Sitting atop the Chrysler building, an 8-year-old boy eats watermelon in the hot afternoon sun. It’s Sunday, and the child is the star of a commercial for Japanese electronic parts. With two small hands grasping the slice of melon, the child finds it hard to spit out words in the same manner that he spits out seeds.
     Eighteen years later, the boy writes a one-man play about the transition from Haitian cultures and traditions into a new American standard, “Watermelon Boy.” The child, now a man, has no problem spurting out words left and right.
     For educator, dancer and poet, Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s speaking comes because he has a lot to say.
     The son of Haitian parents, Joseph was born in New York in 1975. At the age of 5, Joseph began performing as a dancer and actor, appearing in several commercials and short-lived television series.
     From television, Joseph made the transition into theater with several Broadway appearances, including shows like “Stand Up Tragedy,” “The Tap Dance Kid,” and “Black and Blue.”

     Today, Joseph lives out his message as an educator for San Francisco youth and young people across the nation. As program director for Youth Speaks, a San Francisco literary arts organization which conducts weekly poetry workshops for young people, Joseph dedicates his time to providing Bay Area youth with publishing and performance opportunities.
     During 2002, Joseph will stretch even further, as college campuses across Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Nebraska will get a taste of what Joseph has been teaching. The tour included stops at Minnesota State University Moorhead, North Dakota State University and Concordia College from Feb. 12-18. The performer brought African American oral and dance tradition to the stage with his high-energy show, “Slam, Tap and Rap: Oral and Dance Traditions Revisited.”
      After winning the National Poetry Slam in 1999 with Team San Francisco, Joseph developed “Second Sundays,” the largest ongoing open microphone series in the nation. “Second Sundays” is a monthly poetry slam that opens up performance opportunities for young poets and musicians in the Bay Area. Each month nearly 500 people turn out for the show, which includes a slam competition, a non-competitive freestyle event, live bands and DJs in the event.
     “Slams and open microphone nights remind us of the need to hear one another’s opinions,” Joseph said. “We live our lives communicating over phone or e-mail. Spoken work represents an incredible movement towards oral performances.”
      A form of slam poetry, Joseph’s show features tap dancing, music, politics, poetry and dialogue. The show mixes the dance tradition that materialized during slave-holding time, when slaves made noise through stomping their feet and beating percussion instruments, as well as using spoken words through poetry and prose.
     “The word is the primary means of keeping history alive,” Joseph said. “Telling my story, using dance, music and dialogue, is my way of keeping that history.”
     Oral traditions of spoken words are part of every African-American’s history. For many people, words are the best way to express feelings, ideas and history. The word is a means of getting the message out and holds a strong connotation in any culture, especially African-American history.
     African-American traditions have been passed down through the ages in several forms. Words tumble down the family tree through essays by Frederick Douglas, poetry by Langston Hughs, sentiment from Alice Walker, preaching from Malcolm X or oral presentations from modern artists like Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez.
     African-American history stretches way back to the times when slaves like Frederick Douglas and Phillis Wheatley began publishing essays and poetry. Through words, slaves where able to express the pains and heartache that came with being enslaved in American culture. Many of the slaves where uneducated, yet through persistence and hard work, they were able to establish a presence in American literature through their writing.
     “It’s incredible how someone [Wheatley] who wasn’t even supposed to be educated could write good poetry,” said English professor Hazel Retzlaff.
     Retzlaff teaches African-American literature at MSUM. For years, Retzlaff has been passing down the poetry and literature of such substantial writers as Paul Laurence Dunbar, Gwendolyn Brooks, Audre Lorde and Francis Harper.
     Harper is known for writing poetry that looks back on the slavery days and makes the American public realize what a tragic time it was, Retzlaff said. One poem deals with old African-Americans wanting to learn to read so they can read the Bible. Another poem is about babies being torn away from their mothers. Through her poetry, Harper made Americans wake up and realize the damage slavery had done.
     “From 1870-1900, there was a really strong movement in this country to look back on slavery and say, ‘Oh, it wasn’t so bad,’” said Retzlaff. “[Harper] wrote this poem about this baby being town away from its mother, which in protest says: ‘Oh, I’m sorry. It was very bad.’”
     A substantial moment in African-American history was the Harlem Renaissance from 1920-1935. During that time, America saw an outburst of creative activity among African-Americans like Langston Hughs, W.E.B. Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson. The period infused jazz, blues and social unity into poetry, essays and other writings and established a unique mark in American history.
     Even today, African-Americans express their feelings about poverty, drugs, danger and social activism through literature, poetry and music. From rappers Outkast, DMX, Jay-Z to performance artists Sanchez, Baraka and Joseph, African-American traditions and customs are pushing their way into the foreground of American culture.
     With young people moving into the current leadership roles of this nation, educating youth is important for establishing a stable, equalized country. As director of Youth Speaks, Joseph helped create “The Living Word Project,” a program which brings poetry and spoken word to school assemblies and other audiences.
     “I believe what I went through with tutors modeled my opinion on how education should work,”Joseph said. “By increasing the student/teacher ratio, students learn at a much faster pace.”