Poetic insubmission of the orality of Black women word-crafters in slams

Blog post by Dayse Sacramento, creator of Dialogos Insubmissos de Mulheres Negras (Insubmissive Dialogues of Black Women)

“It is necessary to break in
Enough of whities scamming our racial quotas
It’s smothering us, I don’t want to pay for transportation no more
Four bucks is more expensive than you think, it’s privatization, man! (…)”

– Rool Cerqueira

The poem of the slammer Rool Cerqueira is an example of spoken textuality which is born from literary activities erupting in Brazil, especially in the favelas and periferias (marginalized and often criminalized urban areas), with the construction of other narratives and poetic forms that are the unfolding of the effervescent creativity and reading of the society by people who at times are not represented in literature; at times are silenced and have control over images that define them in a stereotypical way. Here in Salvador, Bahia, especially over the last eight years, several slams have happened periodically. I would even highlight the intersectionality of gender, race and sexualities to reflect in more detail on the scene of word combat activities produced and starred by young Black women from Bahia.

The first time I went to a slam was in 2014, by invitation of young people who took part in the organization of Sarau da Onça, one of the first initiatives of this type to happen in Salvador, BA. The group was formed by young Black girls and boys who gathered every week to hold the soirée, and, among the other activities happening there, the slam was one of them. I was often invited to be a judge at the competition, something I had no experience with, much less knew its evaluation criteria.

According to Roberta Estrela D’Alva (2011), The slam has taken on proportions that go beyond the initial ones, which were solely poetry competitions, but have become entertainment venues, with an event structure that is commanded by a person who occupies the function of master of ceremonies, who is called the slammaster. This person is responsible for presenting the competitors and interacting with the audience.

My closest experience with this kind of activity happens when organizing the Slam Insubmissive, one of the activities of Diálogos Insubmissos de Mulheres Negras, DIMN (Insubmissive Dialogues of Black Women), a literary circuit of Black women writers in Salvador, which I have been analyzing and studying for my doctoral thesis. The DIMN, starting in 2017, began the activities of debates regarding the Black community, human rights and violence – physical and symbolic – against Black women, held self-organized events and participated in the last five ones in literary actions of the Bahia scene, and in national and international events, such as the proposal of the first literary partner house exclusively for Black women writers, Casa Insubmissa de Mulheres Negras (Insubmissive House of Black Women).

The Slam Insubmissive is one of DIMN’s initiatives with 6 editions. The 5th edition, the first online, had the theme “Future perspectives for northeastern Black women: Our steps come from afar and where are we going?” The edition awarded the first three winners a cash prize and published an illustrated e-book produced in Portuguese and English. Paying the artists of the word who participate in slams is a political commitment of DIMN, because this work, craft or whatever name is given to the act of working in/for literature needs to be valued and respected more and more. The 6th and last edition was held in a face-to-face format after almost three years of the pandemic. This activity was awarded by Warner Music Brazil as an advocacy action for an award that recognized the impact of the work that DIMN does in the field of arts and racial relations.

But what is a slam? Often, when I am in the organization, many people don’t know what the activity is and what will happen in it. I have used as a quick answer that it is a poetry competition. And yes, it is a competition, and according to the precursor of realization and reflections on slam in Brazil, Roberta Estrela D’Alva, we could define slam poetry in many ways: a spoken word poetry competition, a space for free poetic expression, an agora where current issues are debated, or even as another form of entertainment. (D`ALVA, Roberta Estrela, 2011, p. 122)

For Aline Nery, a researcher and Black teacher from Bahia, slams can be thought of as “poetic movements born in the periferias, or “quebradas”. In her doctoral thesis, she analyzes the Slam of Minas (Girls Slam) as a space of resistance for young Black women who build activities and emancipation practices, creating other forms of representation through their body performances and using literary language in theme and form.

The practice of competing with the word is an act of insubordination. Muniz Sodré draws attention to the fact that literature is a concept that adapts itself to the longings and desires of a consuming reading public. This is an issue that would generate many other writings like this one, the fact that the publishing market directly dictates/interferes in the conception of what literature is based on what it sells, where it is “produced based on a market demand, to literarily entertain a consuming public”. (SODRÉ, 1978, p. 80).

The slam as a literary style and genre has been building a significant path with countless productions, organization and publication of books, management and production of bigger and bigger events, with a growing number of young Black women who define themselves as writers and take these experiences to the professional field, by making presentations with the monetization of their services or even the act of reciting on public transportation buses, taking the oral literature of slam to other scenes and spaces of the city. The texts of Black women slammers are voices that equalize the materialization of aesthetic-academic artistic precepts in an insubmissive literary practice and question discriminatory forms imposed by the Eurocentric canon.

References

D`ALVA, Roberta Estrela (2011). Um microfone na mão e uma ideia na cabeça — o poetry slam entra em cena. Synergies Brési, 9 (119-126). Avaliable at https://gerflint.fr/Base/Bresil9/estrela.pdf .

SANTOS, Aline Nery dos (2020). Vozes que ecoam gritos de resistência: o slam das minas e o lugar de militância das poetas/slammers negras. Disponível em https://dialogosinsubmissos.medium.com/vozes-que-ecoam-gritos-de-resist%C3%AAncia-o-slam-das-minas-e-o-lugar-de-milit%C3%A2ncia-das-df116091f9f5 .

SODRÉ, Muniz (1978). Teoria da literatura de massa. Rio de Janeiro: Tempo Brasileiro.