Andrea "Vocab" Sanderson is a Poet Laureate Emeritus of San Antonio, TX, and the author of She Lives in Music (Flower Song Press, 2020).
Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson is a San Antonio native and a Poet Laureate Emeritus of San Antonio, TX. 2020-2023. Her dynamic style is a fusion of poetry, hip-hop, and R&B. She is a teaching artist who enjoys facilitating workshops all over the nation. She has opened up for Nikki Giovanni, Dr. Cornel West, and Phylicia Rashad. Some of her awards include: Dream Voice 2018 awarded by The Dream Week Commission, The Arts and Letters Award, 2020, Impact Award 2023 for contributions to the arts awarded by The Carver. Best Local Poet 2023 and 2021, by the San Antonio Current. In 2021, she received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship for her legacy project The Echo Project, which featured on KLRN. Vocab's debut book, She Lives In Music was published on Flower Song Press and her albums are available for streaming on all music platforms. In 2022 & 2023, she received Creation Fund grants from National Performance Network for her theatre production with Lubana Al-Quntar entitled, The Seasoned Woman, a production co-commissioned by The Carver and Art2Action. Vocab has collaborated with Centro San Antonio with the public art pieces of poetry: Elevated Melanin, a tribute to that piece is located in Peacock Alley and more recently Permission to Play, a multidisciplinary mural featuring the art of Barbara Felix located on Commerce Street, in downtown San Antonio and The San Antonio International Airport. For more info visit her website: AndreaVocabSanderson.com
Sacred Tongues
Are our tongues not sacred, so much so, that we have buried them in the dirt with our forefathers wailing? Who am I to speak on her skin? Red and hewn from Earth amber touched by terracotta… she has found her worth in forming her heritage around the sun. She speaks to me in a dialect akin to my own, but our worlds are as similarly vast as the waters that separate our ancestors.
She like me has birthed no ravens from her womb, but her hair is as dark as onyx excavated at midnight. The corners of her eyes are tight and her lids are wrapped in coal. She stole ancient history from the scrolls of her upbringing and sang me a song of destiny forgotten.
With lips soft as cotton she speaks the language reminds me that I am so far removed from my Mother Land that the sands of my skin can't recognize trade winds blown from the Ivory Coast. What I yearn for the most is the connection to the roots stemming upward of my family tree.
I yearn for her to see a little bit of herself when she looks at me.
Wish that I was not raised in ambiguity wilting in uncertainty. Peeking through plantation quarters shrouded in mystery stroking indistinguishable traits handed to me through genes and homogenous origins that I can not see.
I am only knowledgeable of five generations that came before me.
But the palm of my outstretched hand can not summon or command a grasp to comprehend who I really am. Never will I know or understand the continent that continually circulates in my veins. Won't recognize the correlation of tribal dance rhythms colliding in a pulsing strain of my heart's terrain.
I can not audibly claim alliance to any country within the continent from whence I know my people came. My words seem almost profane in my exchange with this woman who has spoken in the seed that gave birth to her speech. I do not envy but I admire as I ask her to teach me to say words so sacred I can not pronounce. Syllables so unfamiliar to my tongue and ear that the clarity of what I hear cannot translate to my lips. So I sip enlightenment from her and she curves her mouth in a dispensation of grace that evaporates the silence and paints this moment between us in purity. I sit and I sip until, I want to dig in the ground and search for a sound so holy.
That English becomes foreign to me and I speak and I speak sacredly.
THE INTERVIEW
This interview was conducted between Andrea "Vocab" Sanderson and Jae Nichelle on Jult 1, 2024.
Thank you so much for sharing “Sacred Tongues.” I know that so many of us feel disconnected from our full lineage, so I keep returning to the line “I am only knowledgeable of five generations that came before me.” What’s the earliest history you know of your family?
The part of my family that I learned about on my paternal side stems back to Louisiana and them arriving on an oxen cart to Texas. My dad’s family settled around Port Arthur before relocating to Corpus. But I know about my great great grands and that my people were owned by the folks that had the Sanderson’s chicken farms. My grandmother owned a book of Sandersons that documents Sanderson folk globally. I also took a genetic test that indicated that I am primarily African with the highest percentage being Nigerian. My Nigerian homies already knew this on sight, looking at me. LOL
You recently ended your tenure as San Antonio’s first Black Poet Laureate, during which you created The Echo Project, an oral history initiative honoring community leaders. What other accomplishments during your term are you most proud of?
I think my public art works Elevated Melanin and Sunny Salutations at Poet’s Pointe, Permission to Play, Suds to Salvation (which hasn’t been unveiled yet) and my TEDx Talk (a dream come true) are my proudest moments besides The Echo Project. I have loved all of the multidisciplinary work that I have done alone and through collaboration. I cannot believe how much I have done. Meeting and working with Tanesha Payne and Lubanna Al-Quntar really challenged me in the best ways to come up with new ways of expression.
As a multidisciplinary artist, do you feel as though there are some ideas/ thoughts that are easier for you to express in one discipline vs another?
Hip hop is the easiest and also the most difficult, oddly. Easy, because I love rhyming and difficult because I try to use too many words in a meter and I have to figure out how to say them all before the beat drops. So I write quickly, but then I have to edit and recite it to the beat.
I loved learning via your 300 Voices interview that the name “Vocab” came from how you would read the dictionary as a kid and the importance you place on having an extensive vocabulary. Do you happen to have a top favorite and least favorite word?
Favorite words: juxtaposition and calligraphy. I dislike slurs and derogatory terms for women.
You developed your newest song “Are We There Yet” as part of a collaboration with Centro San Antonio. Can you speak to how you got involved in the project and your thoughts on the importance of art and poetry in public spaces?
I have worked with Centro San Antonio since 2020 when we came together to paint Elevated Melanin, from there we did other public art. Recently we installed, the Permission to Play mural on Commerce St. and Terminal A of the San Antonio International Airport. The mural was designed by Barbara Felix and contains my poetry and the concept was mine. The musical composition for the song was played created by Eddy “Versatile” Keyz. The music video was produced and filmed by Barbara Felix and features Odious Dance and Xelena Gonzalez. In my thoughts and views, all forms of art are a reflection of our inner spirit and a manifestation of what is on the inside of us. Movement and words are a form of communication of something that is supernatural. They are vital.
If you travel out of San Antonio for an extended time, what do you find yourself missing about home?
When I travel away, I miss familiar sounds and smells. I miss the smell of our food and the sound of fusion of regional dialects. Very bluntly, I miss Mexican people, and Mexican American people, I miss immigrants being more of a majority than a minority. If I go to a place outside of the Bible belt, I miss the sight of churches. IF I leave the south, I miss iced tea. IF I leave Texas, I miss big glasses and cups when I go to a restaurant. Southern people give you a huge cup to drink out of. Example… look at a Whataburger cup. A medium is 32 oz.
How can people support you right now?
People can support by streaming my tracks on any music platform. Subscribe to my Youtube or Spotify or just tell a friend to check me out. Follow me on instagram Vocabulous
Name another Black woman writer people should follow.
My buddy Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton.
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