Spoken poetry finds fans in eastern Congo

IN A SMALL, dimly lit room one recent Saturday morning, a group of Congolese slammers are chanting about politics and art, poverty and sex. They tower over the seated audience, gesticulating wildly. The listeners laugh, jeer and occasionally join in by repeating refrains or clapping. This is exactly how slam is meant to be. Marc Smith, an American former builder who hosted the world’s first slam event in Chicago in 1984, would be impressed.

Mr Smith promoted slam, a form of spoken-word poetry, as a way of liberating rhymes from the page and making them accessible. Like rappers, slammers do battle, but they are judged by the audience. As well as giving marks out of ten at the end of performances, attendees express their opinions by cheering or heckling. Slam reached Goma, a city of some 1m people in embattled eastern Congo, five years ago when a handful of young men began watching YouTube videos of slammers across the world. They were inspired by the raw, uncensored rhymes of artists such as Grand Corps Malade (Large Sick Body), a tall French slammer with spinal injuries who writes about racism and loneliness in suburban Paris.