“Every time I hear di sound, di sound, di sound/I innah ah dance ah jump an prance/Rocking heavy dub instead di dancehall cork and di gun start bark…” Mutabaruka live performance, Jamaica, 1980

“To find an MC like me it’s rare/Why? Poetry mi better than Shakespeare, gwaan!/When it comes to the lyrics Benji ah the pioneer/Mi nah tell no lie, mi chat the truth, mi chat sincere…” Papa Benji live performance, Diamonds A Girls Best Friend sound system, London, UK, 1984

I must begin this piece in confessional mode and explain why I began to give dub poetry the credit it deserves. It was during the mid-1980s while I was attending an evening course at Goldsmiths, University of London entitled “African Literature Across The Diaspora: Is There A Black Aesthetic?”. I was asked by the tutor Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe to read Linton Kwesi Johnson’s 1975 publication Dread, Beat And Blood, because all students were expected to read a book a week, and one would be selected to present a critique of its content.

I was a reggae deejay at the time and I liked some dub poetry, but it didn’t move me as a genre like dancehall style chatting. As such, I didn’t read the book properly and tried to blag or bluff my way through the presentation. However, the tutor (who is to this day my greatest mentor) basically publicly shamed me and made me do a proper take on it the next week, because I am of Jamaican parentage and therefore understood the language that was being used throughout, so had no excuses.

This experience led to an awareness and interest in the form, and as such I began to see parallels between dub poetry and what we were doing on reggae sound systems in Jamaica, North America and Canada. That is why I begin the piece with two complementary extracts from 1980s reggae performances by the Jamaican dub poet Mutabaruka and the British reggae deejay Papa Benji – the poet praising the dancehall, and the deejay praising poetry.

Mutabaruka’s extract is of significance because it was on a 1980 sound system recording, I believe by Jack Ruby Hi-Fi, that I first heard his vocal, where it was used as a sample to introduce the Scandal riddim, which during this moment became known as the M16 riddim. This speaks to the ongoing relationship between dancehall performers and dub poets, which has often been overlooked by commentators who regard them as separate and distinctive forms. Yet for Papa Benji, not only is he a poet, he’s “better than Shakespeare”, which means the registers used to determine lyrical excellence come from reggae culture. Therefore to overstand dub poetry we must look within for explanations.

Dub poetry emerged out of reggae culture in 1970s Kingston, and spoke to the everyday reality of the most downtrodden and disaffected members of society. Oku Onuora, birthname Orlando Wong, was born in 1952, raised in Franklin Town, Eastern Kingston, and is regarded as the father of dub poetry. Like many youths at the time he received an informal education through reasoning with Negus, a Rastafari who conscientised him, and it was this awareness of social inequality that became the main driver for his later poetic works.

But as a teenager, having experienced the harshness of life in the slums, his rebellious outlook led to demonstrating against the police, which resulted in various conflicts with the authorities due to painting slogans on the wall in public spaces. Wong became a real life Robin Hood, committing a series of armed robberies, the proceeds of which went towards saving a local youth community centre that had hit upon financial difficulties. During one such robbery he was captured and ultimately given a 15 year jail sentence; he actually had a brief respite from jail when he jumped through a second floor window, but was shot five times and captured days later.

“I was sentenced to… 15 years in 1970 or 71,” he said in an online interview in 2016. “I appealed against conviction and sentence. My sentence was eventually reduced to…ten years and two lashes because initially it was 15 years and 12 lashes. It was reduced when I appealed and the appeal court reduced my sentence. I was serving the time of ten years. I had received my two lashes I was serving the time.” While serving his sentence he began campaigning for prison reform and in 1971 he started writing poetry. His powerful words and perspective led to him becoming the first inmate allowed to perform with a reggae band in 1974 when Cedric Brooks and The Light Of Saba visited prison. His work soon came to the attention of Mervyn Morris, a professor at the University of The West Indies. Wong went on to receive much critical acclaim and literary prizes, and when he was released from prison in 1977, he changed his name to Oku Onuora and began performing with other poets like Mutabaruka. He also inspired poets like Lillian Allen, who helped establish the dub poetry scene in Canada after meeting him.

The dub in dub poetry is akin to the performance you will find from deejays using the B side of a reggae recording, and shouldn’t be confused with dub music, which is its own thing because the special effects make it difficult for the spoken wordsmith to perform on. According to the ethnomusicologist Michael Veal, dub music should be regarded as the ‘C side’ of a reggae recording, because it is a performance in its own right. Therefore, what distinguishes the dub poet from the deejay is how the lyrics are arranged, organised and ultimately performed, as dub poetry is far more suited to an audience with a live band, in my humble opinion. This is because you will often find that the live deejay performance, whether on a sound system or with a live band, features a lot of hype, jumping around, shouting and sadly far too often a “pull up, pull up” every minute as the track is rewound, so the flow is inconsistent. Whereas, when you take in the performance of a dub poet, it is designed and delivered in a way that the audience would expect to receive and appreciate the lyricism of a spoken word artist. Also, while there is the ready focus in dub poetry on Babylon Shitstem as the enemy, and the same speaking out against forms of human suffering and degradation that you associate with conscious reggae performers, you do not find the propensity to misogyny and other anti-human sentiments that you will find in reggae dancehall culture. I am not for a moment investing in the notion that the deejay performance is extemporised and the dub poet’s is composed, which is what has been suggested as one of the major differences between the two forms; rather I am stating that the performativity aspect is quite distinct and therefore the audience expectation is different.

Dub poetry also differs from deejay culture in that it is often published. The UK based Jamaican poet Linton Kwesi Johnson first published Dread, Beat And Blood in 1975 and the Jamaican born, Canada based Afua Cooper also has several publications to her name, including 1994’s Memories Have Tongue. Perhaps the most published dub poet is Birmingham born Benjamin Zephaniah, who has a raft of books including his influential 1985 collection of poems The Dread Affair, as well as several publications in other genres including novels and children’s books. In the UK there is also a longer history of collaboration between dub poetry and other arts movements that began around the early 1980s. In fact, Lynda Rosenior-Patten sheds crucial light on the scene, having worked closely with OBAALA – the Organisation for Black Arts Advancement and Learning Activities in Finsbury Park, North London. It was established in 1983 by Shakka Dedi, Eve-I Kadeena, Anum Iyapo, Opio Donovan and a group of close associates who subsequently set up and ran The Black Art Gallery. The following year, Rosenior-Patten explains, the OBAALA Poetry Theatre was launched and went on to host many events that showcased leading UK based writers and performance poets including Linton Kwesi Johnson, Levi Tafari, Martin Glynn, Anum Iyapo, Shakka Dedi, Errol Lloyd, Brother Resistance, Iyamide Hazeley, Elean Thomas, Morgan Dalphinis, John Agard, Grace Nichols, James Berrys, John Lyons and Jacob Ross, as well as international artists such as Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, The Last Poets, Jayne Cortez, Sweet Honey In The Rock, Fabian and African Dawn, featuring Ahmed Sheikh, Merle Collins and Kwesi Owusu. During this period dub poets were developing a strong following and artists such as Jean Breeze toured nationally.

This was a seminal moment in the development of UK dub poetry, and in forms of artistic collaboration that were central to galvanising African–African Caribbean communities in the UK by providing outlets for Africentric cultural expression. Poets like the Liverpool based Levi Tafari remind us that the reason why dub poetry lives on is because from the outset it has been regarded as an outernational cultural form that is not hindered by the ‘slackness’ and ‘badness’ you find in the deejay world. Indeed, Tafari garnered a reputation during the 1980s for his militant activism and uncompromising stance on the situation in South Africa. His 1985 poem Apartheid System I Don't Like won him critical acclaim as he likened apartheid to the US invasion of Grenada and the Russian invasion of Afghanistan: “Russia and America, the two super powers, they don't really care/Whether Black people in South Africa get their equal share/The Russians invaded Afghanistan and America Grenada/But none of them made an attempt to invade and free Black South Africa/So, Black people, universally, we will have to come together to stand up and fight/For the liberation of the Black people of South Africa”. Thus, by linking the treatment of our brothers and sisters in South Africa with the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and the American invasion and subjugation of our brothers and sisters in Grenada, he speaks to the wider project of white domination that causes so much human suffering. This becomes evident in the manner in which these experiences of oppression are documented and then disseminated live and direct from the amplified platforms provided by the live band performance, where the dub poet provides a potent voice for the voiceless, globally, across at least five decades.

The chanting down of Babylon is a theme ever-present in both deejaying and dub poetry, and perfectly captured in the presence of the contemporary artist Nazamba, who hails from Clarendon, Jamaica where my folks come from. I say this because when you listen to his debut single “Vex” from 2018, you will hear influences from the famous reggae deejays Prince Far I and Prince Jazzbo et al, coupled with the steady rhythmic pace and delivery of Mutabaruka, which makes for a powerful vocal that for me is ancestrally driven. However, what is really interesting about this track, produced by Nagasaki, Japan’s G36, is that it is not a reggae dub rhythm, but something relentless and industrial; it adds a uniqueness to his flow and style, putting me in mind of the versatility of the reggae deejay who (as General Trees reminds us) “any riddim, we ride any riddim, phenomenon”. Nazamba has worked closely with the ubiquitous British producer Kevin ‘The Bug’ Martin, releasing on his Pressure label and also set to appear with his Zonal project at Le Guess Who? festival in the Netherlands.

Martin’s unusual rhythms are the catalyst for the work of another poet, Roger Robinson, his colleague in the group King Midas Sound. Robinson’s track “Dog Heart City” is a poignant critique of what has happened to inner city communities like Brixton, South London in the wake of gentrification, cultural appropriation and community displacement, demonstrating how contemporaneous issues can be dealt with by dub poets in much the same way as you find in performances of other spoken word/sound genres. Not bad going for an ever-present form, almost five decades old, that seems to maintain its potency by being constantly under the radar, while offering for those who are tuned in an uncompromising critique of this wrongheaded world we live in. Don’t be surprised if you get two dub poetry tunes from yours truly in the not too distant future. Blessed love, Rastafari lives.

Kevin Martin featured alongside Stephen O'Malley on the cover of the current November issue of The Wire; and a full album stream and interview with King Midas Sound was published online earlier this year to coincide with their latest LP Solitude.