{"id":114952,"date":"2022-11-22T11:00:38","date_gmt":"2022-11-22T09:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/?p=114952"},"modified":"2022-11-22T11:00:43","modified_gmt":"2022-11-22T09:00:43","slug":"linton-kwesi-jonhson-dub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/linton-kwesi-jonhson-dub\/","title":{"rendered":"Linton Kwesi Johnson in 5 dubs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

With his trilby hat and goatee, Linton Kwesi Johnson\u2019s silhouette is as iconic as his baritone voice. From his London home in Brixton, where he is simply known as \u201cpoet\u201d, to Coachella –  Johnson or LKJ as he\u2019s affectionately known, has performed his verse to generations of fans and is widely credited as the father of dub poetry.The first spoken word artist to give voice to the children of Windrush (the second generation of the Caribbean diaspora) LKJ cleared the way for the likes of Benjamin Zephaniah, Lemn Sissay and Akala and for a time was the only living poet (and the first Black poet) to be published in the esteemed Penguin Modern Classics<\/em> series. The first stanza of his story begins in rural Jamaica in 1952 and the town of Chapelton where he was raised by his grandmother after his parents separated and the first literature the young Linton encountered was the Bible, where he met written verse for the first time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leaving Jamaica in 1963 he was reunited with his mother in London and was shocked by the hostility he encountered in England, and not just from cartoonish racists such as The National Front, but from teachers in school. Studying sociology at Goldsmiths university, he discovered writers such as Aim\u00e9 C\u00e9saire and L\u00e9opold Senghor and attended Black Panther meetings – taking the name Kwesi (the Akan name for born on a Sunday) and around the same time began composing poetry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was whilst dabbling in music journalism and writing record sleeve notes for Virgin Records that he connected with Barbados born producer and multi-instrumentalist Dennis Bovell (writer of the classic \u201cSilly Games\u201d<\/a>) and together in 1978 they released Linton\u2019s debut album Dread Beat an\u2019 Blood<\/em> from where the 1st of our five dubs \u201cAll Wi Doin\u2019 Is Defendin\u201d comes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A meditation on the pressure felt by Black youth in the inner city “All Wi Doin’ Is Defendin'”<\/a>, is propelled forward by a rockers drum riddim over which Johnson \u201ctoasts\u201d or chats his verse answered by unsettling keyboard riffs. The poem predicts the Brixton riots that came a few years later, documenting the growing resentment felt by the youth towards the police:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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