Verses - It's Where You At by: Runway Music - OVERTONE MUSIC

    artist                  Various
    album       Verses - Its Where
                       You At
    genre           Spoken Words

The Verses Sessions, started in 2005 by Nicole Moody, are monthly open-mic spoken word sessions at Zula Bar,
Long Street, Cape Town and have a staunch following of audience members and performing artists. The voices
on Verses, the first ever compilation album of spoken word in South Africa, urge us to Take Heed. And, to quote
Yoel Kenan�s introduction on the inside cover of the album, �it�s long overdue on a continent where the oral
tradition has been of such importance through the ages.�

�Spoken word� is standing in front of a microphone and speaking your mind. It�s a performance art with a growing
following, including familiar names like Kanye West, Lauryn Hill and Joolz. Less well-known but with hugely
loyal cult followings, people like Ani Di Franco, Jack Kerouac and Kwame K Kwame, are recognised as some of the
most important social commentators of our time.

In Verses you�ll find a diversity of voices from Cape Town. They all have a message. The titles alone tell you
that, but the gist of what is being told comes across in full-blooded emotion with the voices of the artists
mingling with music. Sultry messages of love and lust twist into cries of pain and betrayal; voices spitting-mad
with history�s injustices peter out into whispers of hope. Laments for ancestral heroes and even-keeled
denunciations of the social system speak boldly, plainly, frankly.

The artists involved represent the versatility of this medium - beatboxers, rappers, poets and musicians.
All (with the exception of Chi, who lives in Johannesburg) are based in Cape Town. Their words reflect the
gritty reality of their lives in South Africa today; sentiments of a young country in a changing world,
whether it�s about the transient nature of love (and the unending allure of jazz) in Nicole Moody�s �Love
and Jazz�, a rail against South Africa�s historically-defined social order in Teba�s �Stand Up�, or the
poetically sculpted message of anti-institutionalism of Aiden�s �Take Heed�.

With a caliber of musicians like SAMA award-winning Clare Philips and rising hip hop star Lungelo to induce
an atmosphere, the charisma of a lone voice speaking out to the world on each of these eleven tracks, is
seductively, enduringly, simple. As Nicole Moody, the founder of the Verses Sessions says in her introduction to the album:

��maybe you�ll see something of yourself in them. Maybe you�ll hear something riding in between a verse
that�ll inspire you. Maybe you�ll recognise your own story.�

Verses - It's Where You At - RUN002CD

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