Africans have always told their stories through oral narratives including riddles, proverbs, story-telling, songs and poetry.
These oral narratives or African oral literature contributed to the creation of a common identity and a sense of belonging. Africans relied on these oral literature devices to communicate about life's lessons, events and current affairs.
This tradion of performing narratives remains strong in sub-saharan African countries and has been recently revitalised in form of spoken word.
For starters, spoken word is an oral art that focusses on the aesthetics of word play, intonation and voice inflection.
Spoken word not only include poetry performance but it also includes jazz poetry, hip-hop, prose monologues and even speeches.
Those colourful speeches by Patrick Lumumba are simply spoken words. Spoken word performances and festivals are taking shape in Kenya.
Every week, we have poetry readings taking place at different venues all over the country.