Not About Winning: Team Philadelphia Shocks The Brave New Voices Judges + New Poet Stars On The Horizon (VIDEOS)

In previous posts, I had discussed how the "Brave New Voices" Team Philadelphia had challenged the judges on a technicality of one of the other teams who got into the finals. Apparently the other team went over their allotted time and as a result Team Philadelphia got into the finals.

In the final episode which aired last week, Team Philadelphia decided to take themselves out of scoring points in the contest and that it wasn't as much about "winning" as it was about letting their voices be heard.  They then proceeded to perform brilliantly in the rest of the episode. (Team Hawaii won).

As a tribute to the excellent work seen on the show from  Josh Bennett (C'10), Alysia Harris (C'10), and Aysha El Shamyleh (C'10), I wanted to share some more excellent performances from the Penn group of which they are a part: The Excelano Project. Check out some of these moving on campus performances above!

Recently, Josh Bennett performed at the White House for the Obamas. Read more about it at the DP HERE!

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READ MORE - Not About Winning: Team Philadelphia Shocks The Brave New Voices Judges + New Poet Stars On The Horizon (VIDEOS)

Team Philadelphia Uses Their Brave New Voices to RIGHTFULLY Advance Into Finals! (VIDEO)

Drama alert!

If you saw Russell Simmons' "Brave New Voices" on Sunday night you would have seen that at first our Team Philadelphia didn't get into the finals...BUT because of their "brave new voices", they called the judges on a technicality of one of the other teams who got into the finals.  Apparently the other team went over their allotted time. As a result, Team Philadelphia is rightfully now in the finals!

While I have covered chilling performances from Josh Bennett (C'10) and Alysia Harris (C'10), last night was the first time we were introduced to Aysha El Shamyleh (C'10).  And while they didn't show Aysha's "Cupid in a War Zone" video posted on the HBO site on Sunday night's episode, I wanted to make sure all of you got the chance to check it out above.  It's yet another spine tingling, emotional performance by Team Philadelphia!

Per HBO.com,

'Aysha spits passionately about gender and social justice for the Middle East and all Muslims. "My first language is Arabic," she says. "And sometimes I feel really guilty because I cannot pick up a pen and write a poem in Arabic. Maybe it's because it's a very rich, sophisticated language, very difficult to use." Is there slam poetry in the Arab world? Aysha says, "Not that I'm aware of, but my sister and I were thinking we would love to introduce it to Jordan and the Arab world."'

On a related note, in this week's episode there was a moving clip from a performance where Aysha El Shamyleh (C'10) and Alysia Haris (C'10) perform together. Each were locked arm in arm and had their back to one another and were supposed to represent two different sides of a person.  I presently can't find the clip anywhere but if I should find it, I will post it on DT.

Let's all hope that Team Philadelphia wins next Sunday night in the Finals!





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READ MORE - Team Philadelphia Uses Their Brave New Voices to RIGHTFULLY Advance Into Finals! (VIDEO)