Dub Poetry
Although
there are a number of Roots Reggae songs that criticise the society, another
Reggae style talks even more about this topic: the Dub Poetry. The Dub
originally was only a instrumental form of music, that was developed in the late
sixties. Since the early seventies, instrumental versions of Reggae songs, that
are altered with reverbs, echoes, phasers and other electrical instruments are
called Dub. A few years after Dub had been invented, musicians and poets started
to combine this new Reggae style with poems. One of the first who did this was
Oku Onuora a Jamaican poet who said about his poems that they are a mirror of
the Jamaican society. He sings about the problems of the Jamaicans, for example
in his song “Dread times”: “Cost of living get so high, man haffi (has to
go) shopping with im (his) eye.”28 and was especially concerned with violence
all over the world. Although Oku Onuora is a Rasta, he
strictly sings about reality and rarely uses metaphors or symbols from the bible.
However, reality is not only an important ingredient for Oku Onuora’s poems,
but the basic of all Dub Poems. Often, the lyrics of the songs do not simply
have real events or facts as a background, but are built up like protocols with
a commentary. For example Linton Kwesi Johnson tells in “Reggae fi Peach”
about a man who was murdered by the SPG, a special patrol of the British police.
At the beginning of the song he tells what happened, then he gives information
about the victim and in between explains the reaction of the people who knew
Peach and says what he thinks about the people who killed him – “The SPG,
them a murderer”. The topic of “Reggae fi Peach”, police brutality, is
very frequent
in poems of Linton Kwesi Johnson. As a Jamaican who lives in London, he knows
about this problem of blacks in England and slips his experience in his songs,
like in “Sunny’s lettah” (compare page 4). He does not only accuse the
police of being racists, of beating and of killing people who are in their
custody, but also calls the government to account: “Yu fi awsk Maggi Tatcha
bout di liecense fi kill (...) yu fi awsk Tony Blare if im is aware ar if im
care bout di liecense fi kill dat plenty poleece feel dem gat. ”29
Nowadays, the topics of Dub Poetry are often used by Hip-Hoppers and Rap
musicians who sometimes even quote from songs of Johnson..30
Linton Kwesi Johnson