Linton Kwesi Johnson: Lecture Three

1. Linton Kwesi Johnson: Lecture Three • 70s and 80s verse  late 80s and 90s verse • Systemic Racism  The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry • Reflections on change or not in UK and the world • How to read a dub poem  how to apply strategies for reading any poem to reading an oral poem or orature • “If I Woz a Tap Natch Poet”

2. Franco Rosso, BBC film: Dread Beat an’ Blood (1979) “All WiDoin’ is Defendin’” “It Dread Inna Inglan (for George Lindo)” (p. 23) • Footage of work at the Keskidee Centre and Race Today Collective, the Brixton Riots, and the protest in Bradford.

3. Linton Kwesi Johnson: Seventies and Eighties Verse • Poet as community historian and spokesman—Johnson’s use of Jamaican creole to establish and sustain that community. • A sustained critique of “ethnic absolutism” – Paul Gilroy • rite now, • African • Asian • West Indian • an’ Black British • stan firm innaInglan • . . . • for noh matter wat • dey say, • come wat may, • we are here to stay • innaInglan

4. Late 80s and 90s:Reflections on the changes in Britain and worldwide • a sober appraisal of what exactly had been achieved in terms of human freedom • (p. 99)“New Word Hawdah” – ethnic cleansing “sanitary workaz” • (p. 73)“Tings and Times” – “duped/doped/demaralized’ • “chantinfreedam, chantin justice, chantin blood an fyah” • blacks pan di radio • blacks pan tee vee • wi sir an wilaad an wimbe • a figatwifigatar a it dat? • do wi need anadahmoses • fitekwi crass di sea … • as wientahdi twenty-first century (p. 77) • (p. 48) “Reggae fi Dada” — one of Johnson’ s finest elegies. • Poverty, corruption, & political mismanagement in post-independence Jamaica

5. Late Eighties and early Nineties • assess the future of democratic socialism in a new world order after the fall of the Soviet Union • Elegies and love poems • “Hurricane Blues” (p. 82) — love poem, break-up of marrriage • Somethings have not changed: • “License Fi Kill” — deaths in police custody in Britain • (pp. 96-98)

6. “Systemic Racism” in the Metropolitan Police force • 1993 -2013 The Stephen Lawrence Case Continues • Sir William McPherson: “The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry” (1999) 22 April 1993: Stephen Lawrence is stabbed to death in an unprovoked attack by a gang of white youths as he waits at a bus stop in Eltham, south-east London, with his friend Duwayne Brooks. No one has ever been convicted 13 February 1997: Inquest into Lawrence's death ends with a verdict from the jury that he was "unlawfully killed by five white youths". 15 December 1997: Police Complaints Authority report on the original police investigation of Lawrence's murder identifies “significant weaknesses, omissions and lost opportunities". 24 February 1999: Report into the case and its wider implications by a former high court judge, Sir William Macpherson, concludes the police investigation was "marred by a combination of professional incompetence, institutional racism and a failure of leadership by senior officers". The charge of institutional racism in particular prompts a series of changes within the Metropolitan police. July 2013: Conservative Home Secretary refuses a judge-lead inquiry into allegations of a police smear campaign, which included spying and taping.

7. Have things Changed?Some Internet Resources 2005: London Police Shoot Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes 8 times • http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/jul/25/july7.uksecurity5 • http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/4713753.stm 2013: The Home Office “Go Home” debacle • http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/10232988/Race-hate-inquiry-into-Home-Office-go-home-billboards.html • http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2013/jul/26/illegal-immigrant-billboard-stunt 2014: Black face “isn’t racist”: Will Straw and the Britannia Coconut Dancers • http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/10777858/Racist-No-our-black-face-dance-is-a-proud-tradition.html

8. Dub Poetry • Dub is a genre of poetry • To “dub in” a musical rhythm into a poem • A dub poem has a built-in reggae rhythm is not merely putting a piece of poem ’pon a reggae rhythm, it is a poem that has a built-in reggae rhythm – hence when the poem is read without any… backing one can distinctly hear the reggae rhythm coming out of the poem Oku Onuora, Jamaican poet, 1979

9. How to read any poem What does the poem seek to do? How does the poem seek to do it? Choice of form Choice of design Choice of tone Choice of diction

10. Duncan Brown Voicing the Text page 18 What does the poem seek to accomplish in the spheres of social and political action? How does it accomplish this (by what rhetorical features/formal strategies)? Locate the poem within the concerns of its society and at the same time grant the poem its special status as a shaped utterance

11. Linton Kwesi Johnson: •  Lecture Four: Reading dub poetry LKJ is known as “the father of Dub poetry” What does his poetry seek to accomplish? • Political and communal history of the Black British • Spokesperson for Black British experience • Creation of inclusive, progressive civil society – especially with his use of “wi” How does it do this? What formal strategies? His poetry is a fusion of: • Jamaican creole • Reggae rhythms • Afro-Caribbean musical traditions

12. Reading dub poetry LKJ is known as “the father of Dub poetry” What does his poetry seek to accomplish? • Political and communal history of the Black British • Spokesperson for Black British experience • Creation of inclusive, progressive civil society – especially with his use of “wi” How does it do this? What formal strategies? His poetry is a fusion of: • Jamaican creole • Reggae rhythms • Afro-Caribbean musical traditions

13. “Dub poetry” “Jamaican Rebel Music” published in 1976, • a practice called “toasting” or “talkover,” wheredeejays in reggae dance clubs in Jamaica, such as U Roy, Big Youth, and Prince Jazbo, began reciting their own words over the “B” or dub side of a reggae album. • The roots of the practice reside in the musical poetic traditions of the West African griots, and toasting is also found in African American culture. • With the development of reggae and dub, however, toasting took on new dimensions. Dub is the remixed instrumental version of the reggae song, not simply reggae music without the lyrics “the deep structure of reggae. It’s the very skeleton of the music.” Dub creates atmosphere and emotion with drum and bass, using reverberation and echoes to give the music “a kind of illusionary spatial dimension,” • Interview with Klaus Ludes, Classical Reggae Interviews (http:www.classical-reggae-interviews.org), September 5, 1998. You will need sound to hear this)

14. “Linton Kwesi Johnson Interview.” • Interview with Elizabeth DiNovella. The Progressive. Feb. 2007. • <http://www.progressive.org/mag_intv0207>. Q: Why include a CD with the poems? Johnson: I’m writing in my mother tongue, which is an oral language, and people may not be familiar with my phonetic spelling, so we thought the a cappella CD would help. It’s an aid to the reader unfamiliar with reading Jamaican nation language in print. In any event, I write for both the reader and the listener. I’m writing for the eye and the ear. Q: What’s the difference between the two? Johnson: There isn’t any. Academics have this sort of dubious dichotomy between the oral and the scribal, but there isn’t any difference as far as I’m concerned.

15. Guardian Resources • Linton Kwesi Johnson: 'Diane Abbott was right about divide and rule' – video • http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/video/2012/mar/28/linton-kwesi-johnson-video • Wednesday 28 March 2012 • “Trust between the police and the black community is still broken” • Linton Kwesi Johnson • The Guardian, Wednesday 28 March 2012 • http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/mar/28/trust-police-black-community-riots “Linton Kwesi Johnson performs If I Woz A Tap-Natch Poet.” Guardian Online. December 11, 2008. <http:www.guardian.co.ukbooksvideo2008dec05linton-kwesi-johnson-poetry> An online video of the poet performing his poem in the Brixton library.

16. “If I Woz a Tap-Natch Poet.” poem begins with two epigraphs • a self-reflexive and open-ended declaration of his poetic creed • declarations undercut by use of the subjunctive: “If I woz” • playful send-up of the academic mechanisms developed to assess poetic reputations • provides Johnson’s own listing of who might be considered the world’s “tap-natch” poets. • In the album version: a jaunty calypso tune. Calypso, which developed in Trinidad, has long been “a major forum for the articulation of working-class dissent” Howard Johnson (p. 332) • Valuing of Caribbean oral folk culture • Johnson rejects a kind of postcolonial poetry driven only by ideology and rhetoric. “peddlinnoh puerile parchment afetnicity” • evade the strangleholds to creativity presented, on one hand, by the need for academic recognition and, on the other, by narrow demands for ethnic loyalty