Mutabaruka

AS was reported in last Tuesday's (March 4) issue of the Observer, Mutabaruka, the well-known poet and radio talk show host, was in New York last week for the taping of an episode of the new season of the hit series Def Jam Poetry Jam, for cable television station Home Box Office (HBO), in which he will be featured when the season begins in April 2003.

When the poetry series, produced by Russell Simmonds, is aired next month, millions of viewers around the world will see the hard hitting Rastafarian wordsmith reciting two of his most stinging social commentries titled Dis Poem and Eyes of Liberty.

Mutabaruka is not the only Jamaican poet who will be featured in the upcoming series, sharing the spotlight will be the equally controversial poet, Stacyann Chin who was also included on the recent Def Jam Poetry tour, along with well known American writer and activist, Gil Scott-Heron.

And neither will it be the first time that there is going to be a Jamaican presence on the series, as the Clarendon-born, London-based, wordsmith Linton "Kwesi" Johnson, made his appearance some time ago.

"What it is showing, is that poetry as the spoken word has come into its own," mused Mutabaruka, who returned to the island last Wednesday afternoon just in time for his weekly Cutting Edge African-centered, talk/music show on Irie FM.

He hinted that part of the reason for the increasing the momentum poetry now enjoys, is due to a strong anti-rap music sentiment in the US, brought on because of the music's lyrical content. "A lot of the sisters were very anti-rap". This is not surprising, as "the sisters" are often at the receiving end of the lyrical content of rap music, being often styled as "whores and bitches".

According to Muta, there were scores of poets from different perspectives to appear on the series dubbed Def Jam Poetry 3. Among them were no lesser person than the erstwhile lead singer of the Miracles, Smokey Robinson and renowned motivational speaker and author Deepak Chopra.

Apart from his newly appointed role as Folk Philosopher by the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Mutabaruka is looking forward to tour the US in the spring, and to returning to South Africa in May for the premiere of the movie Sankofa, in which he is featured.

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