President Barack Obama and Jamaica Osorio. - Photo: Courtesy of the White House by Chuck Kennedy

Jamaica Osorio performs for Obama poetry bash

By Liza Simon / Ka Wai Ola

Speaking by phone just moments after performing at the White House, Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio was nearly at a loss for words, though this, indeed, is a rare state for the Native Hawaiian slam poetry champion.

Describing how President Obama approached her in the reception line, she recalled: "He said, 'You're the girl from Hawai'i.' … And it was so amazing that I said I was from Pālolo Valley, (O'ahu) and he could actually nod his head and smile, because he got it," said the elated 18-year-old, laughing as she savored the notion that the nation's leader was born and bred just one green valley away from her home. "Mostly when I tell people I am from Hawai'i, they have no idea what's going on here."

In an evening of "Poetry, Music and Spoken Word" hosted by the Obamas at the White House, Osorio delivered an emotional poem meant to enlighten the audience about "what's going on here," through a mesmerizing chant-like cadence in both English and 'ōlelo Hawai'i about her experiences growing up in a native culture that she is also helping to revive by mastering its language.

Jamaica Osorio performs in the East Room.- Photo: Courtesy of the White House by Samatha Appleton

She named the piece Kumulipo after the Hawaiian creation chant, though it was a personalized twist on the traditional oli about the challenges of creating a Hawaiian identity in a modern context. Osorio, who is a freshman at Stanford University pursuing a degree in ethnic studies, said the piece evolved after she realized that she could not dredge up from memory the full Hawaiian names of her great-grandparents, and she had no immediate access to her family's genealogy written in a binder back in her Pālolo Valley home. She contacted her dad, Jonathan Osorio, a Hawaiian Studies professor, but he was away from the Islands and also could not recall – without access to the binder – the information she sought. "He is this amazing and distinguished scholar for Hawaiian people, but like all us today, he is letting go of things – almost unconsciously, and we don't know why we are doing this," Osorio noted. Osorio also said that her first year at Stanford provided grist for her piece: "In our Stanford classes, everyone is always looking forward, which is good, because we want to talk about what we are doing now, which will affect tomorrow, but few seem to be looking behind as if they just want to cut off the ties to their history. As a Hawaiian, I have had trouble with this."

Dressed in an elegant turquoise blouse and slacks, Osorio stepped to the podium in the East Room and launched into litany of Hawaiian experiences. Her two-minute performance bore all the hallmarks of slam poetry, a style in which Osorio has distinguished herself. The spoken-word art frees poetry from the page and places poetry's candor and flights of imagination where many feel it rightfully belongs – before a live audience mixed with musical jams, sometimes with video and dance. Slam goes a step further and gives spoken word artists an arena for competition. An outfit known as Youth Speaks organizes slam fests for teens in more than two dozen U.S. cities. Osorio is a member of the Youth Speaks Hawai'i team, which last summer won first place at the 11th annual International Youth Poetry Slam Festival held in Washington, D.C. Therefore, the White House event did not mark her debut in the nation's capital, but as Osorio repeated in disbelief on the phone, "I was speaking out at the White House!"

Barack and Michelle Obama and cabinet colleagues hosted the poetry party as a part of a fulfillment of a popular campaign promise of inclusiveness, which encompassed a pledge to open the White House to a diverse public. The May 12 poetry party showcased rising stars of spoken-word art alongside their peer jazz musicians and seasoned celebrity artists, writers and performers, including actor James Earl Jones and novelist Michael Chabon. Obama is also reportedly a fan of poetry and has a particular interest in the work of Caribbean master poet Derek Walcott, according to an online article posted by The Guardian.

Osorio said the evening celebration looked to her like a perfect portrait of diversity. "I kept thinking this is a new kind of White House. There were people of color in the audience and on the stage and in the White House staff." She was also impressed with the friendliness of the celebrities. "Everyone was just so down-to-earth. It still hasn't hit me what happened," she said.

Osorio knew nothing about the White House event until just a few days before it took place, when she received a call from James Cass, the director of Youth Speaks for the San Francisco area. "We had this very impromptu conversation and he said, 'Well, I am going to tell you what you are doing on the evening of May 12, and if you don't agree we will have to fight about it,' " said Osorio. With the invitation arose a new challenge: she had to compose her Kumulipo poem, since she had no pieces that would clock in under the given limit of two minutes.

The Pālolo Valley girl swears she got into poetry quite by accident, after a health problem prevented her from continuing to pursue her first love: team sports. "That's when my writing took off. Before that sports to me was always a way of releasing my frustration and getting out things I wanted to express, but poetry became my new outlet," she said.

Though she says she just began to write poetry during her junior year in high school, Osorio appears to have discovered the power of the pen much earlier. As a student at Kaimukī Middle School, her application for admission to Kamehameha Schools was initially rejected. She wrote a letter to the school expressing her disappointment: "I felt like (Kamehameha Schools) was rejecting people who were working really hard to perpetuate Hawaiian culture and taking top-tier kids who could get into other private schools anyway. So my letter said Princess Bernice Pauahi would not have intended it this way."

Subsequently, Osorio was accepted at the school, where she excelled in music, winning a scholarship award named for Helen Desha Beamer. As much as she also loves music, Osorio said poetry has captured her heart. This was not only visible in the East Room, it can also be seen in the new HBO special Brave New Voices. The nine-part documentary features winning slam teams, including the group from Honolulu, of which Osorio is a member.

Catching her breath in the aftermath of her White House debut, Osorio has this to say about the benefits of poetry: "I can tell you it has changed my life. It made me a better student, a better writer and a more honest person. And through poetry, I've made so many friends for life."

Watch Osorio perform Kumulipo at the
White House via this link to her Facebook page.