Brave New Voices

Brave New Voices was created by Youth Speaks Inc in 1998 (a non-profit organization from San Francisco promoting youth intellectual and artistic self-development) after the inaugural Youth Speaks Teen slam poetry in San Francisco – the first poetry slam dedicated to youth in the world. Since that time, Brave New Voices has grown to represent youth ages 13–19 from all across the United States and several cities and countries from around the world. BNV is the largest ongoing spoken word event in the world. Cities compose teams of their top 4-6 youth poets to bring to the festival. When the festival began only four teams participated, and the competition has since grown to more than 50 teams.

The final contestants are judged by a jury composed of artistic personalities. In 2010, the jury was composed by the illusionist and TV host Penn Jillette, poets Mayda Del Valle and Beau Sia, musician Talib Kweli and actress Sanaa Lathan.

The finale of Brave New Voices in 2008 and 2010 was aired on HBO.

James Kass, Bamuthi and others had worked with Stan Lathan for several years to make sure that young people were booked on HBO’s Def Poetry. Before Russell Simmons and Lathan launched Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, they tried it out in San Francisco, finding appreciative audiences and new talents there. Kass, Bamuthi and others pitched the idea of the Brave New Voices series to Hollywood, and Lathan agreed to make it happen. He brought it to HBO, where the young poets could create without fear of censors.

Brave New Voices works to increase the visibility of youth voices, giving them a national platform on a network that will not censor or stereotype them. It also promotes the work of Youth Speaks and the youth spoken word movement as a whole. The hope is that the show will generate the attention and resources needed to sustain the work both locally in the San Francisco Bay area and nationally.

Youth Speaks had worked with HBO’s Def Poetry for a few years, but the 2008 docu-series was the first direct relationship with HBO. The network provided some corporate support of the 2008 and 2010 Brave New Voices Festival. The TV series has three main partners – Youth Speaks, Simmons-Lathan Media Group, and HBO.

During the Brave New Voices festival every year smaller, specific competitions are held that are open to all participants in the larger festival. To date there are three of these types of competitions: Speak Green, MC Olympics, and the Individual Poetry Slam. Winners of these competitions are often highlighted during the festival and given other performance opportunities outside of the festival.

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