ARTICLE: Interview with Tour Magazine
Interview with Tour Magazine, 1996
Benjamin Zephaniah doesn't like heights. He is sitting on the low wall that runs along the edge of the Blue Note rooftop, look seriously uncomfortable. It's four floors down to the street but the photographer insists on a series of shots with a cityscape backdrop. Zephaniah clings to the wall through the session and even manages the occasional smile. But he looks a lot happier when it's all over.
Heights may be a problem for Zephaniah but one thing he has never been afraid of is speaking his mind, and with some of the most eloquent dub poetry ever written. Since bursting onto the scene in the early 1980's with his second volume of poetry, "Dread Affair", an uncompromising attack on the institutions of the land which also introduced a new poetical language and martified the purists, he has been a leading figure and spokesperson in the fight against racism, both in his country and abroad.
Appearances in Eastenders, The Comic Strip and the Black/Asian street culture documentary "Crossing the Tracks", have all increased Zephaniah's media profile. He has also recorded with The Wailers and Sinead O'Connor. To describe him simply as a poet would seem to be misleading. But it is through his poetry that he has become an ambassador of his people and their religion.
Down off the roof and in the basement club, Zephaniah is relaxed and amiable. The Brummie vowels are still there, despite some 15 years in East London. We site and talk about the "Back to Roots" album, on which Zephaniah's uncompromising lyrics are powered by the mood driven rhythms of the Hazardous Dub Company in a conscious revival of 1970s reggae. The comment from the Acid Jazz press officer proves right. Zephaniah can talk and he knows what he wants to say.
"I really just wanted to make an album like the old way," he says. "Jam with the band and add some words. I don't like living in the past but there's a revival of dub music at the moment. It's a political form of music and I am very, very frustrated about the world the world is going politically at the moment."
Zephaniah considers racial attacks in the East End to ne om the increase. There might not be skinheads stomping the streets, but that makes it worse. Now they're dressed in suits and sound like Tory politicians. And sadly, the opposition to them has become disorganised and apathetic.
"Not so long ago," says Zephaniah, "if we'd heard of someone being wrongfully arrested and put in Stoke Newington police station, with a couple of phone calls you could raise up a crowd and possibly get that person out. These days, people are more likely to say, "Oh, I'll sign a petition." But what's missing from all this is political artists. Nowadays, artists only get political if there's a gig at Wembley Stadium adn they get more promotion than the cause itself."
So does he despair at the apathy of the younger generation?
"It's not very cool and hip to demonstrate. People have got the CND symbol on rap records but they don't know what it means. But if you don't understand what's happening to kids now, you can't understand rap. A track like "Cop Killer" might sound extreme, but it's a reality for them. In their own way, they do fight back but it's not in an organised way. It's fragmented. They're wary of people who try and lead."
For many young people, reggae is something their parents listen to. Although there is a revival, it faces a lot of competition from jumgle, rap and ragga.
"Ragga is probably a good introduction to sex," says Zephaniah with a shrug. "But it's really substanceless, to say the least. Nine out of ten ragga tunes are about women's vaginas. Personally, I do like them but I'm not going to make a career out of singing about them." He laughs. "A lot of blokes can say they love a girl on a record 50 times but they can't say it once to their face."
Not long back, a certain record company told Zephaniah that they didn't want his services any more becuase they'd stopped doing the political stuff. He sees the music business as being a contradiction in terms, the former about making money and the survival of the fittest, the latter about spreading love. Another isnger who has clashed with the music moguls is Sinead O'Connor and the two of them recently sang together on the latest Bomb the Bass album.
"I mean, for me, Sinead O'Connor is one of the greatest artists of this country, " says Zephaniah without a hint of irony. "She's a very strong woman. She won't let anybody push her around and so the business doesn't like her. They find her awkward to work with because she talks about the Gulf War. I mean, she's a human being, you know. There are very few people like that."
But back in the late 1980s when Zephaniah himself almost became part of the establishment when he was shortlisted for the Professor of Poetry position at Oxford University. When Seamus Heaney eventually won it, a sigh of relief no doubt rose up about the dreaming spires. What?! A Rastafarian teaching the language of the bard? Whatever next?
"I wish it would have happened in a way 'cos' poetry has such a stuffy image an' I think street poets and rap poets could have looked with some pride and said, 'Look at Oxford University. There's a dub poet there.' For some of these kids in school, who are writing poetry in Scouse and Cockney etc. the language they speak, and they have been told to write properly, it would have been something to hit back with."
Zephaniah has just returned from a world tour where he came across cultures that were more open to the concept of combining music with poetry. But he feels that there is a resurgence of interest in dub and poetry in Britian at the moment. Fellow dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson is also confident to be playing back in England. Their words and music is perhaps more in tune with the 90s and the 80s. So is he optimistic about the future?
"A lot of old laws, like the SUS, have been re-introduced but in a different form. Now we've got the Criminal Justice Bill. But I still basically believe that people can change things. There's still a long way to go but what struggle has ever been easy?"
We emerge out of the darkness of the club into blinding sunlight. Before saying goodbye, I ask him if he is ever tempted to move to the Caribbean and forget the struggle. "no," he says. "Be like deserting a sinking ship, wouldn't it?"
