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LKJ on The World
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The World, LKJ on The World >>
Today's Global Hit is part poetry, part music. The man behind the combustible mix is Linton Kwesi Johnson. He's widely credited with being the founder of "dub poetry," which is essentially spoken word with a reggae backing. The World's Marco Werman reports.
Linton Kwesi Johnson was born in the Jamaican countryside.
He and his family moved to London when he was 11.
It was the early 1960s.
He joined the Black Panthers when he entered college.
The British version of the Panthers wasn't the same thing as the Black Panthers in America.
Linton Kwesi Johnson: "We were two separate organizations. We took the name "panther." Of course in America it was the Black Panther Party. In this country it was the Black Panther Movement. And it was an organization of Africans, West Indians, Asians involved in the struggle for racial equality and social justice."
Marco Werman: Was that where you picked up your politics?
Linton Kwesi Johnson: "Absolutely...That is where I discovered black literature and started to write poetry and eventually became a recording artist. I discovered black literature because we didn't have it in schools. I discovered Langston Hughes. I discovered W.E.B. DuBois, whose book, "The Souls of Black Folk" had a very powerful impact on me and led me to explore in other black writers from America...people like Gwendolyn Brooks whose poetry had a profound effect on me."
Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks had a musicality to their poetry.
That inspired Linton Kwesi Johnson...as did those poets' interpretation of the black experience in America.
Linton Kwesi Johnson: "The first poem that I wrote...when people started calling me a poet...was a poem called "Five Nights of Bleeding" which described a number of violent incidents, which occured in various parts of London, involving youth of my generation. Maybe I should give you a stanza:
Night number one was in Brixton
Sofrano B sound system
Was a-beatin' up the riddim with a fire
Comin' down his reggae reggae wire
It was a sound checkin' down your spinal column
A bad music tearin' up your flesh
An' the rebels dem start a fighting
De youth dem just turn wild, it's
War amongs' the rebels
Madness, madness, war
Linton Kwesi Johnson had only a small stylistic hop to take from poems like that one to the musical style he invented.
Politically-charged spoken word reggae became known as dub poetry.
And it yielded Linton Kwesi Johnson his first hit.
"Sonny's Lettah" was sung from the point of view of a Jamaican locked in a British prison.
He's writing a letter to his mom back home in the West Indies.
He's explaining how he came to the defense of a friend who was beaten by the London police.
I wear two hats. I wear the hat of the poet and I wear the hat of the reggae performer. Usually I'm doing two different kinds of things with the same words.
Linton Kwesi Johnson: "It's two different kinds of experience, because when you go to hear a band you don't just go to hear the vocalist. You want to hear the guitarist and the bass player and the horn section and all that. That's all a part of an evening of musical entertainment. When you go to a poetry reading it's the voice. It's all about the voice."
Marco Werman: You've been performing now for quite some time. Do you feel that what you're saying today is being heard? Or are there other poeple stepping in to say the same sort of thing in a different vein?
Linton Kwesi Johnson: "I hope there are other people stepping in to say the same things in a different way because the message needs to be continually spread. And I also hope that people are still listening to what I have to say on these matters."
Linton Kwesi Johnson says subjects such as police brutality and racial tension are still relevant to his audiences.
And yet his pen has been dormant for nearly four years.
He says he's taking time off to give himself a chance to begin writing again.
Linton Kwesi Johnson does have a new CD out. It's a live album. He wrote all the songs on it at least five years ago. 03/07/05 >> go there
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