditions. The Griots were storytellers and musicians whose role was to preserve the genealogies and oral traditions of the tribe through oral poetry.

I love spoken word poetry for how it strips all the straitjackets that made the art-form bland and unpalatable for the masses. Present-day spoken word, like its progenitor, contains elements of music—jazz and hip-hop—fused with storytelling and theatre. Below, I’ve curated some of my favourite African spoken word artists whose powerful voices cut as deep as they heal and rebuke as loudly as they praise.

Image by SeventyFour / Getty Images.

Walk With Me

Njeri Wangari: “Nomfundo Khambule is a young South African poet and actor passionate about telling unique stories through music, dance and poetry. Inspired by the stories of black people from small communities, poetry for Nomfundo serves as a form of activism for human rights, a discourse on gender inequality, and a pen with which she rewrites the narrative for black women. Her poems are sometimes expressed as prayers, some as offerings and some as letters.

Walk with Me is one such letter she has written to you to follow her in this protest as she proclaims; ‘I no longer use my fists, but now it is with my voice, my key weapon being a metaphor.’”

Unmasked

NW: “Kenya’s Emily Wairimu is a journalist, a spoken word artist, and the founder of The Artheal Foundation — an organisation that promotes mental health through art. Her poetry, which is rooted in her Christianity, comes from a place of pain and trauma. Following several attempts of committing suicide, she instead chose to use her voice to speak up about her struggles and to speak words of healing.

Depression tells the story of a young woman as she unmasks her struggles, not because she doesn’t need the people in her life, but, as Wairimu says ‘because she doesn’t deserve them, reject them before they reject you, ha!’”

Lone Wolf

NW: “Mwelwa Chilombo also referred to as ‘Mwelwa On CoS’ is a Zambian-born and bred storyteller, performance poet, visual artist, and lawyer who believes that art is a celebration of the things that make us human. His sharply delivered and poignant poems on identity, masculinity, relationships, love and religion can be heard in his video albums Select Few (2018) and A Guide For Broken Boys (2022) released on YouTube.

His poem Lone Wolf, which he first performed at the Bittersweet Poetry Event titled ‘Beast Mode’ in 2019, is a captivating piece capturing the spirit of those unafraid to swim against the current.”

kkumi n'emu n'ekitundu (5:30 AM)

NW: “Nze Nsubuga is a Luganda performance poet and writer living in Uganda. He has been doing Luganda poetry for over 5 years, performing under his stage name NZE. Just as poetry chose him, his mother tongue also chose him. Nsubuga is an outlier representing a generation of contemporary African poets to whom indigenous language is as important as the themes explored in their work. Inspired by other Nigerian poets such as Jason Ntaro, Kagayi Ngobi, Okot P’Btek, and Wake the Poet, NZE finds poetry to be the most relatable form of expression.

His poem kkumi n'emu n'ekitundu (5:30 AM) is a lament of Uganda’s education system and the toll it continues to take on its young.”

My Country

NW: “Nigeria’s Hafsat Abdullahi, popularly known as Havfy, is a 21-year old spoken word artist, writer, fashion designer, and model. Unafraid to call out, reprimand and even laugh at the state of her nation, Havfy is one of Nigeria’s fastest-rising spoken word poets whose fierce voice and ferocious words speak up against drug abuse, gender-based violence, even as she reclaims her mother tongue from the rubble of colonialism.

The intelligence of her poetry can be heard in My Country — a satirical and paradoxical lament of everything that her country ‘Naija’ is.”

History Lied To Africa!

NW: “Gombilla is a Ghanaian spoken word artist and poet whose booming voice every time he announces his name G.O.M.B.I.L.A during his performances has become his signature. Straddling poetry and hiplife music, Gombilla’s poetry tackles heritage, political and social issues. His first collection Hope Lives Here published in 2022 explores some of his performance staple themes including love, depression, poverty, self-doubt, abuse, suicide and climate change.

History Lied To Africa is a history lesson and the story of colonialism in Africa and Ghana told, not by the hunter, but by the lion."

Njeri Wangari

Njeri Wangari is a Kenyan poet, freelance journalist, storyteller and communications consultant based in Nairobi with over a decade of experience writing on the intersection of technology with arts, culture, innovation, and new media. Wangari currently runs Afrokidz, a trust that promotes the digitization and preservation of African children’s folklore.