BFI Restores Linton Kwesi Johnson’s ‘Dread Beat an Blood’ for North American Premiere at BAM

A landmark documentary capturing the rise of dub poetry and the uncompromising voice of one of its pioneers is set to return to the screen. Dread Beat an Blood, the 1979 film by Babylon director Franco Rosso, will be shown in a newly restored version at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) this September, marking the 50th anniversary of Linton Kwesi Johnson’s seminal 1975 poem of the same name.

The screening will be followed by Johnson’s first major US stage appearance in nearly 20 years, featuring a spoken word performance and an on-stage conversation with The Atlantic senior editor Vann R. Newkirk II. For audiences, it offers a rare chance to see the “regal dub poet” (as The New York Times described him) return to live performance alongside the revival of one of the defining films about Black British culture.

Filmed in the late 1970s, Dread Beat an Blood immerses viewers in the charged atmosphere of Brixton at a time of deep political friction and racial discrimination. Rosso’s documentary follows Johnson into the recording studio with reggae musician and producer Dennis Bovell, onto stages where his patois-driven verse meets heavy dub rhythms, and into the heart of political protests, including the campaign to free wrongly imprisoned Black Briton George Lindo.

The film also includes scenes from the 1976 Notting Hill Carnival, where confrontations between police and young people of Caribbean heritage underscored the tensions Johnson was writing about. Its direct and confrontational style attracted controversy from the outset, with the BBC shelving a planned broadcast until after Margaret Thatcher’s election.

Linton Kwesi Johnson Jamaican Poet via plutobooks..com

Born in Chapelton, Jamaica, in 1952, Johnson moved to England in 1963. As a teenager, he joined the British Black Panther Movement and became involved in the Race Today Collective and the Black Parents Movement. While studying sociology, he began writing poetry that combined political commentary with the cadence of Jamaican speech, drawing on the sound system culture he grew up around.

By the late 1970s, this fusion of verse and rhythm had crystallised into a new form—dub poetry—which Johnson pioneered. His early recordings under the name Poet and the Roots, including the Dread Beat an Blood album, were as much political testimony as musical innovation. In his own words, “I didn’t want to emulate anyone else. I wanted it to sound like me.”

Though rarely screened after its original release, Rosso’s documentary has been recognised as an essential record of British Caribbean culture. The new restoration, created by the British Film Institute from the original 16mm reels, brings the film to North American audiences for the first time.

Filmmaker Steve McQueen has called Johnson “the one to look to” for integrity and longevity, noting that “his words are still relevant and that reggae bass is still vibrating.” That relevance is borne out in the documentary’s portraits of communities facing injustice, and in Johnson’s unwavering commitment to cultural and political engagement over five decades.

Johnson’s influence stretches far beyond dub poetry. His work has shaped reggae, spoken word, and even the rhythms and social consciousness of early hip-hop. He became the second living poet, and the first Black poet, to be published by Penguin Modern Classics, and his 2023 book Time Come: Selected Prose reaffirmed his standing as a sharp observer of politics and culture.

For Johnson, poetry has always been intertwined with activism. Speaking in 2022, he noted that cultural work “is not a substitute for concrete political action… but all our struggles have a cultural dimension.”

Dread Beat an Blood will premiere in its restored form on Saturday 20 September at BAM’s Harvey Theater, in association with The Atlantic Festival. The evening will include a 45-minute screening, a 25-minute spoken word performance, and a 25-minute conversation with Johnson.

For those who follow the intersections of music, politics, and literature, it is an opportunity to engage with a figure whose voice has shaped half a century of cultural history—and whose words still carry the weight of urgent truth.