The Songs of the American Prophets

In a time when it can feel as though everything has already been said and done in the global art community, how do we discover new forms of expression, understanding, and acceptance? How do we find new, new-romantic, and new-idealistic visions, new mystical sounds and verses—new art forms emerging both around us and within us? And what about narrative and discursive forms that seek to capture the complexity of our era?

We all have questions, and we all have answers. We speak clearly, yet how do we represent the world we live in—a world of mixing and hybridization—through new verbal and musical means capable of reflecting the shifting structures that shape our perceptions?

These questions may be dangerous, but there is good news: we know where the center of our magnetic curiosity lies.

The Songs of the American Prophets is the concept work of David Dephy, the visionary, poetic conductor of Poetry Orchestra. The sound forms and musical dimension of the project were created by Dephy in collaboration with sound artist Saphileaum, who shaped, mixed, engineered, and developed a new sonic language for this spoken-word narrative.

The album unites 12 tracks and 15 acclaimed American and international poets under a shared exploration of spiritual conflict, war, loneliness, madness, secrets, fear, and hope.

But what do we even call our time if everything is “post”? Post-truth? Post-mythos? Post-war and post-peace? Post-literature, post-music, post-visual arts? Post-everything? And then the deeper question: What does the American Prophets album—and even the word “post”—truly mean? What do they share? Is something new and unimaginable arriving in our world? A world still marked by terror, envy, and selfishness? Or does “post” signal a message, a premonition, a longing for an astonishing future—rupture and continuity at once, the erasure and inheritance of the past, the end of one era and the beginning of another? A spiritual one? A cosmic one?

The purpose of this work is to seek new forms of sound and storytelling—forms that allow the narrator to represent contemporary society differently, even idealistically, in an age defined by globalization, the dissolution of geographical and meta-geographical borders, labyrinthine thought, and the blending of languages.

The Songs of the American Prophets is a journey through the mysteries of our existence—and, in its own way, an artistic justification of that existence.

We believe this work carries an answer to those questions.