Linton Kwesi Johnson

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and two, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My castaway this week is a poet. Like many of his generation of West Indians, he came to this country as an immigrant. Unlike many of them, he refused to be marginalised in an unskilled job. He passed his O-levels and went on to get a degree. From then on, he used his gift for words to entertain, but also to inspire, the black movement. Living, working, and campaigning for almost 40 years in Brixton in South London, where he's known simply as the poet, he's written the anthems for a generation who felt oppressed and victimized. With his trademark Trilby and goatee beard, he's now celebrated as one of this country's most influential cultural commentators. His work is recognized by American rappers and on the streets of Soweto, and he performs to audiences in their thousands, both here, in Europe, and across the world. He is Linton Quasi Johnson.

Presenter1:21

Perform, Linton, because you're a performance poet, and we're not talking here really about little recherche kind of poetry evenings. We're talking about you going out to kind of pop concert sized venues.

Linton Kwesi Johnson1:32

Yeah, I mean I'm I'm lucky enough to have had the opportunity to play in big festivals, you know, sometimes maybe to twenty, twenty five thousand people.

Presenter1:40

So you read your poetry most of the time to a kind of reggae beat, don't you? But you do also just read poetry on the stage in front of that large audience table?

Linton Kwesi Johnson1:48

Um, I wear two hats. I'm wearing the reggae artist's hat and I'm wearing the poet's hat. I normally make sure I do wo at least one poem without the band's accompaniment to remind my audience that I began with the word.

Presenter2:03

Hmm. I know they're quiet while you do it.

Linton Kwesi Johnson2:06

Oh, sometimes they're clapping along, you know.

Presenter2:08

'Cause there's such a heavy beat to make.

Linton Kwesi Johnson2:09

If they can yeah, if they can pick up on the rhythm of the poem there, sort of clap along.

Presenter2:12

The poem there.

Presenter2:13

You began with the word, as you say, back in in the seventies, but also a very special type of word because it was uh you've written and you've always written in your own Jamaican patois, your own Jamaican language, yeah?

Linton Kwesi Johnson2:27

Yes. It was an act of rebellion really, choosing that particular um way of writing verse, that particular language. It was an act of of rebellion. I suppose subconsciously I wanted to subvert the English language.

Presenter2:40

I want you, just so we can give people an idea of the sort of stuff you've written, to read us a bit, if you would, perhaps from I think your most famous poem of all. It's called Sonny's Letter.

Presenter2:50

And uh well, you explain it. It's written by a young

Presenter2:54

A West Indian guy who's in Brixton jail, isn't he? And he's writing to his mother home in the Caribbean explaining what's happened.

Linton Kwesi Johnson3:00

Yes, this was a time of infamous sus law, sus being short for suspicion.

Presenter3:06

When the police could just stop you'cause they were suspicious of you.

Linton Kwesi Johnson3:09

That's right. And um as long as they were able to convince the magistrate that they had reasonable grounds to believe that you intended to commit the crime, that was all that was required to get a conviction.

Speaker 33:18

Yeah.

Linton Kwesi Johnson3:18

This fellow is writing to his mother in the Caribbean explaining the circumstances of his imprisonment.

Linton Kwesi Johnson3:25

Brixton Prison.

Linton Kwesi Johnson3:27

Jeba Venue.

Linton Kwesi Johnson3:29

London South West too.

Linton Kwesi Johnson3:31

England

Linton Kwesi Johnson3:33

Dear Mamma

Linton Kwesi Johnson3:34

Good day.

Linton Kwesi Johnson3:35

I hope that when these few lines reach you, they may find you in the best of health.

Linton Kwesi Johnson3:41

Mamma

Linton Kwesi Johnson3:42

I really don't know how fi' tell you this, Cause I did make a solemn promise Fe take here a little Jim, And try me best fer look out fer him.

Linton Kwesi Johnson3:52

Mamma, I really did try my best But none the less misar if it tell you say, Poor little Jim, get a rest.

Presenter4:02

And so it goes on. And in fact, he he murdered a policeman, didn't he? In the end he's cha on a murder charge for as he defended his brother.

Linton Kwesi Johnson4:07

The policeman dies in the struggle that ensues.

Presenter4:11

Later on in that poem there is a line, and I can't say it, you know, but essentially it's Mamma, I just couldn't stand by and and not do nothing. And that's really, it seems to me, that sums up what you've done with your poetry, isn't it?

Linton Kwesi Johnson4:25

That particular poem was my way of dealing with the issue, which was a very contentious issue in the black community at the time.

Linton Kwesi Johnson4:32

And that was my contribution to the campaign to get rid of this unjust law.

Presenter4:36

And indeed, in the end, it was got rid of. But let's uh let's pause there. Tell me about the first record you're going to take to this desert island.

Linton Kwesi Johnson4:38

Unless

Linton Kwesi Johnson4:43

It's a tune called Contact. It's an instrumental number by a Jamaican harmonica player called Roy Richards. It's very upbeat. It's the kind of thing that on a desert island that would, you know, sort of lift your spirits. And it it also reminds me of my childhood in Jamaica. For some reason or the other, when I hear this harmonica, it reminds me of Christmastime.

Presenter4:46

Number

Presenter5:32

Contact by Roy Richards. You read that poem, Linton, out of a selection of your work published as a Penguin classic. I think I'm right in saying that you're only the second living poet to be accorded that honour of being in this series. You normally you have to be a dead poet to be in this series, don't you?

Linton Kwesi Johnson5:47

That's right. Um when I was invited to submit the manuscript, um I thought to myself, why are they inviting me to to join the Dead Poets Society?

Presenter5:55

Quite. Um but that poem, as you say, was against the Sus laws. I presume that you must have had some experience of it at some point.

Linton Kwesi Johnson6:04

Well, I've never been ar arrested for sus, but I've been arrested and assaulted by police officers in Brixton.

Linton Kwesi Johnson6:10

So what I describe in that poem is a combination of experience and imagination.

Presenter6:15

What happened to you? I mean, were you taking it?

Linton Kwesi Johnson6:16

I was simply writing down the numbers of some police officers who were arresting three black youth. One of the things that we were taught in the Black Panthers to do was when you see an incident like that, you take down the police officers' numbers and you pass the information on to the relatives of the person who was being arrested. And of course they saw me doing that and thought, you know, I was pushing my nose in where it wasn't wanted.

Presenter6:38

What happened to you?

Linton Kwesi Johnson6:39

And they gave me a good kicking. I was arrested and charged with two counts of assault and one count of GBH and uh the jury found me not guilty on all counts.

Presenter6:48

It has to be said, Linton, you've lived through a kind of rich piece of black British history, haven't you, second half of the twentieth century? You know. Was it anger really that was your muse?

Linton Kwesi Johnson7:00

Yes, to a certain extent. I mean, my friend and mentor, the Trinidadian poet and publisher John LaRose, describes my parents' generation as the heroic generation, because they had to put up with a lot of things when they came here in the fifties and sixties. They couldn't simply walk off a job if they were racially abused or victimized because they've got children to put through school and bills to pay and so on. My generation, we had no such qualms about standing up and fighting back.

Presenter7:21

Come on.

Presenter7:26

But when and I mentioned in the introduction that that you felt marginalized and given the menial jobs, what kinds of jobs would you and your contemporaries have been naturally kind of pushed towards?

Linton Kwesi Johnson7:37

Not just the black kids, white working class kids too. We weren't invited to this country to become lawyers and doctors and politicians, you know.

Linton Kwesi Johnson7:47

Britain needed cheap labor for reconstruction in the post-World War Two period and that was w what we were brought here for. So, you know, you're expected to go and work on on for London transport or work in the hospitals or work on building sites or work on the conveyor belt in some factory.

Presenter8:00

But as you say, that was a kind of, it wasn't just for black people, that was white working class.

Linton Kwesi Johnson8:02

No, that was

Presenter8:04

Boys and girls too actually were pushed that way.

Linton Kwesi Johnson8:07

Absolutely.

Presenter8:07

But I suppose it's that expectation of underachievement, isn't it?

Linton Kwesi Johnson8:11

Absolutely. I mean, there was also the phenomenon of the schools for the educationally subnormal. A disproportionate amount of black kids were classified as being educationally subnormal. They would give you little tests to do, like they'd ask you to draw a house, for example, and you come from the Caribbean and your the houses there don't have chimneys. So you draw a house without a chimney pot, and somehow that would make you educationally subnormal.

Speaker 18:27

Yeah.

Presenter8:38

Tell me about record number two.

Linton Kwesi Johnson8:40

Record number two is another skia tune by the legendary Jamaican trombonist Don Drummond. It's called Eastern Standard Time and for me it's it's nostalgic, it's Jamaican jazz, Jamaican blues at its best, it expresses the soul of Jamaica. It's a very beautiful melody and it's very evocative of the Jamaican churches for me.

Presenter9:34

John Drummond and Eastern Standard Time. Take me back then, Linton, to your early roots, to Jamaica in the nineteen fifties. It was a pretty rural existence, wasn't it? A sort of community.

Linton Kwesi Johnson9:44

I'm a country boy. Yes. I come from Middle Jamaica, up in the hills. Uh I come from a place called Chappelton in the in the parish of Clarindon. And then when my mother came here I went to live with my grandmother. In a place called Sandy River. We had no streetlights, no running water.

Linton Kwesi Johnson10:01

No electricity, no radio, no T V

Presenter10:04

And what did you live in?

Linton Kwesi Johnson10:06

Live in a house.

Presenter10:07

What sort of hand?

Linton Kwesi Johnson10:07

Sorted.

Linton Kwesi Johnson10:08

It was a house made from daub and wattle with a thatched roof. Well, by the time I left Jamaica sh sh my my grandmother had progressed to zinc or corrugated iron.

Presenter10:16

But you all had chores, Anne. I mean, as a little boy you would do your chores before you went to school, yes. Yes.

Linton Kwesi Johnson10:21

Yes, I had to go and fetch um wood for the fire. I had to move the goat. During the um sugar cane harvest I had to give a hand with that as well, um, help with planting ginger.

Presenter10:33

And school?

Linton Kwesi Johnson10:35

School was great. There was one teacher that I had called Miss Miller, who I I had a crush on her, and I used to bring her oranges and stuff.

Linton Kwesi Johnson10:43

any little errand she wanted doing, she would send me to do it and uh

Presenter10:46

But you were a good pupil, I get him and you were right.

Linton Kwesi Johnson10:48

I loved school, I loved learning, I had a very inquisitive mind.

Presenter10:53

And by the sound of it it was a it was a good school. I mean it was good sort of strong on the three R's. It was good colonial education, wasn't it?

Linton Kwesi Johnson11:00

Well, funnily enough, you know, I the standard of education that I was used to in Jamaica was far higher than anything that I confronted when I came to England and went to Tulsill Secondary Comprehensive School.

Linton Kwesi Johnson11:10

I was doing simultaneous equations from I was about nine in Jamaica, and I didn't start doing that until the third or fourth year in in this country.

Presenter11:18

But just staying in Jamaica for a second, tell me about your grandmother, because as you say, when your parents split up and your mother came to this country and you went to live with your grandmother until you were about eleven, you had a very special relationship with her, didn't you?

Linton Kwesi Johnson11:31

I loved my grandmother so much. She used to call me her husband. You know, she'd say, Um, run to the shop for me me husband and buy me, you know, some salt fish and be quick and I'd run all the way and and there and run all the way back and when I come back she'd say, You come back already. I don't know what I would do without you. God bless you, me husband And it would make my head the size of this room.

Presenter11:53

'Cause you were the master of the house.

Linton Kwesi Johnson11:55

I was the boy, yes, I was the man of the yard.

Presenter11:57

And she'd tell you stories or?

Linton Kwesi Johnson11:58

I learnt all my folk culture from my grandmother.

Linton Kwesi Johnson12:02

She would tell us these, um, what we call doppy stories, ghost stories, and you would end up having nightmares after she told you one of them.

Presenter12:09

And then when you were eleven it was decided you should go and live with your mother, go to England, come here.

Presenter12:16

What was your image now while you were still there? What did you think you were coming to?

Linton Kwesi Johnson12:20

Literally, I came with the idea of England streets of London paved with gold kind of mentality. And I thought all the houses were like palaces. I got a rude awakening when I saw an Englishman sweeping the street. I didn't think that white people did that sort of thing. I thought those kind of work were only reserved for people like me.

Presenter12:37

Because white people in Jamaica were rich.

Linton Kwesi Johnson12:39

Because white people in the Caribbean are rich and and in pu live in privileged positions, you know.

Presenter12:45

Let's pause there and have your next piece of music. What is it?

Linton Kwesi Johnson12:48

My next piece of music is John Lennon's Imagine. When I came to England, I wasn't a big fan of the Beatles really. I liked them. I was more into, you know, bands like The Rolling Stones and The Pretty Things and The Animals and that sort of thing. But I grew to love John Lennon's music. I chose Imagine because it's the kind of utopian dream of what society should be.

Speaker 313:12

You may say I'm a dreamer

Speaker 313:19

But I'm not the only one.

Speaker 313:25

I hope someday you join

Presenter13:36

Tom Lennon and Imagine. So you came to this country, Linton. You came to live in Brixton, where there was a substantial black community by then. I mean, you you would have felt kind of at home in that sense, although the weather was not so nice, I dare say.

Linton Kwesi Johnson13:50

Yes, I felt at home there were familiar faces, familiar voices, and uh all the the West Indian food in the market and so on.

Presenter13:57

You've said that the education wasn't as good as in Jamaica, but nevertheless there would have been more books, I would have thought, because you'd only had a mobile library in Jamaica, hadn't you?

Linton Kwesi Johnson14:05

I read anything and everything, you know, stories, travel books.

Presenter14:09

But were there books that you could identify with, or were they very much kind of white man's literature, as it were?

Linton Kwesi Johnson14:15

I read a book called The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Dubois.

Linton Kwesi Johnson14:20

about the experiences of African Americans in the post emancipation period in the United States of America. Dubois spoke about the problem of the twentieth century being the problem of the colour line.

Linton Kwesi Johnson14:32

And he also talked about the shadow of the veil that hung over black lives. I could identify that with my own experiences growing up here in England.

Presenter14:41

So did you say to yourself then, you know, I can write, I can inspire, I can give my people, not at all.

Linton Kwesi Johnson14:47

Not at all, not at all. I was scribbled down my little verses and showed them to people and the feedback I got from people that made me feel that, you know, perhaps I could, you know, um, write verse.

Presenter14:58

But this was showing them to your own people, not not to teachers at school.

Linton Kwesi Johnson15:01

No, no, no. Friends. Mostly f school friends.

Presenter15:04

But you were doing well at school anyway. You got six O levels in the end, didn't you? So you beat the system in that sense, didn't you?

Linton Kwesi Johnson15:06

Yeah.

Linton Kwesi Johnson15:10

I think I got my 6-0 levels in spite of the system. Not to say that there weren't some good teachers at school.

Linton Kwesi Johnson15:16

Uh my sixth form tutor, the man who taught me economics, a man called mister Winkler, was a very good teacher and unlike some of the other teachers who had low expectations, he thought that somebody like me was good material for LSE and he wa and he thought I could go there and do PPE and go back and take over Jamaica and become the Prime Minister, you know.

Presenter15:36

Did you laugh at him when he said that, or did you as part of you that wanted to believe him?

Linton Kwesi Johnson15:41

It's part of me that wanted to believe him, but um I ended up doing sociology.

Presenter15:46

Record number four.

Linton Kwesi Johnson15:48

Record number four is Embraceable You by Charlie Parker. I love the contrast between this bebop style of playing and the fact that it's a slow, very laid-back ballad. And of course there's the added bonus of of a young Miles Davis there playing trumpet.

Presenter17:05

Young Miles Davis, you say, coming in at the end there, that was Embraceable You played by Charlie Parker.

Presenter17:11

It's always said, Lynton Crazy Johnson, that you coined the phrase dub poetry. Now, I always understood that that was, you know, poetry.

Presenter17:20

I think it's a very good idea.

Linton Kwesi Johnson17:24

That's that's what it's come to be understood as nowadays, yes. But when I coined the term that was back in my university days, and I coined the term to describe the art of the reggae D J, you know, someone like a shaggy, for example. What the DJs were doing in those days was a kind of a spontaneous oral poetry in the tradition of the African griots.

Presenter17:46

Over the top of the instrumental.

Linton Kwesi Johnson17:47

Over the top of the B side of a song, you know.

Presenter17:50

Mm-hmm.

Linton Kwesi Johnson17:51

Um

Presenter17:52

Yeah.

Linton Kwesi Johnson17:52

Toasting, toasting, absolutely.

Presenter17:52

Toasty.

Presenter17:55

Learning, you know.

Linton Kwesi Johnson17:56

Then there was a group of poets at the Jamaica School of Drama. It was Okua Nura who lashed onto the term dub poetry from a paper I had written in 1975, published in Race and Class, called Jamaican Rebel Music. And he saw the term there and used it to describe the kind of oral poetry that he and the others were writing, were doing at the Jamaica School of Drama and popularized it.

Presenter18:21

And that you do it.

Linton Kwesi Johnson18:25

I I don't like to call it dub poetry and I've never called it dub poetry. I just like to call it verse that aspires towards poetry. If you have to um straight jacket me, then I'll gladly accept a reggae poetry.

Presenter18:37

But you don't always do it to music, isn't it?

Linton Kwesi Johnson18:37

Thank you.

Linton Kwesi Johnson18:40

No, I don't.

Presenter18:41

Let's have another example of it, because there's a poem that you wrote uh in the seventies about those all-night reggae clubs um that people will recognize as existing in all big West Indian areas.

Linton Kwesi Johnson18:52

The newest dance.

Presenter18:53

Yeah, exactly. That's sort of big booming sound systems and there were great rivalry, I think, between the various people who ran these sound systems and they'd sort of break into each other's places and bust up the the gear.

Linton Kwesi Johnson19:04

Yeah, there'll be the hot punch up and so on, yes.

Presenter19:06

Well, this one's called Five Nights of Bleeding. Just give us one night.

Linton Kwesi Johnson19:10

Um I'll do the first night.

Linton Kwesi Johnson19:13

Night number one was in Brixton, soprano B sound system was a beating out a rhythm with fire.

Linton Kwesi Johnson19:21

Coming down his reggae reggae wire It was a sound shaking down your spinal column, A bad music tearing up your flesh And the rebels them start a fightin' The youth them just turn wild.

Linton Kwesi Johnson19:35

It's war amongst the rebels.

Linton Kwesi Johnson19:38

Madness madness war.

Presenter19:41

When you write that, you must write it to music. You can hear the beat, the the reggae beat in that kind of

Linton Kwesi Johnson19:47

Yeah, I'm interested in the in the language of music and the music in language. Whenever I'm writing verse, music tends to creep into it somehow. Often I'm kinda hearing a kind of a bass line happening at the back of my head somewhere.

Presenter20:03

Okay, record number five.

Linton Kwesi Johnson20:05

Record number five is spring from Vivaldi's fourth season. I'm not a great.

Presenter20:11

Doesn't quite fit into this whole discussion or these pieces of music. Where does this come from?

Linton Kwesi Johnson20:14

This whole discussion or the

Linton Kwesi Johnson20:16

This is the only piece of classical music that I can hum. I just think it's just a fantastic piece of music. And it's the kind of thing that one would like to have on a desert island because when you're feeling a bit down in the dumb sp a tune like this would make you realize how good it is to be alive.

Linton Kwesi Johnson21:01

Uh

Presenter21:32

Part of Spring from Vivaldi's Four Seasons, played by the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormondy. So once you started to be published, Linton, you were about twenty two, I think, when it all began to happen, you became a kind of spokesman for your generation, really, didn't you? Taking up causes and

Linton Kwesi Johnson21:47

What I certainly tried to do was to be truthful to the experiences of my generation, to try and articulate and express how we felt about our experiences growing up here.

Presenter21:58

So you celebrated, for example, the riots at the Notting Hill Carnival, didn't you?

Linton Kwesi Johnson22:03

The riot I ce which I celebrate in a poem is is the Brixton riot. I celebrate that one. But the the Carnival poem, um I'm celebrating the fact that the pro Carnivalists had won the battle for Carnival against those people who are trying to have it banned.

Presenter22:17

What comes through, and you know this because I'm sure people have accused you in many ways of it before, a kind of you are euphoric. It is a celebration of riot, really. And when we move on then to those summer of'81 riots in Toxteth and St Paul's and Brixton and so on, you talk about the mashing up the police vans, power and glory, smashing and grabbing, looting and burning.

Linton Kwesi Johnson22:39

It was euphoric. It if you if you were there and y and you would have seen, witnessed the euphoria amongst the young people.

Presenter22:47

Explain that to me, why you freaking.

Linton Kwesi Johnson22:48

Because people had suffered so much brutality at the hands of the police, so many people had been brutalized, had been beaten up, had had drugs planted on them, had been framed, had been racially abused. It was like um you know we were getting our own back for a change.

Presenter23:03

How do you justify writing what you wrote? I mean, even if one accepts that one understands why you might have felt it before.

Linton Kwesi Johnson23:09

How does Tennyson get away with writing the charge of the light brigade? Not a very violent poem.

Presenter23:14

Hmm.

Presenter23:15

So you have no you would never have any regrets about it, of course. Absolutely not.

Presenter23:20

You wrote one poem about the New Cross fire. Terrible fire. Again, it was before those riots and in many ways it's believed to have been very much part of the lead up to them, uh wasn't it? That there were some young black kids having a party in a house in New Cross and the house was burned down and suddenly party time turns into a terrible, terrible.

Presenter23:41

Disaster. Do you want to read us just again, read the front bit of that if you would? Okay.

Linton Kwesi Johnson23:48

First the coming and the going in and out of the party, the dubbin' and a rubbing and a rocking to the rhythm, the dancing and the skanking and the party really swinging then the crash and the bang and the flame start fi t rang, the heat and the smoke and the people start fi choke, the screaming and the crying and the dying in the fire.

Presenter23:59

Mm.

Presenter24:07

And on it goes, yeah. That that do you see that as a watershed in the history of black rights in this country?

Linton Kwesi Johnson24:13

It certainly was. The um inquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence is the second watershed, but the first watershed was the the New Cross fire and the riots that ensued and the Scarman inquiry.

Presenter24:25

But that fire was was you know believed by you and by many people to have been a racist arson attack.

Linton Kwesi Johnson24:25

But that fine

Linton Kwesi Johnson24:32

Well, that was what the impression that the police gave us when it happened immediately. But since then they've been trying to prove otherwise.

Linton Kwesi Johnson24:40

Because there was

Presenter24:40

Because there was an open verdict in the

Linton Kwesi Johnson24:42

Because there was an open verdict in the end. Um in fact, the case has just been reopened. The original inquest verdict was squashed.

Presenter24:48

Twenty-one years old.

Linton Kwesi Johnson24:49

21 years later.

Presenter24:49

It's open again. We shall see what happens. Tell me about record number six.

Linton Kwesi Johnson24:54

I've chosen Bob Marley's Redemption song because if I needed to be reminded of who I am and where I'm coming from, then this is the song to do it for me.

Presenter25:06

While we stand aside and look, some say it's just a part of it. We've got

Speaker 125:14

Got a full filled a pool

Speaker 325:17

Uh

Speaker 125:19

Won't you help to sing?

Speaker 125:23

These songs of freedom.

Speaker 125:26

Cause all I ever have.

Speaker 125:32

Redeem Jean Song

Presenter25:35

Bob Marley and Redemption Song, Did you ever meet him?

Linton Kwesi Johnson25:38

Yes, I did. I met him um in London at Island Records offices. He was a very charming fellow.

Presenter25:44

But had he read any of your stuff, did he?

Linton Kwesi Johnson25:45

He had. I'd arranged for him to receive a copy of one of my books. He he said he liked my my verse and he said that but he wanted to know why was I so militant.

Linton Kwesi Johnson25:54

And why wasn't I saying Jarastafari?

Presenter25:57

And what's the answer to that?

Linton Kwesi Johnson25:58

I said I was not a particularly religious person.

Presenter26:01

It's interesting you mention Island Records because when he died they then offered you a big deal, didn't they?

Linton Kwesi Johnson26:06

You know, Sue, I can't remember the timing, um, the exact timing, but I remember being offered a six-album deal by Chris Blackwell and I said no.

Presenter26:13

So why do you turn down a six album deal?

Linton Kwesi Johnson26:16

I wasn't gonna go around and contrive material to fit somebody's recording schedules, you know, that you know, you have to every six months you have to or every year you have to bring out a new album and then you have to go on tour to promote it and all this kind of stuff. I wasn't into that at all.

Presenter26:30

It would warp the nature of what you did. Absolutely. You weren't going to sell your soul.

Linton Kwesi Johnson26:32

Absolutely.

Linton Kwesi Johnson26:34

No.

Presenter26:34

You'cause you've written old rebels get old, some seldom so, but

Linton Kwesi Johnson26:39

You mean sold?

Presenter26:39

You ain't sold yours yet, eh?

Linton Kwesi Johnson26:40

Uh I don't intend to either.

Presenter26:43

So you're you set up your own record company instead, in fact, didn't you? So you're an entrepreneur, you're a big time performer and artist.

Presenter26:51

Others of your generation have become MPs, they've become doctors, they've become academics.

Linton Kwesi Johnson26:56

I think that's inevitable.

Presenter26:57

Yeah, but we've seen, you know, more than that, we've seen the emergence of a black middle class, doesn't

Presenter27:02

All that mean, then, that the battle is won?

Linton Kwesi Johnson27:05

It's progress. It's progress. It doesn't mean that the battle is won, it's that we've won some battles, but the you know, the struggle for racial equality and social justice is an ongoing one.

Presenter27:15

But we've come a long way.

Linton Kwesi Johnson27:16

But we've of course we've come a long way. And I get annoyed with people who pretend that nothing has changed since the sixties, you know. Things have changed. And some things have changed for the better, but some things haven't changed at all. In fact, in some instances I've gotten worse. For example, our relationship with the police. I was reading an article in the newspaper where the leader of the Black Policemen's Association was saying that, you know, nothing's changed since McPherson within the police force.

Presenter27:23

Things have Sure.

Speaker 127:31

What level of the

Presenter27:38

Yeah.

Presenter27:43

But I mean again, there you have, you know, an establishment figure talking about institutional racism, you know. I mean, we we have come such a long way, haven't we? In the period that you've been here.

Linton Kwesi Johnson27:52

That is a a leap in people's consciousness and people's perception about what our struggles are all about. I remember a time the police would not acknowledge that there was such a thing as racially motivated crime. It did not exist in their vocabulary. So yes, one of the great things that has come out of the tragic death of Stephen Lawrence is the fact that we've made this leap.

Speaker 128:09

Uh

Presenter28:15

And you you know, you can't change instinctive attitudes in a few decades, can you? How long does it take then?'Cause you've written you've written a a poem called The The Unfinished Revolution, that's my translation of it. We not reached Mount Zion yet. When when do you reach Mount Zion?

Linton Kwesi Johnson28:32

Your guess is as good as mine, Sue, but um, you know, we have to have it in our sights.

Presenter28:37

Record number seven.

Linton Kwesi Johnson28:39

For me, Otis Reddin is the greatest soul singer of all time. I have never heard any other singer with a voice imbued with so much pain, so much truth, so much soul. I think this is one of the greatest love songs of all time, and it it'd be something that I would like to play on when I'm on the island and um

Linton Kwesi Johnson28:58

Feeling romantic and missing my woman.

Linton Kwesi Johnson29:11

Fucking the matter, please.

Linton Kwesi Johnson29:15

It can't be too serious, we can't talk it over.

Linton Kwesi Johnson29:23

Living limits and misery

Linton Kwesi Johnson29:26

Darling, you can't make my life all over

Presenter29:31

Otis Redding and My Lover's Prayer. You write some love poetry too, actually. It's not all kind of political poetry. I've been known to write.

Linton Kwesi Johnson29:37

I've been known to write the occasional um bit of verse which could be called love poetry.

Presenter29:43

But more of it in recent times. I mean, it strikes me that your poetry has become

Presenter29:48

This is a generalization, but less angry, less rhetorical, more philosophical, more metaphorical.

Linton Kwesi Johnson29:54

It's the inevit I think that's what happens to you when you get middle aged.

Presenter29:58

Umela.

Linton Kwesi Johnson29:59

Hopefully, yes.

Presenter30:00

Oh, you're happy to mellow it.

Linton Kwesi Johnson30:01

Of course, one can't go around being angry all the time.

Presenter30:05

And can you write as easily as you could? Or if you're becoming less angry, you know, does it become a

Linton Kwesi Johnson30:09

If you're

Linton Kwesi Johnson30:12

It depends on what I'm writing about. But um writing verse for me has has never been easy. I suppose it's because of the kind of criteria I set myself. It makes it harder.

Presenter30:20

What is that criteria?

Linton Kwesi Johnson30:22

The criteria is is to do with the way the language works with the music and the way the music works with the language and what the poem is trying to say and how effectively it says it.

Presenter30:32

You do it uh uh as I understand uh quite a lot at night'cause you need quiet to do it. You don't want all those kind of noisy bits of the day to intrude.

Linton Kwesi Johnson30:37

I've written most of my verse mostly late at night.

Presenter30:42

So you will be fine on this desert island. I mean, you know, this is the perfect place to go do it, isn't it?

Linton Kwesi Johnson30:49

Yeah.

Presenter30:50

And as far as looking after yourself is concerned, that's going to be all right too, isn't it? I mean, again, it's it's kind of like a return to your childhood.

Linton Kwesi Johnson30:57

I'm pretty good at at taking care of myself. You know, I was taught all the basic skills at a very early age. Cook, wash, sew, iron, everything I can I can look after myself.

Presenter31:07

You can catch fish, knock up a shelter. Yes. No problem.

Linton Kwesi Johnson31:09

Per shelter. Yes. No problem. No problem.

Presenter31:12

And be happy with your own company.

Linton Kwesi Johnson31:14

I am very happy with my own company. I am my best friend at most times. Like the great poet once said, no man is an island. But I like myself. I like my own company. I can live with myself.

Presenter31:26

Record number eight.

Linton Kwesi Johnson31:28

Record number eight is Feel Like Jumpin' by Marcia Griffiths. It's very upbeat, very uptempo, full of life, very happy. It reminds me of my adolescence when I was just starting to go out clubbing and having girlfriends and that sort of thing.

Speaker 131:45

Like laughing.

Speaker 131:47

I feel like crying Lord, I feel like sighing.

Speaker 131:53

And if you like dying

Presenter32:13

Feel like Jumpin', sung by Marcia Griffiths. Now, if you could only take one of those eight records, Linton, which one would you take?

Linton Kwesi Johnson32:20

Oh my god, I think it would have to be

Presenter32:20

That took you by surprise.

Linton Kwesi Johnson32:27

Embraceable you.

Presenter32:28

Charlie Parker. And a bit of Miles Davis on there too. What about your book? You've got the Bible, you've got the complete works of Shakespeare. What book do you want to add to it?

Linton Kwesi Johnson32:36

I would take One Hundred Years of Solitude by Garcia Marquez. It's a fantastic novel. Um saga set over several generations. You know, it's just a fascinating book.

Presenter32:48

And what about your luxury?

Linton Kwesi Johnson32:49

My luxury item would be a bass guitar because um I've always been a closet musician. I use the bass to compose my music that accompanies my my verse. It would be an opportunity for me to become proficient.

Presenter33:02

Lyndon Quasy Johnson, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Linton Kwesi Johnson33:06

Thank you for having me.

Speaker 333:14

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio form.