When I was about 17 or 18, I went to a house party somewhere in my neighbourhood. It would have been the same as every other house party I had been to before (familiar faces getting more drunk than was actually necessary to have a good time) except that this particular party still lingers with me for two quite different events that happened. The first was waking up the next morning in an unfamiliar garden, with a snail crawling across my face – a very good example of drinking more than was actually necessary. The second was hearing Linton Kwesi Johnson for the first time.

I vividly remember standing in the garden when a voice, so deep and full of power that I thought God was talking to me, came blaring out of the sound system’s speakers…

“…madness…madness…madness tight on the heads of the rebels…”

…then the drums and bass kicked in and I knew was hooked.

But first, let’s put things into a little perspective here. In eighties South Africa, we did not have the Internet, MTV or any other half decent source of information. So in order to find out more about something new, especially something that wasn’t mainstream or had been ‘passed’ by the South African apartheid government, was near impossible. So at the time, I just loved LKJ’s voice and the way Dennis Bovell made the music touch your soul. Years later when I was living in England, I heard the stories behind the songs and developed a whole new appreciation of his music.

You see, LKJ grew up in the Brixton of the seventies and eighties where life was hard and there wasn’t much opportunity if you were young and black and it is these themes that run like a knife through his songs; with one song, All Wi Doin’ Is Defendin’ he even predicts the Brixton riots of 1981.

In his subsequent albums, LKJ continued to highlight the struggles he saw on the streets of London but he wasn’t just a political commentator, he also documented the culture of the times. Many poems like Dread Beat ‘an Blood and Reggae Sounds capture the life and soul of the times. Reggae Sounds, with its words that are enough to make you feel the music, dance and move even when you read them off the page of a book.

“…shock-black bubble-doun-beat bouncing
rock-wise tumble-doun sound music;
foot-drop find drum, blood story,
bass history is a moving…”

Whichever way you look at it, as a political commentator or a cultural historian, Linton Kwesi Johnson’s poems and music recorded a time in Britain’s past that should and will not be forgotten. My only hope is that there is someone out there now, hidden away under all the mind-numbing manufactured bands and X Factor wannabes, who is carrying on the legacy LKJ so perfectly captured over the years.

To find out more about Linton Kwesi Johnson, his poems and music, visit his website.