Together with his trilby hat and goatee, Linton Kwesi Johnson’s silhouette is as iconic as his baritone voice. From his London house in Brixton, the place he’s merely often called “poet”, to Coachella – Johnson or LKJ as he’s affectionately identified, has carried out his verse to generations of followers and is broadly credited as the daddy of dub poetry.The primary spoken phrase artist to offer voice to the youngsters of Windrush (the second era of the Caribbean diaspora) LKJ cleared the way in which for the likes of Benjamin Zephaniah, Lemn Sissay and Akala and for a time was the one dwelling poet (and the primary Black poet) to be revealed within the esteemed Penguin Trendy Classics collection. The primary stanza of his story begins in rural Jamaica in 1952 and the city of Chapelton the place he was raised by his grandmother after his dad and mom separated and the primary literature the younger Linton encountered was the Bible, the place he met written verse for the primary time.
Leaving Jamaica in 1963 he was reunited along with his mom in London and was shocked by the hostility he encountered in England, and never simply from cartoonish racists akin to The Nationwide Entrance, however from academics at school. Learning sociology at Goldsmiths college, he found writers akin to Aimé Césaire and Léopold Senghor and attended Black Panther conferences – taking the identify Kwesi (the Akan identify for born on a Sunday) and across the identical time started composing poetry.
It was while dabbling in music journalism and writing report sleeve notes for Virgin Data that he related with Barbados born producer and multi-instrumentalist Dennis Bovell (author of the traditional “Silly Games”) and collectively in 1978 they launched Linton’s debut album Dread Beat an’ Blood from the place the first of our 5 dubs “All Wi Doin’ Is Defendin” comes.
A meditation on the stress felt by Black youth within the inside metropolis “All Wi Doin’ Is Defendin’”, is propelled ahead by a rockers drum riddim over which Johnson “toasts” or chats his verse answered by unsettling keyboard riffs. The poem predicts the Brixton riots that got here just a few years later, documenting the rising resentment felt by the youth in the direction of the police:
Doze days
of di truncheon
An doze nites
of melancholy locked in a cell
Earlier than concluding that such days are “nicely numbered”.
“All Wi Doin’ Is Defendin’” by Linton Kwesi Johnson
Police brutality can also be the topic of “Sonny’s Lettah” from Linton’s second album Forces of Victory launched in 1979. The speaker of “Sonny’s Lettah (Anti Sus poem)” begins with their deal with of writing (Brixton Jail SW2) and it’s the racist SUS legal guidelines, cease and search legal guidelines used to criminalise Black Britons, that present the catalyst for the tragedy associated on this epistle from a son to his mom:
Mama, I actually doun know how one can inform ya dis
For I did mek a solemn promise
To tek care a lickle Jim
And take a look at mi greatest fi look out fi him
“Sonny’s Lettah (Anti Sus poem)” by Linton Kwesi Johnson
The speaker prefaces earlier than detailing a violent assault by the hands of the police. On a aspect notice the harmonica which wails like a siren on Sonny’s Lettah is performed by non different than Dreadful Julio (Julio Finn) – a aspect man for Archie Shepp. Forces of Victory additionally options the late Emmanuel “Rico” Rodriguez the Cuban born trombone participant who educated on the legendary Alpha Boys Faculty (the convent conservatoire for a lot of of Jamaica’s best instrumentalists). Forces of Victory additionally notably options the late Emmanuel “Rico” Rodriguez the Cuban born trombone participant who educated on the legendary Alpha Boys Faculty (the convent conservatoire for a lot of of Jamaica’s best instrumentalists).
Our subsequent two poems come from Bass Tradition launched in 1980. A meditation on the viscerality of reggae, the title observe “Bass Culture” evokes the skank of guitar and rumble of bass, using all of the phonetic richness of what the Bajan author Kamau Brathwaite named “nation language” in opposition to the pejorative connotations of “patois” to explain Jamaican English.
All tensed up
In di bubble an di bounce
When di beat jus lash
When di wall mus smash
“Bass Tradition” by Linton Kwesi Johnson
In the meantime in “Inglan Is A Bitch” Linton holds house / bears witness for these 1st era Jamaicans who hustled to search out graft in: “Landan toun” the place they discovered different jobs like “pan di andahgroun.” A commentary on the austerity of Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, Bovell’s dubscape options manufacturing tips akin to reverb, filters, and gates as Linton narrates:
Nicely mi dhu day wok an’ mi dhu nite wok
Mi dhu clear wok an’ mi dhu dutty wok
“Inglan Is A Bitch” by Linton Kwesi Johnson
earlier than concluding: “Inglan is a bitch, dere’s no escapin it.” Linton carried out the poem with no band on the traditional British tv programme The Old Grey Whistle Test in 1980.
Launching his personal report label LKJ Data in 1981 to launch fellow poets such because the late Jean “Binta Breeze” Linton continued to launch music on Chris Blackwell’s Island Data together with Making Historical past in 1984 from which our closing poem “Wat About Di Working Claas?” is taken. With a crisp brass association, vibey hammond organ and bluesy guitar licks “Wat About Di Working Claas?” is an expression of Linton’s lifelong dedication to “sowshallism” by way of witty political statement:
From Inglan to Poland
Each step throughout di ocean
Di ruling claases dem in a multitude, oh sure
Di capitalist system are regress
“Wat About Di Working Claas” by Linton Kwesi Johnson
Whether or not accompanied by a band or talking his reality acapella, there may be at all times a bass line in LKJ’s poetry, a sharpness to his pen and a reverberation in his mic. To borrow a phrase from one in all his personal poems, Linton Kwesi Johnson is a “faucet natch poet” and a dwelling legend we really feel compelled to have a good time.
