The Genreration Game: Dub Poetry / Jazzoetry, Ep. 2

In episode 2 of “The Genreration Game”, our recurring series taking us across time through the lens of a particular musical genre, we take a dive into Black British history. Two artists with different approaches and perspectives - Linton Kwesi Johnson and Anthony Joseph - tell us their stories through poetry backed by reggae (Dub Reggae) and jazz (Jazzoetry) music. They paint a vivid picture of the struggles that immigrants from the Caribbean have faced since the HMT Empire Windrush arrived at the Port of Tilbury in 1948.

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The inner London area of Brixton - peopled with a large West Indian community following the post-war arrival of the Windrush generation - has often found its way into song lyrics. Who can forget 1975’s number one smash hit “I’m Going to Barbados” by Typically Tropical with the line

‘I don’t wanna be a bus driver all my life, seen too much of Brixton town in the night.’

Caribbean workers were and still are known for working on London Transport so it’s perhaps surprising to learn that this song was performed by two white guys mimicking a West Indian voice – then again it was the mid-seventies so maybe not so surprising. Cringeworthy in hindsight though many of us sang along at the time. It couldn’t happen today, could it?

Thankfully, The Clash’s “Guns of Brixton” on London Calling only four years later was far grittier seeming to foresee the inner city unrest that would sweep across the nation in the eighties.

‘When they kick at your front door, how you gonna come?

With your hands on your head, or on the trigger of your gun’

South London songstress Joy Crookes would evoke guys experiencing happier times in SW2 with her hit 2021 song “When You Were Mine”.

‘Shoulder to shoulder, smile with a Brixton shine’

Yes, Brixton. Let’s go back to the late seventies and early eighties. The divisive Thatcher government had arrived. Unemployment among the West Indian community soon rocketed to 25%, police were using powers given by the ancient Sus Laws to stop and search anyone under suspicion of a minor drug-related offence, a practice used disproportionately on the black community. Tempers were high, friction grew. The Brixton riots of April 1981 were an inevitable consequence of heavy-handed policing and a wider failure of integration. Some media coverage of the previous year’s New Cross Fire, which claimed the lives of several young black citizens, left no doubt that the fourth estate still viewed the victims as alien others.

Linton Kwesi Johnson, the son of a Windrush mother, a recent graduate of Goldsmith’s College in South East London, had already been making a name for himself in what was being termed Dub Poetry. His 1979 track “Sonny’s Lettah” on the album Forces of Victory had alerted the listener to the lot of the young black man when faced with mob-handed unjustified police brutality.

1984 was the year that Johnson produced his response to the Brixton riots of ‘81 with the acclaimed album Making History including two key tracks “Di Great Insohreckshan” and “Mekkin Histri”.

Brixton had moved on from the awkward awfulness of “Typically Tropical”. As Johnson says at the beginning of track “Di Great Insohreckshan”.

‘It woz in April ninety eighty wan

Doun inna di ghetto af Brixton

Dat di Babylon dem cause such a frickshan

Dat it bring about a great insohreckshan

An it spread all owevah di naeshan

It woz truly an historical occayshan’

For Johnson the “historical occayshan” was truly a matter of black pride and a victory for black resistance. The historical connection was considered in the following track on Making History with its repeated chorus

‘It is noh mistri

Wi mekkin histri

It is noh mistri

Wi winnin victri’

Move on to 2013 and in some ways little has changed as the then-British Home Secretary and future Prime Minister Theresa May decided it would be a spiffing idea to send vans around inner city areas with “GO HOME” motifs sprayed on them as a way of persuading illegal immigrants to return. The vans sparked uproar as people pointed out that these were the exact words used by earlier racist parties and individuals towards the immigrants of the decades leading up to the riots of the eighties. The campaign was thankfully soon dropped. However, it needs pointing out that the Black British experience of the 2000s was markedly different to that of the 60s and 70s in that for instance black role models were now there for all to see in the worlds of television, news broadcasting, sports such as football and athletics, music, literature and film. The likes of Stormzy, Linford Christie and Mo Farah are etched on the consciousness of the nation and so a poet’s response to a new grudging acceptance is one of asking questions as to what is home. Enter Anthony Joseph.

Stormzy’s headline performance at Glastonbury in 2019 was another seminal moment for Black British music.

Taking us through different generations of black Britons he says through his first character of the song Calling England Home (2021), one of the Windrush generation,

‘It take him 60 years before he could call England home.’

Of himself in verse three he asks

‘How long do you have to live in a place before you can call it home?’  

Joseph’s song lacks the up tempo reggae beat of Johnson’s Dennis Bovell produced early eighties songs, but instead relies on smooth saxophone as a backdrop. It’s altogether a calmer approach. Two approaches. The angry voice of a generation confronted with Thatcherism, the reasoned rational voice of today in a changed but still imperfect world asking what the nature is of acceptance. More importantly, should England perhaps accept that it is a place of migration and has been throughout the years?