Characteristically I joined Linton outside, where he’s able to light up a rolled cigarette and talk at ease. The chat’s quite pertinent given that racially aggravated violence is looking to be on the rise again. For Linton poetry is a political weapon, one which he’s used to condemn attacks on black immigrant’s rights since arriving from Jamaica in the early 60s wave. What appears at times to be a defensive or arrogant attitude must be understood in the context of history. There are only two living poets to be published in the Penguin classics series, Linton being the first black poet.
Today the operations hub is LKJ Records and in many ways it’s with the music that Linton began his journey. The style is colloquial language spoken over 12” reggae records (Ragga Dance Hall on a bad day). Unlike groups like Sugar Hill Gang this was not rap, this was Dub-poetry. “I’m talking about James Brown, who used to talk over his music”. People to look up to were “the early reggae DJ’s, people like Big Youth, U Roy and early American rappers. But it wasn’t called rap in those days it was just like the guys were talking over the record.” Inevitably, a band replaced the records and in turn 1978 saw the record ‘Dread Beat And Blood’ produced.
Home for Linton was like many of his generation, Brixton, the same place the infamous riots took place in 1981. Live performances went out not in dark rooms but on the sound systems of the streets. This wasn’t any Notting Hill Carnival though, when fighting took place with the police “it was blacks and whites, solidarity between black youth and white working class youth. Working class youth joined in with us because there was no segregation. We shared the same living: ghettos, run down council estates and were unemployed. It was a time of serious recession of the late 70s so there was solidarity.”
The Two Tone movement otherwise known as ‘Ska’ nicely links the shared music of those forgotten by Thatcher’s Britain. “This town is coming like a ghost town” by the Specials is what most people think of as the perfect tune to help our generation understand what it was like to be a youth at that time. It’s hard to actually name any black bands in the Ska movement though. “The black ska bands didn’t make it big, Ska really was the music of the Mods. In the 60’s when I was a kid, basically there were no Mods or Rockers. Rockers were Teddy Boys, rode motorbikes. The Mods were into Ska and they followed Prince Buster, and they followed reggae, Derrick Morgan for example. Skinheads were into Derrick Morgan big time, and that was before the National Front appropriated skinhead into something completely different.” In other words black music was being appropriated but had no voice of its own.
It’s not often poets are accused of starting riots. “That’s ridiculous, I can’t make people riot I am not a God”. Although lacking in divine power ‘Lincense Fi Kill’ and ‘Sonny’s Letta’ were widely read and spoken of on the streets of London. Giving this otherwise elitist medium a breath of fresh of air wasn’t as hard as it sounds. “Adrian Hendry, one of the Liverpudlian poets, said that most people ignore poetry because most poetry ignores most people. It was elitist, so they want to make it become relevant again. Roger McGough began to popularise poetry because by writing poetry that spoke to people’s everyday lives which ordinary people could relate to, they became accessible poets. That’s what they did. They are responsible really for the revival and broadening of interest in poetry. So, I’m a part of that. I’m trying to locate myself in that tradition, or that movement.”
But wat about alla dis Jamaican slang, don’t it make it harder to understand for other people man? “What is most important for me is authenticity of voice.” Whether it is a discussion about tourism or art, the importance of a vernacular voice is often ignored and misunderstood by westerners. Often such language has connotations which are alien to the person speaking them. “For people who understand the language it gives them more meaning, but for me it didn’t seem to make any sense to try and write about the black experience using the rarefied language of English classical poetry. You’ll especially find that the whole movement in Scotland, where Scottish poets are writing in the vernacular.”
Today the publishing industry have seen the commercial sense, “they’ve got there eye on the market”. Only today is it that ‘local’ poets such as Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, who LKJ recommends, are being published by new houses like Blood Axe. As a young politically-minded kid in the 60s you had to start off with “American poets, Caribbean poets, and African poets, people like Amiri Baraka from America. All the poets I mention in the poem ‘If I Woz A Tap Natch Poet’. Those are the people I read and later I branched out and read English stuff like Shelly.”
Gangsta rap seems to be the replacement for much of the street politics that spoke to the least generation. It would be wrong to assume it’s all about glorifying violence though. “There’s a little bit of that in it. It’s more or less reflecting reality as seen from a point of view of these people. I don’t really listen to that gangsta rap stuff anyway and guys calling women whores and bitches is stupid. There are a lot of intelligent lyrics to be found in rap. I love their poetry disenfranchised, for them to articulate the world they live in.”
Perhaps rap still has the potential to change the way people act with each other. “Certainly it is a medium to carry a message, but for me the best rap tune ever was ‘The Message’ by Grandmaster Flash. I’ve never heard anything as good as that.