Programming Spotlight: BAM's Word. Sound. Power. 2023

 On Wednesday, April 26th Belmont’s St. John’s group had front row seats for BAM’s annual celebration of poetry and hip-hop called Word. Sound. Power.

This year’s performance highlighted the griot as emcee with the ever-fresh artist-poet Baba Israel in that role.  Students’ favorites included  Dahlak Brathwaite, Helixx C. Armageddon, Silent Knight, and Pri the Honey Dark.  

Brilliant, heavy, inspiring, and hard-hitting,  and just when we  thought  the show couldn’t get any better it found new ways to amplify the messages we all needed to hear.

Even better yet, the following week, Jayson P. Smith visited with our students and led a creative writing workshop which brought us back to Armageddon's "James Baldwin."
A language-rich SEL-grounded experience indeed.--Jessica Fenster-Sparber