Dub poetry and the reggae page

Jean "Binta" Breeze (11 March 1956 - 4 August 2021) is recognized as the first woman to write and perform dub poetry. She moved to Kingston in 1978 and studied at the Jamaican School of Drama, where she met Michael "Mikey" Smith and Oku Onuora; she made her stage debut alongside Mutabaruka in 1981, who went on to record her work, including "Aid Travels with a Bomb," on the compilation album "Word Sound 'ave Power.".

Linton Kwesi Johnson, born in Jamaica in 1952 and raised from age eleven in London, coined the term "dub poetry" in the 1970s for verse performed over reggae rhythm that stayed "word-first" rather than subordinating the poetry to the music. His records, often made with producer Dennis Bovell, documented Black British politics directly - police harassment, immigration, the 1981 Brixton uprising - and his 1981 label LKJ Records later released work by other dub poets, including Mikey Smith.

Mutabaruka (born Allan Hope, 26 December 1952) is a Jamaican Rastafari dub poet who began performing live with his band Truth in 1977, part of the wave of Jamaican poets who emerged in the early 1970s. He later became a prominent broadcaster, hosting two of Jamaica's most popular radio programmes, "The Cutting Edge" and "Steppin' Razor," extending his platform from poetry into cultural and political commentary.

Oku Onuora (born Orlando Wong, 1952, in Franklin Town, Eastern Kingston) is widely credited as the father of dub poetry. He began writing poetry in prison in 1971 while campaigning for prison reform, and in 1974 became the first inmate allowed to perform live with a reggae band. After his release in 1977 he took the name Oku Onuora and began performing alongside other poets, including Mutabaruka.

Mikey Smith was a Jamaican dub poet with Rastafarian sympathies and left political leanings, closely associated with Linton Kwesi Johnson and Mutabaruka. He was killed in Kingston in August 1983, days after publicly heckling a government minister at a political rally - a death widely read as politically motivated. Johnson later released some of Smith's recordings on his own LKJ Records label.

A Jamaican genre or form associated with the reggae era. Starter record pending editorial verification.

Jamaican-born women carried dub poetry's reasoning voice from Kingston yards to Toronto stages and a Halifax poet laureateship.

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