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<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=1 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><SPAN class=TopStory></SPAN></TD></TR><TR><TD>Basil Walters, Observer staff reporter
Friday, October 20, 2006
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</TD></TR><TR><TD><SPAN class=Description>Dub poet and talk show host Mutabaruka</SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><P class=StoryText align=justify>Well-known poet and talk show host, Mutabaruka, has been invited as an Artiste-in-Residence by Merritt College, in Oakland, California. The college, from which came the Black Panther Party revolutionary movement of the 1960s, has offered the controversial Rastafarian philosopher a semester, beginning April 2007, to lecture students about his poetry, his world view as well as his perspective of black issues.<P class=StoryText align=justify>"They have me an Artiste-in-Residence, effective April of next year," Mutabaruka told Splash. The host of the weekly no-holds-barred Cutting Edge programme on Irie-FM, added: "Dem di offer mi a semesta still, but how dem ah set it up, mi neva really waan stay up deh fi five months. Soh mi tell dem six week is OK, with di intention that mi can go and come from California every week. Is like dem aware ah di Cutting Edge. so dem allow mi dah privilege deh fi fly back and forth."<P class=StoryText align=justify>He further explained that the invitation was born specifically out of the institution's interest - as the alma mater of Black Panther founders, Huey P Newton and Bobby Seale - in the culture of the Caribbean people as well as Africa. No doubt, they were also influenced by the knowledge that one of the founding fathers of Pan-Africanism, Marcus Garvey, came from Jamaica and Stokely Carmichael, a prominent figure in the Black Power movement, was from Trinidad.<P class=StoryText align=justify>"Every year dem (Merritt College) carry a group of students down here as well as to Ghana. Here in Jamaica, dem goh BoBo Hill (a Rastafari Camp out by Bull Bay), dem goh Accompong (the Maroon settlement), dem really visit a lot of the indigineous places in Jamaica and dem go Ghana too," Mutabaruka explained.<P class=StoryText align=justify>"Some of the teachers dem kinda know of mi work and especially from the movie Sankofa [in which I appeared], because it's a movie weh a lot of schools use fi deal with black issues, legacy, and when it relate to slavery and thing, dem use di movie Sankofa. So dat was one of the movie weh propel we name among the black community and the scholars dem inna America," he added.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Continuing, he said, "Well, these teachers recognised the contribution weh wi mek over the years in terms of poetry and in terms of the part weh wi play inna di movie. So that was the criteria an the basis fi really invite mi to be an Artiste-In-Residence. So wi goin' do it fi six weeks. It's about dub poetry and the issues weh surround it. How it develop, the people dem who mek it and who create it. The idea round it, what create it, what form it, what allow it fi really reach weh it reach, yuh nuh."<P class=StoryText align=justify>But this is nothing new for the artiste born Allan Hope. One of the most toured Jamaican artistes, Mutabaruka did a stint as guest lecturer at the University of the West Indies during his assignment as Folk Philosopher in 2003/2004.<P class=StoryText align=justify>"Weh mi really a do a weh mi normally do. Is like, talk to students. Mi used to go to the different schools and talk. The Folk Philosopher was really a title, but before the Folk Philosophy, mi used to goh to different schools and speak. And mi tour a lot to different colleges. I've been to almost every major university in America and talk. I've been to Yale, I've been to Howard, I've been to Boston University, you
Friday, October 20, 2006
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<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=175 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>
</TD></TR><TR><TD><SPAN class=Description>Dub poet and talk show host Mutabaruka</SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><P class=StoryText align=justify>Well-known poet and talk show host, Mutabaruka, has been invited as an Artiste-in-Residence by Merritt College, in Oakland, California. The college, from which came the Black Panther Party revolutionary movement of the 1960s, has offered the controversial Rastafarian philosopher a semester, beginning April 2007, to lecture students about his poetry, his world view as well as his perspective of black issues.<P class=StoryText align=justify>"They have me an Artiste-in-Residence, effective April of next year," Mutabaruka told Splash. The host of the weekly no-holds-barred Cutting Edge programme on Irie-FM, added: "Dem di offer mi a semesta still, but how dem ah set it up, mi neva really waan stay up deh fi five months. Soh mi tell dem six week is OK, with di intention that mi can go and come from California every week. Is like dem aware ah di Cutting Edge. so dem allow mi dah privilege deh fi fly back and forth."<P class=StoryText align=justify>He further explained that the invitation was born specifically out of the institution's interest - as the alma mater of Black Panther founders, Huey P Newton and Bobby Seale - in the culture of the Caribbean people as well as Africa. No doubt, they were also influenced by the knowledge that one of the founding fathers of Pan-Africanism, Marcus Garvey, came from Jamaica and Stokely Carmichael, a prominent figure in the Black Power movement, was from Trinidad.<P class=StoryText align=justify>"Every year dem (Merritt College) carry a group of students down here as well as to Ghana. Here in Jamaica, dem goh BoBo Hill (a Rastafari Camp out by Bull Bay), dem goh Accompong (the Maroon settlement), dem really visit a lot of the indigineous places in Jamaica and dem go Ghana too," Mutabaruka explained.<P class=StoryText align=justify>"Some of the teachers dem kinda know of mi work and especially from the movie Sankofa [in which I appeared], because it's a movie weh a lot of schools use fi deal with black issues, legacy, and when it relate to slavery and thing, dem use di movie Sankofa. So dat was one of the movie weh propel we name among the black community and the scholars dem inna America," he added.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Continuing, he said, "Well, these teachers recognised the contribution weh wi mek over the years in terms of poetry and in terms of the part weh wi play inna di movie. So that was the criteria an the basis fi really invite mi to be an Artiste-In-Residence. So wi goin' do it fi six weeks. It's about dub poetry and the issues weh surround it. How it develop, the people dem who mek it and who create it. The idea round it, what create it, what form it, what allow it fi really reach weh it reach, yuh nuh."<P class=StoryText align=justify>But this is nothing new for the artiste born Allan Hope. One of the most toured Jamaican artistes, Mutabaruka did a stint as guest lecturer at the University of the West Indies during his assignment as Folk Philosopher in 2003/2004.<P class=StoryText align=justify>"Weh mi really a do a weh mi normally do. Is like, talk to students. Mi used to go to the different schools and talk. The Folk Philosopher was really a title, but before the Folk Philosophy, mi used to goh to different schools and speak. And mi tour a lot to different colleges. I've been to almost every major university in America and talk. I've been to Yale, I've been to Howard, I've been to Boston University, you
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</TD></TR><TR><TD><SPAN class=Description>MUTABARUKA. refuses to interview politicians on The Cutting Edge</SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><P class=StoryText align=justify>At Kingston Technical High School, he joined the struggle to win self-identity and dignity through the Black Power movement driven by the son of a national hero, Marcus Garvey Jnr, who operated his African Nationalist Union from the Success Club on Wildman Street. That, for Muta, was only a step away from becoming a Rastafarian, scorned by upper Jamaica but carrying an irresistible message to the working masses.<P class=StoryText align=justify>On wings of poem<P class=StoryText align=justify>Muta's message rode on the wings of a poem - poetry that articulated the conditions of the people who gave him his inspiration. If the words of the poet jarred the collective nerves, they also made society listen.<P class=StoryText align=justify>It might have been inevitable that Muta became a member of the Rastafarian group, the Twelve Tribes of Israel. But after a terrible falling out, in which he said he suffered physical and verbal abuse, he settled into the purist Nyah Binghi, which saw Ethiopia's late Emperor Haile Selassie, not as Jesus the Christ - as in the case of the Twelve Tribes - but as the Almighty God Himself.<P class=StoryText align=justify>It transpired that while he read his poems and worked assiduously with his Rasta queen, Yvonne Peters-Hope, to build a house on swamp lands in the far hills of John's Hall, St James, creative thinkers in the tourist mecca of Negril, Westmoreland, were mouthing the name of Mutabaruka.<P class=StoryText align=justify>The Issa-owned Negril Beach Village, now Hedonism II, wanted to experiment with their entertainment package, to give the tourists something different. "They wanted a new vibe and wanted me and some other Rasta brethren to come to the hotel and explain to the guests what is Rasta," Muta recounts. Claudia Robinson, an actress with connections to the hotel, was commissioned to contact Muta. This was 1974.<P class=StoryText align=justify>"They put us up at the hotel and allowed us to sell our trinkets there," Muta recalls. He started stringing beads and knitting tams, and after that, almost anything that people could wear, including bikinis, in the red, gold and green colours of Rastafari.<P class=StoryText align=justify>He wonders now how it is that some young men say they turn to crime because of poverty, recalling how he tried everything to ensure he could earn a living and never once thought of committing a crime.
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