Los Angeles, California, USA – September 18, 2026 – Grammy-nominated poet and spoken word artist Marc Marcel is challenging the boundaries of what a poetry album can become with Black Shaman Strikes Back, an ambitious new project that transforms a full-length spoken word album into a cinematic experience.
The follow-up to Marcel’s Grammy-nominated Black Shaman, Black Shaman Strikes Back moves beyond the traditional confines of recorded poetry. The album serves as the score, soundtrack and narrative foundation for an accompanying feature-length film, combining live-action filmmaking, original animation and AI-assisted visual production to create a continuous visual interpretation of Marcel’s poetry.
For Marcel, the project represents the culmination of a period of intense creative focus shaped by his own confrontation with mortality.
A survivor of a near-fatal airplane incident, Marcel has spoken about how the experience fundamentally changed his relationship with time and creative purpose. The questions — what we do with the time we have, what we leave behind and how fear can either constrain or propel us — run throughout Black Shaman Strikes Back. The album moves between vulnerability and defiance, spirituality and social commentary, and the deeply personal and universal.
“I have been breathing this album,” Marcel said. “There has been no other project on my plate — just this, one hundred percent, since the day after the Grammys.”
Marcel began developing the project immediately following the 2026 Grammy Awards, where Black Shaman was nominated for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album. Rather than attempt to recreate the project that earned him the nomination, he set out to push his work somewhere new.
The result is an album that deliberately refuses to stay within the traditional boundaries of spoken word.
Expanding What Poetry Can Become
Across Black Shaman Strikes Back, Marcel moves poetry through radically different musical environments.
Tracks including “Adam” and “Air” embrace expansive, cinematic storytelling, while “Gypsy Eyes” and “In the Light” move into electronic and EDM-influenced territory. Elsewhere, Marcel removes the production altogether, performing a cappella with nothing but voice, language and rhythm.
“I tried to give people the most well-rounded presentation of what poetry can be,” Marcel said. “I’m not trying to keep it in the box people expect it to live in.”
That same philosophy ultimately pushed the project beyond music.
Working with generative video platform Higgsfield AI, Marcel began translating the imagery embedded in his poetry into visual sequences. What started as an album expanded into an accompanying feature-length film blending live-action footage, original animation and AI-assisted visuals around the album’s narrative.
The technology, Marcel says, is ultimately a tool in service of something much older: imagination.
“I’m a poet with a magic paintbrush,” Marcel said. “My art is only bound to the limits of my imagination.”
The resulting film treats the poetry not as background narration or an addition to a traditional screenplay, but as the foundation from which the visual story is constructed.
An Ambitious Creative Collaboration
The scope of Black Shaman Strikes Back extends to the artists Marcel assembled around the project.
Produced by Leandro Álvarez, the album features contributions from Grammy-winning composer and pianist Kitt Wakeley, with classical arrangements performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Grammy-nominated New age vocalist Gem Auset lends her voice to the album, while performers GeorgiaMe and Malina Moye contribute to the project’s theatrical and musical range. Grammy-nominated artist and social influencer StaJe serves as executive producer.
Together, the collaborators move the album across orchestral, electronic, theatrical and stripped-down musical landscapes while keeping Marcel’s poetry at its center.
The result is a project meant to be immersively experienced.
Spoken Word at a Creative Crossroads
Black Shaman Strikes Back arrives as spoken word continues to claim a larger place within the recording industry and as emerging technology gives independent artists new ways to translate ideas across mediums.
For Marcel, those developments create an opportunity to reconsider what it means to be a poet in the first place.
Rather than separating poetry, music and filmmaking into distinct creative disciplines, Black Shaman Strikes Back treats them as parts of the same storytelling language — allowing a poem to begin with the human voice, expand through an orchestra or electronic production, and ultimately become a visual world.
The project also marks Marcel’s return to the Grammy conversation. Black Shaman Strikes Back has been submitted for consideration in the Best Spoken Word Poetry Album category, following his 2026 nomination for Black Shaman.
But Marcel sees the project’s larger significance beyond awards.
At a moment when technology is rapidly changing how independent artists create and distribute their work, Black Shaman Strikes Back offers a glimpse at a different creative model — one in which a poet can build not only an album, but an entire visual universe around the work.
The accompanying feature film extends that experiment, positioning poetry as the foundation for cinematic storytelling rather than simply an element within it.
Black Shaman Strikes Back was released August 18. The accompanying feature film is expected to debut in fall 2026, with an official release date to be announced.
About Marc Marcel
Marc Marcel is a Grammy-nominated poet, spoken word artist, author and performer whose work explores identity, spirituality, social consciousness and the human experience. His album Black Shaman was nominated for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album at the 2026 Grammy Awards. With Black Shaman Strikes Back, Marcel expands his creative practice across music, film, animation and emerging visual technology while continuing to explore the possibilities of poetry as a contemporary storytelling medium.
Listen and Learn More:
Black Shaman Strikes Back: https://linktr.ee/blackshaman
Official Website: https://www.iammarcmarcel.com
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/marcmarcel
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marcmarcel
Media ContactCompany Name: Connect Reach MarketingContact Person: Justin PayneEmail: Send EmailCity: Los AngelesState: CACountry: United StatesWebsite: Connectreachmarketing.com
