Mutabaruka ‘The Dub Poet’ speaks out

10 Feb, 2017 - 00:02 0 Views

The ManicaPost

. . . continued from last week

It’s a typical vegan diet?

MUTA: Yes. No animal products. I don’t use animal products. I don’t use it. I don’t wear it. I never gave my children animal products. They don’t know how cheese is made—egg, honey—none of those things. None of those things, nothing from animals. I grow up my children them that way. But I am the only one that make the transition to the raw food thing. But a lot of Rastas, they’re into it. You have different stages. Some people eat fish, some people don’t eat fish. Some people drink milk, some people don’t drink milk. My concept of vegetarian is vegetable. “Vegetarian” come from vegetable. I wouldn’t include milk and cheese and egg and these things. That is not vegetable. When I say vegetarian, I don’t have to say “vegan.” That is terminologies now that make the thing get strange. People say they are lacto-vegetarian and vegan-vegetarian. You can’t be a lacto-vegetarian and a vegan-vegetarian. You’re either a vegetarian or you’re not a vegetarian. A vegetarian is a person who only eats vegetables. So if you are drinking milk and eating fish…you can’t have a semi-vegetarian.?

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Do you have any advice for people who are curious about vegetarianism but have not made the commitment?

Muta: Well I would say to listen to your body. You have to just know what is good for you. You can’t have no strict hard and fast rule for anybody. You have to know what is with you. You have a lot of people who are making the transition to vegetarianism who have this concern about where you get your protein from. Anybody who you tell that you are becoming a vegetarian will say, “Well, where will you get protein from?” They feel as if protein is the most important thing out of the foods. But most people spend too much time trying to figure out protein. There’s too much protein already being taken. So when somebody eating fish, chicken, saying them looking for protein, you already have your protein in basic nuts, beans, grains. Brown rice has protein. Red peas, most of the peas, most of the nuts, are mostly protein. I don’t think they should be concerned with it. I think we have been brainwashed in this protein thing. We already have the protein.?

Can you explain what dub poetry is?

Muta: Dub poetry is Jamaican poetry to music, especially reggae music. What we do, we use the music to compliment the poems. Most of the poems is basically a social, political or religious commentary. We use the reggae music to express it. So that is why they call it dub poetry, because Jamaican music at one time was dub music. Now they would call it reggae poetry. ????

Are you considered the father of dub poetry?

MUTA: The father? (laughs) Well, you see when I was doing poetry they didn’t call it dub poetry. It was just poetry to music. Dub poetry just come later on down because they wanted to identify a kind of poem. I don’t really like the term still because it kind of limit you to that. A lot of my poems, especially on my CDs, would draw from different black musical perspective. We’re very African-centered. A lot of my poems would draw from the black experience, the musical experience of black people all over the world. You don’t want to just limit yourself to reggae?

Who are some of those musical influences for you?

Muta: Well, we just listen to every music that black people make, especially African music. You see, when we started to write the poems, we had a mind of music, a music mentality because we loved to play music, and we listened to a lot of music. I couldn’t name the specific musicians as such. Depending on the poem, we use a type of music. We used to listen to poets like Last Poets, Gil Scott-Heron, Marcus Garvey. We used to read Marcus Garvey poems. In the sixties when we used to go to school, there was Sonia Sanchez, Gwendolyn Brooks, LeRoi Jones. We started to develop out of that Black Poets experience.?

Do you see a relationship between diet and consciousness? And, if so, how have you seen yourself grow spiritually as a Rastafarian due to your change of diet?

Muta: One thing vegetarian allows you to do is to become more compassionate. What I get to understand within the vegetarian concept is that all life is one. It’s just different manifestations of flesh. The cow, the goat, the bird, they all flesh. Is of one source, the life source. Even the tree is of one life source. When it comes down to flesh now, man wasn’t made to eat flesh. Your body doesn’t assimilate flesh as such. When you stop eating flesh, you kind of recognize certain compassion inside of you. You feel like, wow, the cow, he don’t eat animal, him just there, he don’t trouble nobody. So you kind of start to feel like why should I kill the cow? The cow doesn’t trouble nobody. The cow just eats greens everyday. The goat eats greens everyday and don’t trouble nobody. That feeling take hold of you and you start to go into yourself. You start to get feelings toward things. You start to feel more developed into a being, a person. And then you take it from there within the consciousness of what people call God. We move within a level of man taking responsibility…If you kill animals it don’t mean that you won’t kill a man. Even when the Bible tell you “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” it never said “Thou Shalt Not Kill man.” It said “Thou Shalt Not Kill” and full stop. So who’s to say what it is talking about when it say “Thou Shalt Not Kill”? If God wanted animals to be your food, him wouldn’t make them with foot to run away, and with eyes. Food not supposed to have eyes and mouth and nose. That is not food. Food cannot have eyes. That is crazy. It help me as a person to understand what really is this thing that is life. As a Rasta man, it allows you to keep certain sanity in all this confusion. It allows you really to keep a certain train of thought. Because you’re thinking on life, and how to sustain and maintain life in its glory, in its fullness, in its totality. — sparksofdissent

For contributions on reggae/dancehall music and latest news contact Ras Libz Kartel on 0773 219 891 or [email protected]

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