There’s a cut and paste version of explaining what the Speak! CD is all about,

Speak! is a women of color-led media collective. In the summer months of 2008, they created a CD compilation of spoken word, poetry, and song. After months of hard work, they are excited to finally share their first self-named album with the world!

With artists and poets from all over the country, the Speak! CD is a testament of struggle, hope, and love. Many of the contributors are in the Radical Women of Color blogosphere and will be familiar names to you. Instead of just reading their work, you’ll be able to hear their voices.

Proceeds of this album will go toward funding mothers and/or financially restricted activists wanting to attend the Allied Media Conference in Detroit, MI this July. This is our own grassroots organizing at its finest with financial assistance from the AMC. Here it is, ready for your purchasing!

but I thought I’d give you another version in case you already read that…

In all the juke and jive I’ve encountered about how people want to raise their social consciousness, in all the complaints that online interaction and threads don’t really do anything, amongst all the bemoaning the road that mainstream music has traveled, and all the talk among folks who want to “help” but don’t know how…Here is a musical, artistic collection of work between scholars, activists, poets, mothers, warriors, students, sisters, and partners which does one thing: it speaks truth.

Each track, as I listened to it again last night, is piece of truth of someone’s life. You may not understand it. You may not get it. But, there it is, twenty tracks of spoken truth reserved to fill the spaces and ears of those willing to listen and engage.

Be a part of it.