Why are more people not aware of these? And why aren’t they being televised? They should be. Way better than Wife Swap or whatever gawdawful “reality” shows they air nowadays.

These are four videos posted on the White House YouTube channel taken from the White House Evening of Poetry, Music, and the Spoken Word on May 12, 2009.

The first video is of Lin-Manuel Miranda, accompanied on piano by Tony Award-winning music director Alex Lacamoire, performing probably one of the best hip hop songs/poems I’ve ever heard, The Hamilton Mixtape, about Alexander Hamilton, the first United States Secretary of the Treasury.

Incidentally, I’m fairly certain that beat was inspired by Eminem’s Lose Yourself:

The second video from the White House mini-concert is a beautiful poem, Tamaraʼs Opus, by Brave New Voices slam champion Joshua Bennett, about a brother apologizing to his deaf sister for never having properly learned sign language:

The third is another Brave New Voices slam champion, Jamaica Osorio, performing her poem, Kumulipo:

The fourth and final video is bittersweet for me. It starts off amazing, but I don’t properly appreciate jazz to appreciate the arrangement she uses in this rendition of the song. It’s Esperanza Spalding performing her version of Tell Him, a song I have fond memories of because of one Miss Lauryn Hill:

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