By Tobias
Schlosser
Celebrations
for the unofficial 40th anniversary of dub poetry have already begun, with
several poetry events taking place internationally. Last February, northern
England hosted the 14th Annual Poetry in Motion event (founded by dub poet Yasus Afari), and in
April the Roots Dub Poetry Reggae Revival
took place in Kingston, Jamaica.
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| Linton Kwesi Johnson |
Things will
probably kick into higher gear in 2018 to mark 40 years since the first record
with spoken words on dub music was released: Linton Kwesi Johnson’s Dread Beat an’ Blood.
So, in the run-up, let's look back at the roots of dub and its poetry, and how it all started.
Dub has its
origin in reggae, but it has charted its own course. Reggae vibes are often
associated with peace, love and harmony, while listeners sometimes forget that
this music was born in areas of Jamaica where violence and exclusion were the
ingredients of everyday life.
Whereas Bob Marley’s songs created hope, and
exhorted listeners to fight for a better future, dub (the pared-down instrumental
remix) is often said to have initially created a form of escapism, especially
for people who had few prospects of gainful employment. Troubles could be
temporarily alleviated when the tunes from the sound systems created a
“Dancehall Nirvana”, as the ethnomusicologist Michael E. Veal illustrates in
his acclaimed publication Dub.
Soundscapes & Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae.
The emergence
of dub poetry out of Jamaica’s music culture is largely a story of emigration. After
World War II, many Jamaicans sought to find a better life overseas. They were
encouraged to do so by the British government since the country needed
“affordable” labour (it is the same story for Canada, especially Ontario, where
Toronto became a centre for dub poetry). But instead of being accepted fully by
the society in which they worked, Jamaicans often faced racism and
discrimination. Many felt betrayed when they compared their circumstances to what
had been promised and what they had left behind, and this situation went on to affect those coming of age in the Seventies. By then, dub was serving new needs; the music was no longer considered a form of "escapism" because with spoken words, it was becoming a medium to reflect the experiences and the disappointments far away from home.
At the same time, the tunes were a constant reminder of one’s roots amidst the
diaspora.
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| The sleeve of a 1996 compilation. |
Thus Linton Kwesi
Johnson’s work would focus on describing the struggles in Britain where some immigrants felt forced
to live in the shadows.
Two years after his first release, his now-famous and hard-hitting “Inglan
is a Bitch” came out; this searing poem encapsulates the perspective of an
immigrant in London who finds it impossible to escape from poverty regardless of
the effort he makes.
The poem emerged amid a time of political unrest and
protests on the streets, which also found their assessment in dub poetry. For
instance, the death of activist Blair Peach after an attack in an anti-racism
demonstration is the subject of Johnson’s poem “Reggae Fi Peach”
(1980). Johnson is considered the first poet to describe the emotions among
immigrants in the British inner cities forty years ago, using words, music and non-violence to help effect change and raise awareness.
Regarding his
own evolution as a dub poet, Johnson told Jamaican writer Alecia
McKenzie in an interview that he’d first decided to put his poetry to music
in 1976.
“I used to
recite poetry unaccompanied before that,” he said. “Then I started using Rasta
drummers. At the time I was working at Virgin Records, writing sleeve notes and
so on, so I asked the people there to help me make an album.”
Virgin
founder Richard Branson agreed to finance the record and it was recorded with
British dub music pioneer Dennis Bovell and other artists and released in 1978.
Johnson has described doing readings in numerous venues after the launch of the
album but he told McKenzie he had “never been part of or tried to get into the
literary establishment”.
Born in
Jamaica in 1952, Johnson moved to London 11 years later and, as a student, was
involved in organizing poetry workshops and building solidarity. Throughout the
development of the dub poetry genre, he and and other poets have consistently supported
one other; for example, Johnson helped Michael “Mikey” Smith to record his only
album Mi Cyaan Believe it in the early
1980s. Already an acclaimed poet by age 28, Smith was killed after a political
argument in Kingston in 1983 - a murder that outraged and saddened many
citizens.
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| Dub poet Oku Onuoru (photo: Veronique Skelsey) |
Johnson’s LKJ
record label, set up in 1981, has also recorded fellow poets and musicians such
as Jean “Binta” Breeze and Bovell, and he has worked with Oku Onuora,
Mutabaruka and several others.
In the interview, Johnson credited Oku Onuoru with popularizing the term “dub
poetry”. Onuoru in fact had performed his poetry with a reggae band in 1974,
while he was in prison, and after his release he performed live with Mikey
Smith. Onuoro released his first dub record in 1979, recorded at Bob Marley’s
Tuff Gong studios, and he developed a friendship with Johnson during subsequent
tours in Europe. His work, too, has always been political.
For Johnson,
creating his own record label was a way to “provide a platform for poetry" that
came out of the reggae tradition.
“I’d been
slagging off the big labels for the way they treated artists,” he told McKenzie. “So I
thought I’d put my money where my mouth is.”
The LKJ Records
productions include Tracks by Jean
“Binta” Breeze, Bushfire by saxophonist and flautist Steve Gregory, Tings and Times
by Johnson and Dub of Ages by Dennis
Bovell.
On the other
side of the Atlantic, where Onuoru and Mutabaruka spoke out in Kingston against local and global injustice, Canada was seeing a growing dub poetry movement as well. In Toronto,
a lively and predominantly female dub poetry scene was founded by Lillian Allen,
and artists such as Afua Cooper and Ahdri Zihna Mandiela rose out of this. Dub poetry did not only help Jamaicans living far away from home to
express themselves on issues of concern, it also became a tool for the second
generation of immigrants (such as Benjamin Zephaniah) and it additionally influenced
poets in Jamaica (like No-Maddz).
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| CD sleeve of "LKJ IN DUB" (1992) |
With these
developments, the messages of dub poetry have become more complex and
challenging. In the 1970s, Dub poets attacked the elites and institutions that
supported and carried out policies of racial discrimination.
Nowadays, where
things have changed with regard to official policies, it is no longer the rules
that are criticised, but the structures in which we live.
The tendency today is for
dub poets to address structures of discrimination, and by doing so, find
similarities with other people facing exclusion. Lillian Allen, for example,
illustrates in her poems how extreme masculinity causes violence from which
women and men suffer, and Ahdri Zhina Mandiela challenges heteronormative
structures in her poetry.
Furthermore, Benjamin Zephaniah sees a sad truth in
the fact that it is only a question of the power hierarchy whether you are
heard and visible. Referring to Aboriginal people in Australia and Taiwan,
Zephaniah made this universal statement in an interview: “It’s a shame that the
people who are peaceful, the people who just want to live in peace and don’t seek
power, are the people who get walked over.”
Considering
these different trends, one might find it challenging to come up with a
suitable definition of dub poetry because this art is beyond the mere
arrangement of having spoken words on pared-down reggae grooves.
Maybe it can be described
this way: Dub poetry is an art movement representing the people whose voices
are not heard enough. That is why poet Lillian Allen
claims in an interview
that dub poetry’s aim is “to disrupt traditional discourse. [Dub poetry’s
intention] is to call attention to a whole life that has been ignored, that’s
happening and that actually feeds the other life [...], but that has been cut
out of the discourse or the images and so forth.”
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| Dennis Bovell's "Dub of Ages" - for ages to come? |
According to Allen, the core
of dub poetry is its “uncompromising and demanding stand”.
We can conclude
that dub poetry is alive, and will always be, even if poets were to stop
performing the genre. The reason for this is simple. As Mutabaruka's “Dis Poem” demonstrates, a dub poem has the ability “to be continued in your
mind”.
And as Linton
Kwesi Johnson has said: “I haven’t lost my street cred. It’s been a long
apprenticeship, but it’s an on-going process.”
NOTE: Linton
Kwesi Johnson received an honorary doctorate from Rhodes University in
Grahamstown, South Africa, in April 2017.
Tobias
Schlosser is a German writer, researcher and expert drink-maker.
