The city speaks

On Friday July 18 Johannesburg will enjoy the first in a number of performances as part of the 2003 Urban Voices programme.

Celebrating its third year, the festival plays host to the lyric-hungry and word-rap fanatics who last year took in the very finest poets both African and American, the likes of Saul Williams, Sarah Jones and Papa Noel.

This international spoken-word festival then travels to Durban and Cape Town, ending its pilgrimage at the Bassline in Melville in August, and is set to be the South African Arts Exchange’s biggest event yet. The programme includes, direct from Russell Simmons’s Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, Black Ice; Jamaican Jean Brita Breeze; Paco Sery and his collective from Côte d’Ivoire; and one of the United States’s finest wordsmiths — Ursula Rucker. Her inclusion is a minor coup for the organisers and fans alike.

“I am excited to be coming out,” she admits. “It is my first time on the continent. Such history, such drama, so I am coming with an open mind … ready to share and learn.”With a career just one year shy of a decade, Rucker first took to the Zanzibar Blue stage in Philadelphia in 1994, where she completed her first live poetry reading.

As a graduate of the journalism school at Temple University, Philadelphia, Rucker’s enquiring mind and questioning nature soon had some of the world’s most innovative producers and musicians wanting to work with her. In the past 10 years Rucker has collaborated on some of the finest tracks, from 4Hero’s Loveless to the Silent Poets’ Get Ready and the Gravity Games anthem Sixth Sense. Each has showcased the artist’s vocal style.

As she has grown, so has her work and her ability to express herself with even more gusto, passion and social consciousness, as is witnessed on the Roots’ life-and-death saga Return to Innocence Lost; an unsettling portrait of slavery, Soon, penned by Rob Yancey; and the classic Jazzanova remix of Circe.

On her 2001 solo debut, Supa Sista, Rucker can be heard spitting at society through rhyme, slamming black musicians who glorify violence on the track What???, and celebrating women on Letter to a Sister Friend.

She contemplates relationships on 7 and even ponders the potential of technology on Digichant. Every major Roots album also sports her inclusion — her friends include King Britt and Jonah Sharp, both of whom have repaid her contributions by guesting on her debut on the !K7 label. They will also appear on her second album, Silver or Lead, due out in October. While her work is knee-deep in electronica, Rucker manages to stay true to the spoken word.

“Silver or Lead is a unique collection of art,” says Rucker about her forthcoming album. And about her collaborators: “There’s some new, some old … some known, some unknown. Everyone on this album is an artist I respect and/or admire. Artists with integrity, heart and all are friends. These people are my extended family. I am honoured to know all of them … and more honoured to share and make art with them.

“My poetry comes out of often rough and challenging, as well as wonderful and enlightening, times. There is always a great deal of emotion and change in one’s life — so my greatest happiness has to come from being able to continue to make my voice my mouthpiece.”

Addiction, murder and loss are just some of the topics that unfold with unflinching realism. The machine that drives her messages home is the insight offered by years of living through a great deal of what she reports on. Musical arrangements unsettle and entertain collectively, making her work autobiographical in many instances.

Although her South African debut will consist largely of the spoken word, Rucker hints at coming back to South Africa with a full line-up once her new album is released. “Hopefully I can return to do a concert,” she says, “but … it all starts with the words and emotions and there will be plenty of both on this trip, in large doses.”Urban Voices is set to entertain all who embrace world-class vocal reportage, regardless of persuasion. “Opportunity is something to be respected and cherished,” Rucker says. “I give thanks … often!”

Urban Voices 2003