Dub poetry represents a major form of black popular art, standing as a perfect mix of past and present, of tradition and experimentation. Dub poetry is a form of performance poetry which makes use of the ancient oral traditions of Africa, with their focus on storytelling, and that has developed out of the reggae tradition in Jamaica and England in the mid-Seventies. In this sense, dub poets soon started to use the same channels of communication - records, live acts - as the reggae musicians, singers and DJs of Kingston and London.
Dub poetry stands as a privileged space to investigate the connection between Caribbean and African cultures. Apart from the music and dance, it is the oral tradition, embodied in multiple social performances, which links the Caribbean reality to the African one, a link which was established centuries ago with the translation of African bodies, voices and stories into the New World during the Middle Passage. It is important to note how:
the original African...
