Mutaburaka
During the tumultuous Sixties and Seventies there was an outpouring of socially-conscious protest music in popular music and during the late Eighties in the realm of hip-hop. Given the widespread unrest and crises around the world, many wonder where is the protest music of today. In Jamaica, many records addressed social issues but the dub-poetry movement, which emerged in the 1970’s with powerful albums by Linton Kwesi Johnson, explicitly combined challenging lyric messages with the heavy rhythms of “rebel music.” It is quite timely that at this juncture, acclaimed Jamaican dub-poet Mutabaruka, steps forward with his first new album in 14 years, the incendiary Black Attack on Shanachie Entertainment—hot on the heels of his August release of a new book The Verbal Swordsman. There will also be a vinyl release on November 20th.
Produced by revered UK dub-master Mad Professor, Black Attack delivers hard-hitting social commentary over a heavy set of riddims delivered by Mad Professor’s Robotiks band. Indeed, Mutabaruka is the last-man-standing in a genre where such figures as Linton Kwesi Johnson, Sister Breeze, Oku Onura, Lillian Allen and Mikey Smith, have either become inactive or have passed away. Mutaburaka has remained visible via his long-running popular often-controversial radio show on Irie-FM in Jamaica “The Cutting Edge,” occasional self-released singles, performing his poetry on four continents and regular postings of provocative video commentaries on YouTube.
Black Attack is attacking all the things that are keeping black people from progressing after 500 years of slavery and now colonialism,” Muta explains. “I had connected with Mad Professor over ten years ago and he actually sent some riddims, but we didn’t connect again until last year when I was in England; we decided to take advantage of me being in England plus he had a studio. I selected poems from my poetry book that was never recorded plus new ones I had lately written.”
Mad Professor adds, “It was a great pleasure recording and working with Mutabaruka. In 45 years of recording many artists from all over the world, this has been the smoothest project ever! He has a transparent approach to both the business and the technical/musical techniques. It’s a real pleasure and really enjoyable!! Truly a real legend!!"
