Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Linton Kwesi Johnson's influence on Pop Group's Mark Stewart

Stewart had been hanging with Linton Kwesi Johnson and organisations like Race Today and the Radical Alliance of Black Poets and Players. Linton Kwesi Johnson didn't exactly mince words: his antifascist anthem "Fite Dem Back" vowed "We gonna smash their brains in/'Cos they ain't got nuffink in 'em". Johnson wasn't actually a Rasta (indeed he upset many Jamaicans when he mocked Rastafarianism as an ostrich religion), but his patois-thick voice and baleful cadences gave the words, which look simplistic on the printed page, a power and authority that Stewart aspired to.

Linton Kwesi Johnson - Fite Dem Back 1979

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