Marc Bamuthi Joseph: "You Have the Rite"
TED Fellow Marc Bamuthi Joseph is a curator of words, ideas and protagonists. His bold, poetically-driven work investigates social issues and cultural identity. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
Air Jordan 4s for Christmas.
episode of "Black-ish."
on my Black man feet.
freedom days back fast enough.
on the Upper East Side.
boys are the stupidest.
barely getting away
is stewarding this tradition well.
and Marvin Gaye on repeat.
and older than Emmett Till.
enter his prime suspect years:
the threat of communities from below.
humans have no natural predator,
genetically embedded and instinctual
and then walks around them,
half-eaten gazelles,
on some Nat Geo shit.
broken "Fortnite" thing
under the eye of my filming iPhone,
who has just salvaged a draw.
considering the odds that I'm going to die
who expects that in 18 minutes,
to capture this moment, so.
when I was 16 getting ready for the SAT,
that really speaks is my skin.
on 12th and Broadway,
a police car pulls up behind me,
that earnest Black man face.
and then hits the siren,
another patrol car now, four cops now,
hands behind my back, shackled.
only until I'm scared and then sad.
before my own death.
before he realizes
formed memory of me
I never came for him.
in the moss at the base of my thoughts,
of my freedom attempts.
in the time of civil unrest,
arching like a broken-winged sparrow,
had a warrant out on him,
dude doesn't hear "Marc Joseph,"
on the corner now,
I'm not fed to the beast today.
makes sure to give me a ticket
in the hollow city,
in the age of autonomous vehicles.
and my internet is broken,
that I don't love my son enough
don't care about your rights, yo.
happening in my head
and Marvin Gaye comes on the radio.
that I almost never said,
in the friendly sky
against the fading baseline.
for the existential moment.
is its own genre of experience.
why you sing like an angel,
why heaven bends to your voice.
the cop in the rearview mirror
of the fraction that survives.
of your telepathic goodbye,
in Marvin's upper register
of America at its worst.
of the restless dead,
mistakes and live through them,
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Marc Bamuthi Joseph - Arts activist, spoken word artistTED Fellow Marc Bamuthi Joseph is a curator of words, ideas and protagonists. His bold, poetically-driven work investigates social issues and cultural identity.
Why you should listen
Marc Bamuthi Joseph is a steadfast believer in empathy as the most valuable currency in building community, and he seeks to spark curiosity and dialogue about freedom, compassion and fearlessness through pioneering arts stewardship and education. A 2017 TEDGlobal Fellow, Bamuthi graced the cover of Smithsonian Magazine as one of America's Top Young Innovators in the Arts and Sciences; artistically directed HBO's "Russell Simmons presents Brave New Voices"; and is an inaugural recipient of the United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship, which annually recognizes 50 of the country’s greatest living artists. Dance Magazine named him a Top Influencer in 2017.
Bamuthi's evening-length work, red black and GREEN: a blues, was nominated for a 2013 Bessie Award for "Outstanding Production (of a work stretching the boundaries of a traditional form)" and he has won numerous grants including from the National Endowment for the Arts and Creative Capital Foundation. His noted work /peh-LO-tah/ is inspired by soccer and Bamuthi's first generation American experience, intersecting global economics, cross-border fan culture and the politics of joy.
Bamuthi is the founding Program Director of the non-profit Youth Speaks, and he is a co-founder of Life is Living, a national series of one-day festivals which activate under-resourced parks and affirm peaceful urban life. His essays have been published in Harvard Education Press; he has lectured at more than 200 colleges, has carried adjunct professorships at Stanford and Lehigh, among others, and currently serves as Chief of Program and Pedagogy at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.
Marc Bamuthi Joseph | Speaker | TED.com