By Serenity Lewis, Donovan Spencer, Melani Segovia
Last summer, we got to interview an American Performer, Marc Bamuthi Joseph. He started his arts career at the age of 10, after acting in a lot of TV commercials. He was at his home when we spoke with him, comfortably sitting on his bed where “the wifi worked best”. Joseph is an arts educator and curator; he believes that art is a “cell that can eventually become a network of cells”. He went to Morehouse College and started writing poetry and, later on, won the National Poetry Slam. Here are some questions we got to ask him and the amazing answers he gave us.
We asked him, “Why do you dance?” He says he mostly uses dancing to express his emotions, feelings, and creativities. Also he feels his poems work together to tell his story, and to break out and release his emotions.
We asked him what he used art for? His response: if we can utilize art and find a connection to it then we can understand it more. Feels like art is a cell that it will eventually be a network of cells, just like a community. He says that we can help our community grow by using art because it would give us a positive way for expressing ourselves.
We think the same, in fact using art to express yourself is vital in communities of color. He said art is an action just like basketball or rap, we just have to find it within ourselves to see if we have talent in it or not then channel it towards something positive. He stated that hip-hop is a culture that it’s a community and it was founded by a small community, and that art is the same thing.
We asked him about his emotional attachment to art? His response: I can only speak for me, but what I think makes humans special is their emotional intelligence for art.
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