by Idris Goodwin

Almost every weekend I pack a suitcase with my books, CDs and flyers, drive a few hours to a community college or bookstore, set up my little table and commence to running my mouth. I am the hip hop version of Willy Loman. People want to know: What you do, would you call it rap? Are they monologues? Is it slam? What is it?

Calling it “a hybrid of spoken word, hip hop poetics, and creative memoir” doesn’t make it much easier. To be honest, there isn’t a short but all encompassing answer, so I invented one. The following essay, “Break Beat Poetry,” from my debut collection These Are The Breaks (Write Bloody Publishing) prose and essays on hip hop culture and race in America, explains just what the heck I do.

an excerpt from These Are The Breaks

When Bronx DJs performed for neighborhood block parties in the early 70s, they discovered how to extend the instrumental “breakdown” section of a record. When looped, these free-flowing breakdowns – dubbed break beats – served as the audio stage on which dancers and MCs “got loose” or “styled.”10

Birthed from the intersection of Afro Latin, Latin jazz, be bop jazz, hard bop, hard rock, rock and roll, rhythm and blues, blue-eyed soul and German computer music, break beats are true poly-cultural relics. All electronic music, from rap to house to techno, drum and bass, utilize the cyclical flow of a break beat.

Break beat music ignited listeners’ desire for self-expression, including many writers of the hip-hop generation. Their “God selves were let loose”11 by the break beat, rousing writers to fracture tradition and sample surprising new structures. Break beat poets play with assonance and repetition, but they also explore possibilities of meter, blending familiar rhythms, melodies, and cadences with the unexpected.

It is an attempt to make music with words. As such, the writing requires careful consideration. In the same manner that a classical composer balances each note, a break beat poet must consider his or her words with precision. A successful break beat poem can (and should) be recorded and published so that the public may fully experience this synthesis of the visual and the aural. It goes without saying that break beat poems are created with the intention to be performed aloud for an audience. They are to be felt, to be “heard with the hips.”12

Break beat poetry attempts to generate a physical response in the bodies of listeners before their brains censor movement. A successful break beat poem will bob heads, tap feet, jump fingers, launch chills, fling words into mouths. It is entirely physical. The poet must feel the urgency of the piece throughout his or her body. The break beat poem can only be experienced if its creator shows the listeners how.

In instances where a break beat poet works with a musical accompaniment, he or she must pay homage to the music as its own form of poetry. The break beat poet’s approach, then, should allow for the music to lead, to inspire the writing. Break beat poets often freestyle, but more importantly, they write songs.

It should be noted that break beat poetry is not in defiance of, or in conflict with, any other strain of writing or performance. Instead, it embraces multiple genres, much as early DJ artistry blended funk, soul, and rock. Everything is fair game, as long as it emanates from the raw, untampered music of the soul, that patchwork of multiple allegiances, contradictory opinions, and bittersweet experiences.

Most importantly, break beat poets are not afraid. They write with purpose: to celebrate humanity, even when demanding justice. Break Beat Poetry speaks to the concerns, dreams, and hungers of actual living, breathing communities of individuals. Break Beat Poems are honest. Break Beat Poems celebrate.

10 These were local terms before break dancing or rapping, when individuals expressed themselves in response to the DJ’s break beats.

11 Refers to a popular quote by hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambatta: “When I heard the break beat, I let my God self get loose.”

12 Refers to a line by poet Dennis Kim: “Listen to this poem with your hips.”

Idris will be performing and discussing his book, These Are the Breaks, at an Equilibrium Spoken Word at the Loft performance on March 3, 2011. Local spoken word poets LIsa Brimmer, Ed Bok Lee, and Guante perform as well.

This excerpt used by permission of the author.