Abstract
The chapter discusses how Linton Kwesi Johnson’s poetry explores the relationship between the sound systems in London and the Metropolitan police in the 1970s and 1980s. Johnson’s poems often document the shutting down of a sound system event, the subcultural space of the Caribbean party, by the police. In this sense, the sound system is a ‘relatively’ closed-off or autonomous aesthetic space within the city that is, nevertheless, constantly invaded by a wider political context. Johnson thus portrays the everyday infrastructures such as SUS laws that targeted spaces for black cultural production and hindered access to the aesthetic experience of black art forms. The reading proposes that Johnson’s portrayal of the sound system is a suitable metaphor for what Kobena Mercer describes as the black artist’s ‘burden of representation’. Johnson has suggested that he felt unable to create art for art’s sake when he started writing poetry. This ‘burden’ plays out in his poetry, and particularly his sound system poems, to illustrate how the politicisation and polemical mode of black art is often not primarily a result of the artist’s own formal choices, such as the choice between representation and abstraction. Rather, it is often determined by an overpowering and invasive state infrastructure that polices it and forces it into a defensive mode regardless of its own aesthetic features.
hours beat di scene movin rite
when all of a sudden
bam bam bam a knockin pan di door.
‘Who’s dat?’ asked Western feelin rite.
‘Open up! It’s the police! Open up!’ (‘Street 66’, Linton Kwesi Johnson)
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The members of the Caribbean Artist Movement (CAM), which Johnson cites as one of his main cultural influences, were often divided by this question. One of the most prominent examples is what Anne Walmsley describes as the state of ‘confrontation and crisis’ about the ‘black power position’ at the second CAM conference in 1968. Richard Small argued that the West Indian artist should ‘become sprititually [sic] apart of the black community in Britain’, while Wilson Harris warned against this development and promoted the ‘creative imagination’: ‘if there is anything genuine about art, the artist must stand out, he cannot conform to a group’ (cited in Walmsley 1992: 185).
- 2.
The abbreviation ‘SUS law’ derives from ‘suspected person’, and is the slang term used to describe a law that permitted the police to stop, search, and sometimes even arrest a person suspected not only of having committed a crime, but also of committing one in the future. The tension generated by such legislation impacted the Brixton riot in 1981, which Johnson portrays in the poem ‘Di Great Insohreckshan’, from the album Making History (1984). The SUS law was a revision of the early nineteenth-century Vagrancy Act. This earlier Victorian legislation had been designed to crack down on vagabonds, beggars, and other homeless people occupying the streets (see ‘Vagrancy Act of 1824’s). The law thus historically functioned as a key legal tool to enhance state control of the city’s ‘public spaces’ (Harvey 1973; Mitchell 2003).
- 3.
Although Johnson’s poetry is set in the 1970s, his criticism of the police’s targeting of black urban nightlife resonates with contemporary oppositions to gentrification. See Laam Hae’s The Gentrification of Nightlife and the Right to the City: Regulating Spaces of Social Dancing in New York (2012) for more on the political consequences of contemporary policing and sanitation of nightlife in urban areas.
- 4.
As well as joining the campaign against the police threats to shut down Notting Hill Carnival in the 1970s, particularly after the carnival riots in 1976, Johnson was involved with several political organisations that actively worked to promote black arts in the UK. This included Creation for Liberation, which mobilised artists working with poetry, music, and painting to participate in performances to raise money for anti-racist campaigns and to promote the work of black artists (see Morris 1989; Caesar and Johnson 1996; Dawson 2006; Donnell 2001).
- 5.
In Britain, debates about whether the carnival should be moved from Notting Hill for various safety reasons since become an expected annual occurrence, taking place most recently in the wake of the Grenfell fire in 2017. In the months preceding the festival, government officials questioned whether it was too soon to hold the Notting Hill Carnival so close to the site after the tragic fire in which so many people died. However, their suggestion to move the event was rejected by Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, who realised that such a move would severely damage community relations in the area (Rawlinson 2017). Khan’s decision demonstrates that even the political establishment had to realise, after Grenfell, the unique role that Notting Hill Carnival has played in fostering a proud multicultural London identity, a community solidarity that has been of particular importance to the racially diverse working-class inhabitants in the area affected by the fire.
- 6.
Works Cited
Barrow, S. and Dalton, P. (1997). Reggae: The Rough Guide. London: Rough Guides.
Bridges, L. and Gilroy, P. (1982). ‘Striking Back’. Marxism Today, 26, pp. 34–35.
Bucknor, M. A. (2011). ‘Dub Poetry as Postmodern Art form: Self-conscious of Critical Reception’. In Bucknor, M. A., and Donnell, A., (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Anglophone Caribbean Literature. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 255–264.
Boehmer, E. and Davies, D. (2015). ‘Literature, planning and infrastructure: Investigating the southern city through postcolonial texts’. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 51(4), pp. 395–409.
Caesar, B. and Johnson, L. K. (1996). Linton Kwesi Johnson talks at Sparkside-Studios, Brixton, London, 11 June 1996.
Cohen, A. (1982). ‘A Polyethnic London Carnival as a Contested Cultural Performance’. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 5(1), pp. 23–41.
Corcoran, N. (2007). The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century English Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dawes, K. (1999). Natural Mysticism: Towards A New Reggae Aesthetic in Caribbean Writing. Leeds: Peepal Tree Press.
Dawson, A. (2006). ‘Linton Kwesi Johnson’s Dub Poetry and the Political Aesthetics of Carnival in Britain’. Small Axe, 10(3), pp. 54–69.
Dieffenthaller, I. (2009). Snow on Sugarcane: The Evolution of West Indian Poetry in Britain. Newcastle-Upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.
Donnell, A. (2001). Companion to Contemporary Black British Culture. London: Routledge.
English, D. (2016). 1971: A Year in the Life of Color. Chicago: Chicago University Press,
———. (2007). How to see a Work of Art in Total Darkness. Cambridge, Mass and London, MIT Press.
Fowler, C. (2016). ‘Liberationist Political Poetics’. In Osborne, D., (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to British Black and Asian Literature (1945–2010). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gilroy, P. (2010). ‘Fanon and Améry’. Theory, Culture & Society, 27(7–8), pp. 16–32.
———. (2003). ‘Between the Blues and the Blues Dance: Some Soundscapes of the Black Atlantic’. In Bull, M., Back, L., and Howes, D., (eds.), The Auditory Culture Reader, pp. 381–95.
Glissant, É. (2000). Faulkner/ Mississippi. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Godfrey, M. and Whitley, Z. (2007). Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power. London: Tate Publishing.
———. (1997). The Poetics of Relation. Wing, B., trans. Ann Arbour: University of Michigan Press.
Habekost, C. (1993). Verbal Riddim: The Politics and Aesthetics of Afro-Caribbean Dub Poetry. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Hall, S. (1999). ‘From Scarman to Stephen Lawrence’. History Workshop Journal, 48, pp. 187–197.
Hamilton, I. (1996). The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hammermeister, K. (2002). The German Aesthetic Tradition. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press.
Harvey, D. (1973). Social Justice and The City. London: Edward Arnold.
Henriques, J. (2011). Sonic Bodies: Reggae Sound Systems, Performance Techniques, and Ways of Knowing. New York: Continuum Publishing.
Hutton, C. (2007). ‘Forging Identity and Community Through Aestheticism and Entertainment: The Sound System and The Rise of the DJ’. Caribbean Quarterly, 53(4), pp. 16–31.
Jackson, P. (1988). ‘Street Life: The Politics of Carnival’. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 6(2), pp. 213–227.
Johnson, L. K. (2006). Selected Poems. London: Penguin Books.
———. (1976). ‘Jamaican Rebel Music’. Race & Class, 17(4), pp. 397–413.
John, M. (2004). Postcolonial London: Rewriting the Metropolis. London and New York: Routledge.
Laam, H. (2012). The Gentrification of Nightlife and the Right to the City: Regulating Spaces of Social Dancing in New York. New York and London: Routledge.
McFarlane, A. (1998). ‘The Epistemological Significance of “I-an-I” as a Response to Quashie and Anancyism in Jamaican Culture’. In Murrell, N. S., Spencer, W. D., and McFarlane, A. A., (eds.), Chanting Down Babylon: The Rastafari Reader. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, pp. 170–124.
McLeod, J. (2004). Postcolonial London: Rewriting the Metropolis. London: Routledge.
Mercer, K. (1990). ‘Black Art and the Burden of Representation’. Third Text, 4(10), pp. 61–78.
Morris, M. (1997). ‘Dub Poetry?’ Caribbean Quarterly, 43(4), pp. 1–10.
———. (1989). ‘Interview with Linton Kwesi Johnson’. In Markham, E.A., (ed.), Hinterland: Caribbean Poetry from the West Indies & Britain. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Bloodaxe, pp. 250–272.
Merriman, E. (2012). ‘“Wi Naw Tek Noh More A Dem Oppreshan”: Linton Kwesi Johnson’s Resistant Vision’. In Grafe, A., and Stevens, J., (ed.), Lines of Resistance: Essays on British Poetry from Thomas Hardy to Linton Kwesi Johnson. Jefferson, N.C.: MacFarland, pp. 218–235.
Mitchell, D. (2003). The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space. London: Guilford Press.
———. (1989). ‘Interview with Linton Kwesi Johnson’. In Markham, E.A., (ed.), Hinterland: Caribbean Poetry from the West Indies & Britain. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Bloodaxe, pp. 250–272.
Pollard, V. (2000). Dread Talk: The Language of Rastafari. Barbados and Montreal: McGill-Queen University Press and Canoe Press.
Puri, S. (2003). ‘Beyond Resistance: Notes Toward a New Caribbean Cultural Studies’. Small Axe, 7(2), pp. 23–38.
Prasad, Y. (2002). ‘Makin Sense Outta Nansense’. Socialist Review. Online Source: http://socialistreview.org.uk/263/mekin-sense-outta-nansense Accessed 9 November 2017.
Rancière, J. (2009). Aesthetics and its Discontents. Corcoran, S., trans. Cambridge: Polity Press.
———. (2004). The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible. Rockhill, G. trans. London: Continuum Publishing.
Rawlinson, K. (2017). ‘Sadiq Khan Rejects Call to Move Notting Hill Carnival after Grenfell Fire’, The Guadian, 7 July. Online Source: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jul/07/sadiq-khan-rejects-call-to-move-notting-hill-carnival-after-grenfell-fire Accessed 9 November 2017.
Smith, D. J. (1991) ‘The Origins of Black Hostility to the Police’. Policing and Society, 2(1), pp. 1–15.
‘Vagrancy Act of 1824’. The National Archives, 12.05.3, 15.13. Online Source: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo4/5/83/contents Accessed 9 November 2017.
Walmsley, A. (1992). The Caribbean Artist Movement 1966–1972: A Literary & Cultural History. London and Port of Spain: New Beacon Books.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Layne, L.O. (2018). Sound Systems and Other Systems: The Policing of Urban Aesthetic Spaces in the Poetry of Linton Kwesi Johnson. In: Boehmer, E., Davies, D. (eds) Planned Violence. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91388-9_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91388-9_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-91387-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-91388-9
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)