Abstract
This paper investigates Linton Kwesi Johnson’s political activism in “Five Nights of Bleeding” and “Di Great Insohreckshan” in order to answer the much-debated question: which is more effective in conveying Johnson’s political message: the performed song or the scribed poem? First, the paper gives a brief history of dub music which started in Jamaica, Johnson’s motherland. A discussion of dub poetry follows highlighting the pioneers such as Johnson and Mutabaruka. I argue that the performed songs and the scribed poems under study are effective in convey Johnson’s message each in its own way; however, the scribed form has a stronger, more longstanding impact on imparting the message than stage performance because it relies on the musicality of the words created by sounds and aural images easily grasped even by an international readership alien to the heritage of dub music. An analysis of political events in the two poems shows that a scribed poem, which, as in “Five Nights of Bleeding”, graphically represents a tension between Standard English, and Jamaican Creole and Jamaican English, and which highlights sounds at play as in “Di Great Insohreckshan”, asserting identity, can do without stage performance.
Highlights
This paper investigates Linton Kwesi Johnson’s political activism in “Five Nights of Bleeding” and “Di Great Insohreckshan” in order to answer the much-debated question: which is more effective in conveying Johnson’s political message: the performed song or the scribed poem? First, the paper gives a brief history of dub music which started in Jamaica, Johnson’s motherland
I argue that the performed songs and the scribed poems under study are effective in convey Johnson’s message each in its own way; the scribed form has a stronger, more longstanding impact on imparting the message than stage performance because it relies on the musicality of the words created by sounds and aural images grasped even by an international readership alien to the heritage of dub music
An analysis of political events in the two poems shows that a scribed poem, which, as in “Five Nights of Bleeding”, graphically represents a tension between Standard English, and Jamaican Creole and Jamaican English, and which highlights sounds at play as in “Di Great Insohreckshan”, asserting identity, can do without stage performance
Summary
The origin of “dub” may be traced back to film making or dubbing and “the ghoulish habit of re-recording voices onto a soundtrack” (Sullivan, 2014, p. 7). Deconstruction is an artistic process per se: The way in which the dub pioneers (with Lynford Anderson, Errol Thompson, Augustus Pablo, King Tubby, Keith Hudson, Lee “Scratch” Perry among them) began deconstructing songs into their constituent parts rebuilding them into alternative compositions—literally turning them inside out to reveal their “seams”—made the music simultaneously avant-garde and hugely popular with the sound system crowds. 21), which depended on recording the band on one track and the vocals on another, emerged and later proved important to the appearance of dub music. Duke Vin (Vincent Forbes) and Count Suckle (Wilbert Campbell) were of the first soundmen to reach Britain They helped introduce white British youth to Jamaican music. Other famous figures appeared such as UK dub producers Dennis Bovell, Adrian Sherwood, a producer in the post-punk scene, and Neil Fraser, aka Mad Professor
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