Festival Show - Dub Poetry Explosion


A bunch of poets, and not a dull one in the lot.

It was a very different kind of show this evening - an evening of dub poetry. I'm not sure it could be considered "real" dub poetry in that much of it was unaccompanied (making it, presumably, just poetry).

First up was Crisis, who did a blazing set of poems, many with musical elements. His stuff was quite political and social, and he got the audience well wound up.





Then came Zena Edwards. It was nice, laid back stuff and she had a beautiful voice.





The first half ended with a guy named Lemn Sissay who was sensational. Funny, energetic, fast - great stuff. Turns out he was also on the first Leftfield album. Keep your ears open for this guy.





After the interval came Mr Perry himself, doing one of his extended, extremely weird monologues. He called the Queen something rude, said Bush was a reptile, talked at length about his poop and how the bass line of a song is the same as poo, referred to himself as "king of the punks" and took off his hat to show us his bright red hair as proof, and generally acted very weird in an amusing kind of way.





Then came Jayzik - a more "typical" modern poet.





And finally Mutabaruka. He had no music - he simply read poems and spoke between them about social issues, home, America, Jamaica, food, and all sorts of things.



Posted: Sun - June 15, 2003 at 02:42 PM   Meltdown   The Shows   Email Comments

© Adam Smith