Sticking with some non-Country selections I was all set to give you Gil Scott- Heron today until I noticed the dreaded hyphen. Carry on like that and you could well be getting Cheryl Fernandez-Versini for goodness sake.
So it was back to the drawing board but not for long given a fairly obvious candidate was staring us in the face.
Step forward the mighty UK based but Jamaican born dub post Linton Kwesi Johnson (Kwesi being a Ghanaian name for a boy who was born on a Sunday).
Bass Culture and Forces of Victory came out at the time of Two Tone and Rock Against Racism and subsequently were embraced by a wider audience than may have previously been the case.
His political poetry dealing with the experiences of being African- Caribbean in Britain clearly struck a cord.
Linton Kwesi Johnson - Sonny's Lettah (Anti-Sus Poem)
Linton Kwesi Johnson -Inglan is a Bitch
I did English A-Level in a night class some years ago. On the syllabus was a book of modern poetry and one week our tutor asked us to pick any poem at random to study. I chose Inglan Is A Bitch by LKJ. The following week, our tutor went round the room and asked each of us to read our chosen poem out loud. So there's me, trying to read Inglan Is A Bitch in the Jamaican patois it's written in. Cue hysterical laughter from entire class...
ReplyDeleteSuperb
DeleteSounds like you got a right slagging!
Good choices CC.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely love TheRobster's story, brilliant.
ReplyDeleteGreat choices. The 'Forces of Victory' album will always resonate with me for being the first present I ever bought for my boyfriend in 1979 (I'd never heard of LKJ until I met him); it was for his birthday, just a few months after we'd started going out together. And a few years before I also married him :-)
Superb selections CC, that have prompted a couple of excellent stories in the comments.
ReplyDeleteVery fine selections CC
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