Music
Johnson's best-known albums include his debut Dread Beat an' Blood (1978), Forces of Victory (1979), Bass Culture (1980) and Making History (1983). Across these albums are spread classics of the dub poetry school of performance – and, indeed, of reggae itself – such as "Dread Beat An' Blood", "Sonny's Lettah", "Inglan Is A Bitch", "Independent Intavenshan" and "All Wi Doin Is Defendin". His poem Di Great Insohreckshan is his response to the 1981 Brixton riots. The work was the subject of a BBC Radio 4 program in 2007.
Johnson's work, allied to the Jamaican "toasting" tradition, is regarded as an essential precursor of rap.
Johnson's record label LKJ Records is home to other reggae artists, some of whom made up The Dub Band, with whom Johnson mostly recorded, and other Dub Poets, such as Jean "Binta" Breeze. Past releases on the label include recordings by Mikey Smith.
Of late, Johnson has only performed live on an intermittent basis, perhaps as a result of modern reggae's shift towards the more spontaneous and rapid-fire performers of ragga or dancehall.
Read more about this topic: Linton Kwesi Johnson
Famous quotes containing the word music:
“As for the terms good and bad, they indicate no positive quality in things regarded in themselves, but are merely modes of thinking, or notions which we form from the comparison of things with one another. Thus one and the same thing can be at the same time good, bad, and indifferent. For instance music is good for him that is melancholy, bad for him who mourns; for him who is deaf, it is neither good nor bad.”
—Baruch (Benedict)
“Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines.
His words are music in my ear,”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“And in the next instant, immediately behind them, Victor saw his former wife.
At once he lowered his gaze, automatically tapping his cigarette to dislodge the ash that had not yet had time to form. From somewhere low down his heart rose like a fist to deliver an uppercut, drew back, struck again, then went into a fast disorderly throb, contradicting the music and drowning it.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)