Jeronimo Speaks – All About Hip Hop, Poetry & Activism In Chicago
Awake to the morning new
When Sun awaits for the dawn to break
And clouds start to move like bubbles kids playfully blow
Black brothers and sisters gather round in the way
Sing the Blues like a few black birds that already flew away
Count their blessing and feed their children with delicacies
Love and Wisdom, divine food for Soul.
Soul, off of his CD titled The Gordian Knot, is the spoken word/neo soul video from Jeronimo Speaks. Based in Southside Chicago, Jeronimo, called Jero’ by his friends, masters and performs poetry with the aim to touch your heart, sparkle knowledge, connect with the Black culture, and enlighten his community.
For years he’s been studying hip hop, but the more he writes and pulls up to open mics, the more he’s acknowleged as an authentic poet. In 2014, Chicago’s P.O.E.T Organisation named him Spoken Word Artist of the year, and in 2015, he was nominated for the Poet of the Year, by the Midwest Urban Music Awards.
He’ll talk about anything with honesty, sometimes with irony, always with clever wordplays.
Along with Soul, featuring Amber Whitted, Jeronimo Speaks pays tribute not only to Nina Simone but to Black Heroes who gave their body and soul to the current African-American inheritance.
The scenes in the video short and follow quickly, although they’re documenting a lot. This visual is as rich in details as Jero’s poems.
Indeed, he’s wearing a Black Heroes tshirt in front of the painting of Rosa Parks, symbol of the struggle against segregation, Martin Luther King’s wife, Coretta Scott King, the born slave abolitionist Frederick Douglas, Marvin Gaye, who contributed to the Blackspotation era, and even Tupac Shakur, rapper, poet and activist.
With such content, you can understand why Jeronimo Speaks claims in his poems “I wanna be interviewed by historians” (Jitters Piece).
Jeronimo Speaks’ art and reality consist in hip hop, poetry, and activism. Careful for his community and the importance of access to culture and knowledge, he’s dedicated to master his craft, move and inspire his listeners and let his actions follow his words for his city of Chicago.
This explains why he’s proudly repping his Solace Coalition Southside t-shirt, looking up to his Black Heroes, and on a mission to keep on doing justice to his culture and good to his people.
“I along with another artist Alicia “Restore’ Spikes created an artist activist coalition, where we work with a budding artist on the come up teaching them artist development, business structure, and the art of the grind.
We then go into the community and feed the homeless and less fortunate, we also provide clothing, toiletries, and feminine hygiene products. we go into the juvenile detention center as well.
We throw free youth open mics giving the kids a safe space to have fun, entertain, eat, and connect.” – Jeronimo Speaks, on Solace Coalition Southside.
Word call things to existence and Spoken Word can happen to become a movement, when a solid coalition is making the moves.
