According to the event's press release, "Voices for the Voiceless" aims "to expose the Five College and New England areas to the diversity, complexity and power of the African American, Asian and Latino national poetry scene."
The Friday evening discussion panel, which tackles Latino and African diaspora studies and their relation to spoken word poetry, will take place in the Pruyne Lecture Hall in Fayerweather Hall at 6 p.m. Jose Montoya, Jesus Tato Laviera, Roberto Vargas, Louis Reyes Rivera, Shaggy Flores and D.C.-based poet Tonia Maria Mathews will discuss their work and field questions from the audience. The panel will focus on spoken word not merely as an art form but as a means of political expression as well.
Among the chief questions to be addressed is whether spoken word has continued to act as a form of empowerment and activism among latter generations of Latinos, or whether its agency has been sacrificed during its growth. The panel's composition, which includes four of spoken word's elder statesmen and two more contemporary figures, is uniquely suited to pay heed to such transgenerational issues. The discussion will be followed by a buffet catered by local Mexican restaurant Veracruzana, which donated over $1,000 of food for the occasion.
The Saturday evening concert is entitled "Latino Lingo: The Funky Bilinguals," and scheduled for 7 p.m. in the Keefe Campus Center. "[It] serves to empower not just the Latino community and all communities of color," said La Causa representative Angelica Cesario '08, "but also the arts of spoken word and poetry, mediums that are often not recognized."
The convention will also honor Montoya, the Poet Laureate of Sacramento; Laviera, a vanguard of Puerto Rican literature; and Vargas, a Nicaraguan poet and statesman, as recipients of the Louis Reyes Rivera Lifetime Achievement Award for their devotion to at-risk communities and their accomplishments in poetry. Rivera, one of the genre's pioneers and a mentor to many of the event's performers, will also attend.
This year's honorees were particularly influential in establishing spoken word as a legitimate artistic form, helping birth world-famous venues such as the Nuyorican Poetry Café and the Bowery Poetry Club, in addition to spoken word's most heralded manifestation, HBO's Def Poetry Jam. "[These artists] are all individuals who were members of different vanguard movements in the Latino literary renaissance that was taking place in Nuyorican, Chicano and other Latino communities in the U.S. during the 1960s and 1970s," said Ron Espiritu '06, co-chair of the Chicano Caucus and one of the event's primary coordinators.
Joining Montoya, Laviera, Vargas and Rivera are a number of present era performers who have assumed the mantle of the art form and their predecessors' penchant for activism. Colorfully named Shaggy Flores, Giles Lung-Hwa Li, Crystal Senter-Brown, Jahipster, Maurice "Soulfighter" Taylor, Robert Karimi, Mahogany Brown and Truth Thomas will take the microphone alongside the four elder poets.
This year's performers come from a diverse array of professions: teachers, labor organizers, AIDS activists and the heads of non-profits are all on the roster. Many have published anthologies and recorded albums. "They are all creative and innovative artists in the national poetry scene," said Espiritu. "[They] continue to represent a culture and population in the U.S. that is repeatedly overlooked, ignored, commodified and silenced." The Pioneer Valley also will be strongly represented through local products Crystal Senter-Brown and "Soulfighter" Taylor. Music, provided by VDJ Batibiri, will round out the festivities.
"Voices for the Voiceless" was originally created by former Mt. Holyoke student Lydia Okutoro and former UMass student Shaggy Flores, one of this year's artists.