Allen Hope was a Roman Catholic teenager working in Kingston for the Jamaican phone company in the late ’60s when he discovered Rastafarianism and the writings of Malcolm X and Eldridge Cleaver. A newly radicalized Hope adopted the Rastafarian religion (or nonreligion, as he would have it, for Rastas are free of most dogma), moved to the countryside and took the name Mutabaruka, which means “one who is always victorious.” He also started writing poetry, much of which he has set to reggae and dub music over the years. The self- proclaimed Melanin Man’s works have railed against white imperialism and in favor of women’s rights; some have even adapted British-based nursery rhymes to document tenement yard reality and to crusade for an end to the killing of animals. Muta ranks with Britain’s Linton Kwesi Johnson and America’s Gil Scott-Heron as a great musical poet of the African diaspora.
This article appears in Aug 2-8, 2001.
