Marc Marcel, Grammy-Nominated Spoken Word Artist
Black Shaman Strikes Back Album Cover
Marc Marcel taken by Lorena Gheorghe
Marc Marcel, Visionary behind Black Shaman Strikes Back Film
Black Shaman Strikes Back Film
New multimedia project expands the possibilities of spoken word through orchestral and electronic music, live action, animation and AI-assisted filmmaking
LOS ANGELES, CA, UNITED STATES, October 7, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — 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, released in August, 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 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.
From Album to Screen
The feature film accompanying Black Shaman Strikes Back will make its screen debut on October 7, 2026, with an intimate private screening in Hollywood, marking the first time the film will be presented to an audience.
The screening brings Marcel’s cross-medium experiment full circle, presenting his 22nd spoken word album as a complete cinematic work. Built around the album’s poetry and music, the feature blends live-action filmmaking, original animation, and AI-assisted visuals to translate Marcel’s words into an immersive cinematic narrative.
Presented by The Cosmidelic Foundation at the Hang On To The Dream Foundation in Los Angeles, the October 7 event will offer a curated audience an exclusive first look at the film ahead of its broader release.
For Marcel, the premiere represents the realization of the larger creative vision behind Black Shaman Strikes Back — an album conceived not simply to be heard, but to become an entire visual world.
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 cinematic 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.
About Marc Marcel
Marc Marcel is a Grammy-nominated poet, spoken word artist, author, animator, and performer whose work explores spirituality, philosophy, social consciousness, and the human experience. Born in Baltimore and diagnosed with dyslexia at age 10, Marcel has built a career spanning 150 U.S. cities and eight countries, published five books, and produced 22 spoken word albums. He has performed at more than 50 universities, including Harvard and Yale, entertained U.S. troops in Qatar, and performed at the Smithsonian’s 2009 Presidential Inaugural Peace Ball.
In 2026, Marcel earned a Grammy nomination for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album for Black Shaman. His creative work extends beyond spoken word to books, animation, film, and multimedia storytelling, including The Book That Doesn’t Even Matter and Gurus, a satirical animated series featuring some of history’s most notable philosophers.
Marcel is co-founder of Cosmidelic Productions and founder of The Cosmidelic Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Through his work across these platforms, he continues to explore the intersection of creativity, consciousness, philosophy, and emerging forms of storytelling.
To learn more about Marc Marcel, visit iammarcmarcel.com.
About Cosmidelic Productions
Cosmidelic Productions is a conscious entertainment and multimedia company creating original content at the intersection of art, philosophy, spirituality and emerging technology. Co-founded by Marc Marcel and Brian Flaccus, Cosmidelic develops projects across film, animation, podcasting, poetry, and AI-driven storytelling designed to challenge conventional thinking and expand the possibilities of contemporary storytelling.
Its growing creative universe includes Cosmidelic Download, a metaphysical and philosophical podcast hosted by Marcel; Gurus, a philosophical satire series; and Nova Sol’Kai, an AI-centered storytelling project exploring the intersection of human consciousness, philosophy, and machine intelligence. Through its productions, Cosmidelic merges entertainment with deeper inquiry, creating work that invites audiences to question, explore, and imagine new possibilities.
To learn more about Cosmidelic Productions, visit cosmidelic.com.
About The Cosmidelic Foundation
The Cosmidelic Foundation is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to educating and inspiring individuals through storytelling, creativity, and conscious innovation. Through books, films, podcasts, poetry, and immersive multimedia experiences, the Foundation explores topics including mental health, personal growth, equality, and societal awareness, using the intersection of entertainment and education to encourage curiosity, self-awareness, and positive change.
Rooted in a belief in the transformative power of storytelling, The Cosmidelic Foundation supports creative work and community-driven initiatives designed to inspire a more connected, conscious, and compassionate world.
To learn more about The Cosmidelic Foundation, visit cosmidelic.com/foundation.
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