Spoken word has seen something of a surge in the London music scene recently, epitomised by the SpitNights circuit, which filled out the sizable Roundhouse in April with its fruitful blend of poetry and improvised jazz.

A form that is dismissed by some, there is clearly something about our current social and political climate that continues to draw audiences to the clarity and potency of spoken word.

When in the hands of powerhouse poet Aja Monet, it simply reaches new heights.

Born in Brooklyn, Monet spent years honing her craft in New York’s supreme poetry slam and hip-hop scene, and has since drawn from an abundance of musical influences from soul, to blues, to gospel, to jazz, to become a truly unique musical talent.

She dubs her genre ‘surrealist blues’ - a slightly enigmatic term perhaps, bringing echoes of Langston Hughes. And last week she brought this surrealist blues from across the Atlantic to Colour Factory as part of the Pitchfork Music Festival, and left the audience spellbound.

Like Hughes, there is a distinct social-protest element about Monet’s work, and to say she wears her heart on her sleeve would be an understatement.

In between songs on the Congo mines that supply our smartphones (‘for the Congo’), and lamentations on inequality and ICE agents in LA (‘hollyweird’), she gave anecdotes about Free Palestine marches, and impassioned speeches advocating the principles of socialism.

The protest thread ran through the playing of impressive support act Momoko Gill – who is one to watch, with a jazz sound that can be at once pulsing and ambient – and was displayed aesthetically by Monet’s keyboardist in the form of a black fist Afro comb, an accessory symbolically associated with the Black Power movement.

Jazz itself, of course, has long been a vehicle for protest. And here, Monet’s band of keys (Brian Hargrove), bass (Dominique Sanders) and drums (Zachary Morrow) were superb. They knew exactly when to sit back and let her voice shine through, and when to drive the music forward: whether that be in the form of gentle, soulful rhythm backing, or alarm-like keyboard solos and explosive drums. 

There was also spirited call and response between Monet and Morrow, harking back to the gospel and blues traditions utilised by protest performer and forerunner Nina Simone. There were even moments when she leaned into the role of a preacher – it isn’t often in Hackney Wick that you see a show ending with a blessing.

No doubt the success is down to Monet’s skill as a bandleader. Being a bandleader is hard, being a poet bandleader is doubly hard. But she directs the players and manages time with such ease and control, and even effectively utilises silence: ‘silence is a noise too.’

She proved, too, the flexibility and capability of spoken word, and has in effect mastered it as a tool for jazz. Her voice can be percussive, can bend and snap in the way of a double bass, can scream at the top range; and she can experiment with rhythm and emphasis with true verve.

This was particularly true of her performance of ‘working class musicians’, a swinging ode to the dedication and struggle of working musicians: ‘though it be a labour of love, a labour it is’. 

In her introduction Monet had extended this admiration to not just musicians but all who work in the music industry, and all in the working class, a message which struck a particular chord on the day the US midterm elections recalibrated the focus on working-class people.

Monet ended the night with ‘elsewhere’, a homage to Sly & The Family Stone that not only sunk the audience into a sumptuous funk groove, but encapsulated the essence of Aja Monet.

Her surrealism – brought to life in the vivid stage production, with banners of flowing poetry streaming from the balconies – was most evident in her lyrics here, inviting the audience to ‘embrace the marvellous daydreams / born in the forest of our refuge’.

Always embracing possibility, and the endurance of the individual soul above the harshness of our reality, she proclaimed: ‘we were born to be sun ray, radiant / falling upon the horizon newly each day shining waywardness / let’s go, let’s go to the elsewhere.’