You Poet! What’s Your Worth?

I had the chance to perform at EHALAKASA last night and it was great. The reason is, I did some poems from the past, some were written as far back as 2006. I know you might be asking why I went back to bring those old stuff because I have so many new works. Blame it on nostalgia.

Last week, I had people on my twitter asking me for links to some very old works. Honestly, I didn’t remember 2 of the pieces that they needed links to, I had to refer to my books. I know it’s very sad or you might think I am stupid, but don’t blame me, the pieces are too many. I quickly had to forget about all of those poems that I planned to do yesterday. I replaced them with a couple of old pieces, and it was so awesome performing them once again. I really enjoyed myself and I sold some Photosentences CDs as well. Check out one of the performances in the video below:

Why haven’t I been going through shows? Well, it’s because I don’t get the money that I think I deserve. Before I started this post, someone hit me on whatsapp about this spoken word show that he is doing. He wants me to be on that show so after a short talk, I asked him how much he was paying and check out his reply below:

 

That is what I hate! “I will give you something small for fuel”, “I am giving you a platform”, “take this small something”…I have been performing for free and I will perform for something small depending on my mood or relationship but you don’t hit me up and tell me these things. They are trash to me! I have hustled to get this far, I have helped create an ‘atmosphere’ for spoken word in Ghana, I have an album out, I have so many singles and other tracks out, (all of these I paid for), I have gone through countless radio and TV interviews so it gets confusing when people hit me up and say things like they are giving me a platform and all of those bull. It hurts and it’s disrespectful.

And It hurts when I see desperate spoken word artistes in Ghana go through shows and leave with nothing, it’s an insult to even your talent/skill. You deserve to be rewarded by whoever is employing your services. The last ‘big’ show I did, I got about 900GHC for it, was a 3min performance and even though this is nothing, taking into consideration company I was dealing with, it was enough to strike out some things on the TO DO list.

My fellow poets, you are #MADEOFBLACK, and no, I’m not talking about your complexion, neither am I talking about the complexion of your parents. I am talking about how talented you are and how bold you are, because of the positive words you spew. You are #MADEOFBLACK because I believe you are bold spoken word artistes who wouldn’t be shaken by any oppressor, you have what it takes to spark, to burn, to shine bright, so don’t let anyone hold you back and do not sell yourself cheap.

You spend days, if not weeks writing and memorizing and someone, somewhere, comes and tells you how much your art is worth? Come on guys, its about time! You are #MADEOFBLACK because you rule, your black breaks, from region to region, country to country, your black is confident so I beg-know your worth. It’s time we come together as poets and be on the same page, It’s time we empower other poets, to make them aware of the power that they hold. Most are not even aware of this power. It’s about time that these event organizers etc start respecting our art because what we hold never comes cheap. I can tell you some funny and disrespectful things that I have heard from these people but I will just save it for another day.

Just remember that you are #MADEOFBLACK and you know what I mean by this.