December 2017



Empowerment and Oppression Through Form in Jamaican Diasporic Dub Poetry



Vernacular literature is often confined to judgement in relation to its dominant, or cosmopolitan literary language counterpart. The political status of the vernacular and the social status of its speakers bleed into the evaluation of its literature. This tendency can seem oppressive when vernacular text appears unable to be judged solely as a piece of literature. Especially if attempting to shift from a local readership to a transnational one, vernacular authors must tune into an awareness of their audience to a greater extent than authors of literature in standard languages. In consideration of their growing audience, a community of Jamaican-diasporic authors are utilizing new ways to disseminate their work. Specifically, Jamaican diaspora dub poets encounter a unique obstacle to diversifying their readership. Since dub poetry originated as an oral, performative literature, incorporating music and rhythm, distribution of it calls for the incorporation of new mediums. While many dub poets embrace printing and digitally recording their poems, others are resistant to relinquish the oral component of their art form. I will explore the various ways in which transitioning dub poetry into text is a perpetuation of European cultural norms acting upon a vernacular. I will also examine the opposing side in which the textualization of dub poetry is an act of appropriation of European mechanisms that empowers poets through the medium of dominant cultural apparatuses. I propose that the textualization of dub poetry both summons the oppressive relationship between the Jamaican vernacular language and culture and the Western cultural impositions and empowers dub poets to uplift their craft through Western mediums.

Dub poetry is a class of performance poetry that is spoken or chanted in Jamaican Patois and often uses reggae rhythms as background (DeCosmo 33). These rhythms may be in the background of the poet in the physical form of an accompanying band, or they may be implicitly present in the poet’s vocal delivery. The first Jamaican dub poet and the one who coined its name was Oku Nagba Ozala Onuora, who began writing poetry while in prison in 1971 (Sullivan 194). On the musicality of dub poems, Onuora once said, “when the poem is read without any reggae rhythm ‘backing’ so to speak, one can distinctly hear the reggae-rhythm coming out of the poem” (Sullivan 193). The voice operates as an instrument in dub poetry (Sharpe 265).

The term “dub” refers to the B side or instrumental version of a record (Sharpe 265). In the dubbing process, deejays manipulate sounds to produce a reverberating or doubling effect, which coincides with the fact that the Jamaican Patois word “duppy” translates to ghost in Standard English (Sullivan 7). Dub as a music genre developed out of reggae in Kingston, Jamaica in the 1960s, about a decade before the birth of dub poetry (Sullivan 7). Dub poetry is distinct from dubbing because poets pre-compose their words and deliver them outside of the dance hall, which is the typical setting of deejaying (Sullivan 193). The content of dub poetry also distinguishes it. Dub poems tend to address topics of oppression, resistance, and hegemony (DeCosmo 33). Born out of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora in the late 1970s, dub poetry has functioned as a platform for political expression. Its performance aspect has served to bring voice to resistance against racist and neo-colonial forces (DeCosmo 33). The most prominent dub poets reside in Canada and England and have navigated their diasporic identities through their poems.

Dub poetry carves out its own space in global literature, especially in relation to Western ideas of poetry. The decisions of whether or not to view dub poetry in relation to other types of poetry, and moreso, how to view it in a cross-cultural context have generated a rift in the dub poetry community. Some dub poets, such as Benjamin Zaphaniah, do not identify as poets in order to distinguish their craft from Western lyrical tradition (DeCosmo 33). Others, such as Lillian Allen, demand to be seen as poets in order to emphasize the literary quality of their work (Gingell 226). Those dubbers who resonate with the former sentiment tend to place great importance on the performative, oral aspect of dub poetry. Those who advocate for dub poetry’s categorization as literature have turned to new mediums and formats with which to present their poems. They embrace printing, publishing, and recording technology. This textualization and documentation of what many dub poets insist as an intrinsically oral form has sparked debate in the dub poetry community.

The transition from speech to text entails representing the Jamaican English vernacular, a mainly spoken language, orthographically. Jamaican Creole has historically existed in a polarizing diglossia with Standard English, in which the former is the language of informal communication and latter of schools, law, and all areas which require written text (Coppola 8). Publishing dub poems also necessitates the use of textual formatting to convey the rhythm of dub poetry (Gingell 221). Canadian dub poets have employed a range of techniques for bringing the rhythm and aurality of their poems to print. Some of these techniques are the inclusion of graphics and illustrations, using a variety of fonts and letter sizes, providing instructions on how to read the poem, and using non-letter symbols to encode semantic meanings (Gingell 221). These printing methods prioritize the way the poem becomes vocalized off the page, and thus, reinstantiate a performance every time the poem is read. For example, the spacing and spelling in this excerpt of Lillian Allen’s “Riddim An’ Hardtimes” guides the reader’s internal or re-created performance of the poem:

An’ him chucks on some riddim

an’ yu hear him say

riddim an’ hardtimes

riddim an’ hardtimes



(Carr 13)


Allen’s spelling represents Jamaican Creole phonetics, while her spacing invokes the mapping of time, which is the plane in which sound exists. Despite these printing techniques, reading a dub poem is an intrinsically different experience from witnessing a performance. In the interest of establishing literary prestige, however, publishing is the most compelling way to accept dub poetry as a literary form (Gingell 226).

The various methods dub poets deploy to lift their poems off the page serve to guide the audience’s internal or voiced enactment of the poem. One author, Mervyn Morris, stresses consideration of the reader in the transcription of dub poetry (Gingell 233). He proposes that this reader is most likely not Jamaican because of low literacy rates as well as poetry reading rates in Jamaica (233-4). Hence, the transition from performance to print signals the transition from Black audiences to white readers (Clarke 59). Non-Jamaican readers do not have “what Vèvè Clark calls ‘diaspora literacy’... defined as cultivating interdisciplinary intimacy with the social, cultural, spiritual, and political history and contexts that inform the texture of dub aesthetics (Carr 14). Non-Jamaican readers are equipped with neither the vernacular familiarity of Jamaican Creole nor the life experience and identity to resonate with dub poems. Manipulating the ink on the page attempts to bridge this gap in understanding for non-Jamaican readers. Thus, the printing of dub poetry renders it, however transformed it is in its textual format, accessible to non-Jamaican, English-speaking readers.

If a performance of dub poetry is only accessible to its live and local audience, then publishing dub poetry has the ability to transport the poems to a broader readership. Clarke asserts that “the strength of the page is in its portability” (58). Print publishing and digital recording theoretically increase accessibility to these poems, but this availability only opens up to people with the access to and, furthermore, the will and cultural awareness to engage with books and technology. That is to say that technological documentation of dub poetry does not expand its Jamaican or Jamaican-diasporic audiences as much as it picks up scrutiny from “high culture” Western critics (Clarke 59). A performance may not be accessible to people geographically far away from it, but for the dub poet’s community, a performance is more available than a book. Lillian Allen has posed the argument that live spoken word “leaps class, economic, and literacy barriers that might inhibit access” (Carr 29). Regardless of which audiences gain or lose access with each aesthetic form, the printing of a dub poem does not mean that it must permanently depart from performance. In fact, readers can utilize the text to hold their own performances of a dub poem, enabling the voice of the poet to reverberate across a wider geographical range. Print is thus an additional route by which people can encounter dub poetry.

Dub poetry is a platform for voicing resistance against Western dominance. The content of dub poems deals with oppressive forces and acknowledges existences that might otherwise perish in silence. The cry of a poet breaks through the silence of the Jamaican people, who have limited ability to impose their voice on the rest of the world. The orality of dub poetry is an opportunity for the poet to exert power. Whereas reading requires a solitary reader, performance calls together a community. Dub poetry hails from a long lineage of communal music-centered performance. Enslaved African people in Jamaica were prohibited from both acquiring English literacy and retaining their West African languages and culture, so music and dance became mediums for education and for sustaining “social memory” (Carr 10). Steven Green, the co-editor of T-Dot Griots: An Anthology of Toronto’s Black Storytellers (2004) makes the argument that performance “harken[s poets] in a spiritual, intuitive way to their ancestral African roots… tapping in to [sic] the soul of Blackness” (Clarke 58). Gingell goes so far as to propose the idea that “the [B]lackness of a [B]lack-authored poem is best realized in its performance” (57). If the aesthetic form of dub poetry is intertwined with its historical, cultural identity, then the textualization of dub poetry would effectively strip away its nativeness.

A key component of the motivation behind dub poets’ desire to be judged as literary is their recognition that in “so-called high culture” literature attracts more cultural capital than orality (Gingell 226). Vernacular poets seek incorporation into the Western sphere of culture in order to receive the prestige and power that is out of reach for the vernacular author. This validation can be empowering, but the need for it marks the European standard to which dub poets must strive. Clarke elucidates this issue by questioning “if the… [B]lack poet—African, American, Canadian, or Caribbean—insists on the performative grace of his or her work, why must he or she be assessed (condemned) by the print conventions of Eurocentric poetry?” (Clarke 60). Dub poets internalize the idea that printing verifies the respectability of their craft. If this idea did not possess the cultural authority that it does, they would not feel the need to be literary; dub poetry in its oral form would not feel inadequate. Not only should the oral form’s literary-ness not be in question, but also it should not need to be literary to also be prestigious. Dub poets’ desire to be seen as authors of literature demonstrates that their work exists within a European framework of culture.

Many critics dismiss dub poetry when measuring it against traditional European lyrical aesthetic values (Carr 11). Victor Chan criticizes the genre’s failure to be introspective, “... ‘musing, quiet, reflective, tender, delicate, or registering a complexity of position or feeling…’” (11). Carr insists that dub poetry does not operate within the Western aesthetic norms of poetry (11). She asserts that dub poetry must be evaluated outside of the notions of “Western cultural gatekeepers who have asserted the incompatibility of political and aesthetic categories (11). For authors to insert themselves in this framework, then, could seem as though they are conforming to the European conventions that condemn their work. In addition, the introduction of audio recordings, television, radio, and film to the presentation format of dub poetry imposes Western technology on dub poetry (Carr 10). The documentation of dub poetry, therefore, symbolizes compliance to Western cultural dominance.

Dub poets, however, are not blind to the implications of textualization. Rather than feeling resigned to Western aesthetic standards, they proclaim their empowerment through Western mediums. Publishing dub poetry gives their work a monetary value, thus opening up opportunities for dub poets to earn more profit. Bringing their work to literature can lead to social and professional benefits as well as career development (Gingell 230). Printing broadcasts the message of a poet far beyond the local spaces to which dub poetry performance was previously confined. By seizing Western printing mechanisms and recording technology, dub poets spread their messages of resisting Western cultural dominance to a more global audience. In addition, the orthographization of Jamaican Creole represents a vernacular making demands of its audience instead of the typical situation in which vernacular text conforms, perhaps by way of translation, to the cosmopolitan reader’s learned mode of literacy.

Becoming literature is also empowering for dub poets because the culture industry tends only to accept Black expression in an art form. Music, dance, and other non-scholarly formats are frequently the most accessible means to commercial success for Black people. This feature of society is evident in the case of dub poet Lillian Allen’s rejection from the League of Canadian Poets and later reception of a Juno Award in the category of reggae-calypso music (Gingell 226). Exclusion from the literary community is degrading for dub poets; “‘Poetry coming out of an African tradition can be valued as popular music, but not as Literature’” (226). Publishing dub poetry also does the work of uplifting the Jamaican Creole language. Some scholars posit that diglossia in Jamaica and Jamaican diasporic communities is dissolving as Jamaican Creole enters more and more into “formal and written contexts” (Coppola 8). Bringing dub poetry into the realm of literature would result in the Jamaican language obtaining a place in high culture. Although the presentation of the craft changes from performance to text and technological display, the content and the vernacular of dub poems remains true to its core. Technology has the power to prevent the consequential erasure of orality of Jamaican-diasporic narratives by sealing them into a permanent form.

Dub poetry’s current encounter with Western culture is reminiscent of the Jamaican language’s relationship with Standard English at the time of its formation in the seventeenth century. Various forms of Jamaican Creole emerged from the linguistic collision of enslaved Africans and English colonists. The creation of a creole language usually uses the colonizer’s language to articulate life in opposition to those colonial forces. Not only did the Jamaican language develop in order for the enslaved people on the island to articulate their environment, but also, through its modifications to Standard English grammar, linguistically reflected the ontological conditions of enslavement. In other words, the distress in the experience of forced importation and slavery mirrors the corruption of English grammar that occured in creolization. Enslaved Africans displaced in Jamaica adapted lexically to English, while maintaining phonemic structure and tonality of West African languages (De Camp 118). The creole that emerged, therefore, was intelligible to English plantation owners and simultaneously true to the sound aesthetics of their ancestors’ languages. Clarke argues that language is an arena for the “colonized” speakers’ negotiation of their political equality, and so, in the process of speaking the language of the oppressor, the oppressed attempts to destroy it (56). Under this notion, the deviance of Jamaican English grammar from Standard English grammar is an act of resistance to Western colonization.

Clarke also affirms that “In the post-colonial era… Negro poetry emerges from an endless war with European tongues” (56). Dub poets who feel empowered through European cultural means, namely the English language and textualization of their work, might reject the classification of the relationship as a “war”, calling it instead something like resistance. Rather than feuding in direct opposition to one another, Jamaican English dub poets are attempting to incorporate the Western cultural format into their journey of uplift. Just as enslaved Jamaican commnities adopted English vocabulary to express themselves, and thus, empower themselves through communicating their existence, dub poets seek to adopt Western technology and the traditional European literary form of print in order to spread their poems and gain prestige transnationally.

The situation of European cultural dominance that produced Jamaican Creole persists today, and so, to analyze dub poetry without analyzing its relation to dominant forms of culture would be to neglect a crucial part of its formation, its message, and its position in society. As in the formation of Jamaican English, language is a reflection of existence, and that existence is engaged in a relationship with multiple cultural, social, and political forces. Both the formation of Jamaican Creole and dub poetry are results of cultures in contact. Dub poetry does not exist in a vacuum. It is actively in a dialogue with other forms of poetry and literature as well as its political surroundings. The textualization and recording of dub poetry is a process that reflects the reality of diasporic communities. Change and adjustment to the environment have historically been critical to the survival of Jamaican-diasporic communities. The changes to dub poetry’s format are yet another adaptation to its surrounding cultural atmosphere. Rather than clinging strictly to the cultural modes of their predecessors, dub poets are defining their diasporic identities in a way most suitable to the present cultural moment. Instead of ignoring their context, they are reacting to its demands and capitalizing off of its resources to gain wider circulation in the literary world. Jenny Sharpe notes how globalization and diaspora collide to form “new hybrid cultures” that “emerge through an ‘indigenization’ of metropolitan culture (261). The pressures of institutional culture invoke dub poetry’s need to be literary and, consequently, its need to be documented and printed. Whether these new formats for dub poetry perpetuate European standards and cultural hegemony or empower previously confined Jamaican voices is up to individual dub poets.












Works Cited

Carr, Brenda. “‘Come Mek Wi Work Together’: Community witness and social agency in Lillian Allen’s Dub Poetry.” Ariel: A Review of International English Literature. The Board of Governers, The University of Calgary, 1998, vol. 29. no. 3. pp. 7-29.

Clarke, George Elliot. “Bring Da Noise: The Poetics of Performance, chez d’bi young and Oni Joseph.” Listening Up, Writing Down, and Looking Beyond: interfaces of the oral, written, and visual, edited by Susan Gingell and Wendy Roy, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2012, 56-60.

Coppola, Manuela. “Spelling Out Resistance: Dub Poetry and Typographic Resistance.” Anglistica: An Interdisciplinary Journal. <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291697312_Spelling_Out_Resistance_Dub_Poetry_and_Typographic_Resistance>. Accessed 14 December 2017.

DeCosmo, Janet L. "Dub Poetry: Legacy of Roots Reggae." Griot, vol. 14, no. 2, 1995, pp. 33, Periodicals Archive Online, https://search.proquest.com/docview/1297944142?accountid=9758.

Gingell, Susan. “‘Always a Poem, Once A Book’: Motivations and Strategies for Print Textualizing of Caribbean-Canadian Dub and Performance Poetry.” Journal of West Indian Literature. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/23020019>. Accessed 14 December 2017.

Sharpe, Jenny. “Cartographies of Globalization, Technologies of Gendered Subjectivities: The Dub Poetry of Lean "Binta" Breeze.” Minor Transnationalism, edited by Françoise Lionett & Shu-mei Shih, Duke University Press, 2005, 261-5.
Sullivan, Paul. “Remixology: Tracing the Dub Diaspora.” Reaktion Books, Limited, 2013.