Linton Kwesi Johnson: Lecture Two Using the resources available CD in book

1. Linton Kwesi Johnson: • Lecture Two • Using the resources available • CD in book • Notes at the back of your text • Mp3 files with Carol • Further reading – seminar handout • Discography • Poetry • Critical AND bIOGRAPHICAL Studies • CULTURAL, HISTORICAL, AND LINGUISTIC RESOURCES • Interviews • Official website • http://www.lintonkwesijohnson.com/ • Guardian website • Search for Linton Kwesi Johnson

2. Linton Kwesi Johnson:Seventies and Eighties Verse • Poet as community historian and spokesperson—Johnson’s use of Jamaican creole to establish and sustain that community. • History of British racism: Conservative Party politics, police brutality ---> sustained critique of “ethnic absolutism” – Paul Gilroy in The Black Atlantic • Jamaican creole and reggae poetry: Discovering the right genre and language for his poetry. Brathwaite and Nation Language. • “Reggae Sounds” (p. 15) : a poetic manifesto of reggae poetry • “All WiDoin is Defendin” (p. 9): community spokesperson • “It Dread Inna Inglan” (p.23) • John McLeod, Chap. 4: “Babylon’s Burning” • Postcolonial London 820.932421 MCL

3. http://www.20thcenturylondon.org.uk Photograph of "Stop the Coloured Invasion" Protest in Trafalgar Square in 1959 with "Keep Britain White" Banner -

4. Slogan of the Tory (Conservative Party) candidate, Peter Griffiths. He won the inner Birmingham seat of Smethwick by a landslide. UK “Looking back at race relations” bbc.co.uk "Like the Roman, I seem to see the Tiber foaming with much blood."

5. 70s and 80s: Young poet in Brixton, London • Black Panther Youth Movement at school • Meets John La Rose Founder of the Caribbean Arts • Movement & New Beacon Bookshop • Publishes first two collections and first LP Voices of the Living and the Dead (1974) Dread, Beat and Blood (1975) Dread, Beat an’ Blood (1978) • 1978: Library Resources and Education Officer at Keskidee Arts Centre • (a Black Arts Centre) • Worked for the Race Today Collective, editor of the journal Race Today • Active work, educating and writing about the experiences of • black Britons – poetry drawn from this context.

6. Jamaican Creole • Not a “patois”. Jamaican Creole = combination of English, Spanish, Portuguese and African languages. • It is not a dialect or “broken English” but rather “a fully-fledged language • with its own vocabulary, syntax, grammar, imagery, and folklore” (DilipHiro) “Jamaican language” or “Nation language” Barbados-born poet Kamau (Edward) Brathwaite History of the Voice: The Development of Nation Language in Anglophone Caribbean Poetry (1984). Nation language is the language which is influenced very strongly by the African model, the African aspect of our New World /Caribbean heritage. English it may be in terms of some of its lexical features. But in its contours, its rhythms and timbre, its sound explosions, it is not English, even though the words as you hear them might be English to a greater or lesser degree. And this brings us back to the question …. Can English be a revolutionary language? And the lovely answer [is] it it is not English that is the agent. It is not language, but people, who make revolutions. … Nation language may be in English: but it is in an English which is like a howl, or a shout or a machine gun or the wind or the wave … And sometimes it is English and African at the same time. (Brathwaite 13) Loan words e.g. pickney – child picaninny pequeño– small in Spanish

7. Reggae Sounds (p. 15) Rhythm of a tropical electrical storm (cooled doun to the pace of the struggle), flame-rhythm of historically yearning flame-rhythm of the time of turning Measuring the time for bombs or for burning. Slow drop. make stop. move forward. Dig doun to the root of the pain; Shape it into violence for the people They will know what to do, they will do it

8. Reggae Sounds • 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 • the poem displays an astute self-reflexivity • Johnson records in written verse the lived connections • between Jamaican music, history, and his new form of reggae poetry. • Reggae music’s articulation of the global struggle for black freedom. • Johnson asserts “bass history is a moving / is a hurting black story” and reggae is figured in lines of verse that re-create its rhythmic pull.

9. Franco Rosso, BBC film: • Dread Beat an’ Blood (1979) “All WiDoin’ is Defendin’” (p. 9) “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. • 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