In a small, dimly lit room one recent Saturday morning, a group of Congolese slammers are chanting about politics and art, poverty and sex. They tower over the seated audience, gesticulating wildly. The listeners laugh, jeer and occasionally join in by repeating refrains or clapping. this is exactly how slam is meant to be. Marc Smith, an American former builder who hosted the world’s first slam event in Chicago in 1984, would be impressed.
最近一个星期六的早晨，一群刚果诗喃者在一间昏暗狭小的房间里吟诵着政治与艺术、贫穷与性活动。他们高高站在坐着的观众面前，疯狂地打着手势。听众们不时地大笑或嘲笑，偶尔也会通过重复诗句或鼓掌的方式加入进来。这正是诗喃的本意。1984年在芝加哥举行了世界首场诗喃赛事的美国前建筑商马克·史密斯对此印象深刻。
Mr Smith promoted slam, a form of spoken-word poetry, as a way of liberating rhymes from the page and making them accessible. Like rappers, slammers do battle, but they are judged by the audience. As well as giving marks out of ten at the end of performances, attendees express their opinions by cheering or heckling. Slam reached Goma, a city of some 1m people in embattled eastern Congo, five years ago when a handful of young men began watching YouTube videos of slammers across the world. They were inspired by the raw, uncensored rhymes of artists such as Grand Corps Malade (Large Sick Body), a tall French slammer with spinal injuries who writes about racism and loneliness in suburban Paris.
史密斯先生提倡通过诗喃（一种口语诗的形式）将韵文从书页中解放出来并使之普及。就像说唱歌手之间会进行较量一样，诗喃者也会斗诗，但他们的输赢是由观众来评判的。除了在表演结束时按十分制打分外，参与的观众还会通过欢呼或起哄的方式表达自己的观点。诗喃在五年前到达了戈马——一座有大约100万人口、位于刚果东部的危机四伏的城市——当时有一些年轻人开始在YouTube上观看世界各地的诗喃者的视频。他们深受Grand Corps Malade（高大病体）等艺术家们未经删减、原汁原味的押韵所鼓舞，Grand Corps Malade是法国的一个高个子诗喃者，他常创作有关巴黎郊区的种族主义和孤独的诗喃
“There was a lot of appetite for slam here,” says Ben Kamuntu, one of Goma’s early slammers. “Young people wanted to break away from silence, we wanted to express ourselves.” With its sprawling tin-roofed houses and unpaved sidestreets, Goma is a far cry from Chicago’s skyscrapers, but the same slam fervour spread among its youth as it did when Mr Smith first promoted the idea in America. Soon, more than a hundred people were meeting to practise, clubbing together to rent a small house where they could slam. Before the pandemic hit, the best exponents put on shows in Goma’s bars and restaurants.
戈马的诗喃者元老本·卡蒙图说，“这里有很多人对诗喃有浓厚的兴趣。”“年轻人想打破沉默，我们想表达自己。”戈马有着铺天盖地的铁皮屋顶房屋和未铺砌的小巷，与遍地摩天大楼的芝加哥相去甚远，但戈马年轻人对诗喃的狂热却与史密斯先生第一次在美国宣扬这一想法时的情况毫无二致。很快，一百多个戈马人聚集在一起练习，他们共同租赁了一间可以练习诗喃的小房子。在疫情来袭之前，最优秀的诗喃者在戈马的酒吧和餐馆举行了演出。
When one slammer, a slight 22-year-old called Rita Zaburi, was asked by a friend why she spent so much time alone in her room, she decided to respond in verse. On the morning of your correspondent’s visit, she stands up, shyly at first, and slams about what it means to be a poet. “It is not about being a sorcerer, healing wounds with the magic of your creativity,” she begins in French. “It is about denouncing the evils that swallow our society.”
当一个名叫丽塔·扎布里的22岁的诗喃者被一个朋友问及她独自在房间里呆很长时间的原因时，她决定用诗喃来回答。在《经济学人》记者来访的那天早上，她的表现也可圈可点，她刚开始还很羞怯，后来就展示了有关“当诗人意味着什么”的诗喃。她用法语开始说，“当诗人与当巫师不同，诗人用创造力的魔力治愈创伤，诗人痛斥吞噬社会的罪恶。”
