Linton Kwesi Johnson is a man with a message. The Jamaica-born dub poet, musician and social activist is preparing to speak at the Albany in Lewisham next month, for a public Q&A about his five-decade-long career. He’s appearing as part of Rebel Music, an upcoming festival linked to the London Borough of Culture 2022, featuring the likes of Black Obsidian Sound System, Charles Hayward and CURL, which will celebrate the story of the area’s history of activism through music. Johnson’s music and poetry has been at the heart of Black activism in the UK for the last 50 years – and he’s still fighting now. “Racism is still very much at the heart of the DNA of the United Kingdom,” he tells me from his home in South London, as he reflects, aged 69, on the work that still needs to be done. “Our struggle is an ongoing one because racism permeates every aspect of British society.”
Johnson arrived in Brixton, aged 11, after travelling from his home in rural Jamaica to be with his mother. She was a part of the Windrush generation and Johnson recalls how colonialism still propagated the idea of Britain as Jamaica’s idyllic motherland. “I thought England was this splendid place, this wonderful place, the mother country with castles and palaces and all this sort of thing.” What did he find when he got here? “Disappointment,” he says with a sigh. “Racial hostility was pervasive everywhere you went. It was in the corner shop, in the chippy, in schools, on the buses. It was everywhere.”
