Parole e musica di Linton Kwesi Johnson
Da Jah Lyrics




Walter Rodney (Georgetown, 23 marzo 1942 – 13 giugno 1980) è stato uno storico e politico guyanese. È noto per le sue posizioni anti-colonialiste e per la sua dura critica della condotta delle nazioni europee nei confronti delle colonie africane e americane, ed è considerato uno dei padri del panafricanismo.

Nel 1980 Rodney si candidò per le elezioni politiche della Guyana, ma fu assassinato in un attentato dinamitardo.

[1978]
Testo di Linton Kwesi Johnson
Musica di Poet And The Roots
Dall'album "Dread Beat an' Blood"
Da http://www.mtv.it/



Johnson's first published poem was "Five Nights of Bleeding" which was later included in “Voices of the Living and the Dead” and in his second book, “Dread Beat and Blood”. It was written for Leroy Harris, a black youth stabbed at a party in South London. The poem was transitional. Its focus on the local, on the particulars of black life and struggle in London, would become typical of the poetry that his audience would read and hear in his books, performances, and recordings. And the rhythm is strongly that of the sound-system reggae that is the imaginative sound track for the events that occur in the poem's narrative, much in the way that the actual music would become integral with Johnson's performances. Yet the carefully chosen diction in the poem and the straightforward... (Continues)