Audio Collections: Spoken Arts: Spoken Word
There are a wide range of spoken word materials. Spoken word media mainly consist of a person or persons speaking; i.e., storytelling, poetry, public speeches, etc.
The spoken words are sometimes accompanied by incidental musical or other sounds.
Many of the best-known examples are recorded radio programs. For example, early radio dramas can be found on cassette and CD. In addition, some of the current materials found on National Public Radio are available online. Listen to sample tracks at Amazon. This American Life: Lies, Sissies & Fiascoes CD contains tracks from a weekly radio anthology of stories. This is popular with fans of National Public Radio (NPR). Look for radio websites such as This American Life that publish their work both on CD/DVD and as podcasts.
Beginning in 1959, the annual Grammy Awards have selected a Best Spoken Word Album. Sometimes called audio art, recordings may include spoken word, sound, and music. For the purpose of this website, we've placed the spoken word audiobooks on another page. A few of the options are listed below:
Children's. From classical music for babies to books-on-tape for teens, there many audio resources for kids. Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein is a well-known example. Some match the books and others are musical versions.
Comedy. Comedians such as Eddie Murphy, George Carlin, Ray Romano, Robin Williams, and Bill Cosby are known for their comedy audio recordings. Listen to a clip of Bill Cosby’s Wonderfulness or Robin Williams' Live 2002 at Amazon. Notice that Robin Williams' is listed as containing explicit language. Collections can be found of famous comedians. For example, And It’s Deep Too! contains the works of Richard Pryor from 1968-1992. You’ll also want to explore comedic groups such as Monty Python that combine skips and songs.
Exercise. Many people enjoy listening to specialized CDs or audiotapes while they walk, run, or ride a bike. Some play music and others contain motivational talks. For example, Yoga Zone: Music for Yoga Practice by Windham Hill provides music to practicing yoga.
Historical Connections. Many teachers like to use music from specific time periods to bring learning alive. Check out titles like Lewis and Clark: Sounds of Discovery, The Civil War – Traditional American Songs and Instrumental Music Featured in the Film by Ken Burns, and Down from the Mountain and O Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack.
Historical Works. There are many interesting materials from specific time periods. For example, The Beat Generation is a box set that contains music, poetry, and speeches from the beat era including people such as Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs. Famous speeches, poetry, and storytelling are only a few of the audio materials of interest.
Sample some of the MP3 recordings at Poems and Presentations: Audio Selections at Digital Beats: Jack Kerouac, University of Massachusetts Lowell.
Every library should have a copy of Great Speeches of the 20th Century. This box set of four CDs contains well-known as well as lesser known speeches from politicians, scientists, sports figures, and more. Listen to a few examples at Amazon. Speech collections are available for people such as Winston Churchill, Walter Cronkite, Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy.
Visit Americana Phonic and listen to audio narrations of works in the public domain - - Common Sense, The Federalist Papers and Herman Melville's first book: Typee.
Oyez: US Supreme Court Media provides over 2,000 recordings of oral arguments before the US Supreme Court. Note that The Oyez Project claims a limited copyright in these recordings; the recordings are licensed under a Creative Commons agreement that allows you to copy, adapt, distibute, and transmit these works as long as you give the Oyez Project credit and you don’t use the works for commercial purposes.
Instructional Audio. Whether you want to learn to dance, play the guitar, speak Spanish, you can find “how-to” instructional audios to help. Learning to play instruments such as the guitar, piano, harmonica, keyboard and others often contain a book, sheet music, charts, and sometimes even the instrument itself. Most popular languages are available on audiotape or CD including Spanish, Italian, German, French, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and even Yiddish. Other types of instruction such as learning to play cards games or win at gambling are also popular.
Interviews. One can listen to interviews of people such as writers, musicians, authors. From Christopher Lydon and Radio Open Source, here's an interview (Jan 2011) of Isabel Wilkerson on the Great Migration (MP3 33 minutes), Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (Part 2, Real Media 18:50 minutes).
Visit 1968 Narrators at The Whole World Was Watching: An Oral History of 1968, a joint project between South Kingstown High School and Brown University's Scholarly Technology Group. There you can find audio recordings of oral history interviews.
Literature. Audio Books at Project Gutenberg is an audiobook source for spoken word recordings in the public domain. Audio recordings of the World English Bible are also in the public domain.
Visit and explore LibriVox - The collection includes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and dramatic works. LibriVox takes texts already in the public domain in the US, asks volunteers to make audio recordings of that text, and then releases the resulting audio back into the public domain. The texts are mostly from Project Gutenberg.
Poetry. Recorded poems by poets such as Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou are a great way to enjoy poetry. In addition, compilations are also available. For example, Our Souls Have Grown Deep Like the Rivers is a two-CD collection of African American poetry spanning the 20th century. Poetry can be brought to life by the right reader. Closed On Account of Rabies: Poems and Tales of Edgar Allen Poe is an example. The Raven is read by spooky Christopher Walken.
For added understanding, read Miazga, Mark (1998). Spoken Word Movement of the 1990's.
Radio Anthologies. Classic radio programs are still popular on tape and CD. Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon stories from Prairie Home Companion is another example of a series that originated on Public Radio. Listen to excepts from Lake Wobegon Loyalty Days or the Audio Highlights (Mixture of spoken word and musical performance) found on the Prarie Home Companion website.
Visit and explore RadioLovers.com to listen to old radio shows of the past; programs include adventure, crime, pulp, sci-fi, noir and commercials.
Self-Help Audio. Since the 1960s business executives have listened to promotional and sales tactics audiotapes. The area of self-help has grown in recent years. From Dr. Phil’s advice to self-help guru’s who will help with weight loss, stress, and financing, many tapes and CDs are available. Check out Sound Body, Sound Mind by Andrew Weil. It combines spoken word, sounds, and music. Some materials are based on books, while other are only available in an audio format.
Visit and explore Spoken Word - a site that shares audio and video recordings of spoken-word events and programs in a variety of categories and topics.
Audiobooks are a prime example of the mass adoption and consumption of spoken word recordings. Read the off-site article, Audiobooks or Aural Art? by Yuri Rasovsky. There's a growing controversy about the popularity of audiobooks and their relationship to other spoken arts. Do you think audiobooks are giving "audio art" a bad name? Or, do you think they can live happily together?