It was the insurrectionist sound of the turbulent 70s – and now it’s back, thanks to Moor Mother and King Midas Sound
Earlier this year, British poet Roger Robinson met one of his idols, Linton Kwesi Johnson. With his 1978 album Dread Beat an’ Blood, which fiercely criticised police brutality in London and forecast the 1981 Brixton riots, Johnson helped to establish dub poetry: a blend of chest-rattling bass and thunderous verses speaking truth to power. He gave Robinson a memorable, if cryptic, missive.
“He said, ‘Nobody needs to sound like me now,’” recalls Robinson, who records and performs with Kevin Martin (AKA deep bass explorer the Bug) as King Midas Sound. “That made me think, what would dub poetry be now? He’s a very progressive thinker and he would want to see it morph into something that has the same sentiment, but a different framework and emphasis.”
Related: Moor Mother: 'We have yet to truly understand what enslavement means'
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