Callaloo

Callaloo 26.3 (2003) 607-613

Dub and Difference
A Conversation with Jean "Binta" Breeze

Jenny Sharpe

Jamaican-born Jean "Binta" Breeze is an internationally-renowned poet, actress, storyteller, dancer, and theatrical director who writes and performs both in standard English and Jamaican patois. She grew up in Patty Hill, a small village in the hills of Hanover before moving to Kingston in 1978 to study at the Jamaica School of Drama, where she met the dub poets Oku Onuora, Mikey Smith, and Mutabaruka. Dub poetry, which is the term used for a poetic style that fuses reggae music with the spoken word, is a transatlantic form that emerged simultaneously in Kingston and London and subsequently spread to more far-flung places like South Africa. Breeze first performed onstage in 1981 with Mutabaruka in Montego Bay and went on to record a number of songs that received airplay on Jamaica's reggae stations. The British dub poet, Linton Kwesi Johnson, heard Breeze and decided to introduce her to a European audience. She has lived in London since 1985 but spends a few months each year in Hanover to be with her three children.

Although Breeze first achieved international recognition as a dub poet, she cannot be so easily categorized. Finding the reggae rhythm of dub poetry somewhat restricting, she began to experiment with different kinds of musical styles, integrating jazz, blues, mento, and kaiso into her work. Breeze's published work includes Riddym Ravings (Race Today), Spring Cleaning (Virago), On the Edge of an Island (Bloodaxe), and The Arrival of Brighteye (Bloodaxe). These works not only explore a wide range of personal, social, and political relationships but also grapple with the everyday experiences of ordinary Jamaican women. Using her skills as a storyteller and the emotive power of her voice, she performs the poems rather than simply read them. Breeze recorded Tracks (LKJ Records) with Linton Kwesi Johnson's back-up band, the Dennis Bovell Dub Band. Her first screenplay Hallelujah Anyhow! was screened at the 1990 British Film Festival and subsequently broadcast on Channel 4. She also played a leading role in the Talawa theater production of The Prayer in London. She has collaborated with the African-American female a cappella group, Sweet Honey in the Rock, and Maya Angelou personally chose her to perform at her 70th birthday. Breeze's spoken performance to the music of a gospel choir was so powerful and moving that, when it ended, Angelou immediately walked across the stage to embrace her. This interview was conducted in November 2001, on the morning after Breeze performed at the University of California at Los Angeles. [End Page 607]

SHARPE: You spoke last night about how you came to be a dub poet. I would like to begin with that because I think that it's a great story.

BREEZE: Well, I lived for a few years in the hills as a Rastafarian woman, and during that time I was not occupied with writing at all, but was just making up lyrics for a sound system called I.T. Open King Sounds and just chanting all the time and remembering things in my head. And when I came out of the hills, I had a psychotic breakdown, part of which included reacting to everything that was said on the radio. One day I turned on the radio, and it was playing, "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay." Now the bay near us is Montego Bay, so I got on a bus fifteen miles to Montego Bay and sat out on the pier, waiting to see who was waiting for me on the dock of the bay. And I was sitting there writing, when a Rastafarian man came up to me and said—"So! The daughter is a poet!" And I said—"Yes." And he said: "Would you like to perform at a concert for his Majesty's [Haile Sellassie] 90th birthday?" And I said—"Yes." This was 1980 or 1981, and the next week my name was in the papers as one of the...