Low Down

Baba Brinkman, known for his “lit-hop” version of The Canterbury Tales teams up with Dizraeli, the current UK BBC Radio 4 Slam Champion to dish up a feast of a political debate in a variety of rap and performance poetry forms. The action takes place in Britain (Mud Island) – from which in an act of diplomacy, Scotland is excused – in 2013. It is a place in which the government owns the rights to writers’ pens, and writing can only be published with their consent; in which detention without charge has become the quintessence of Englishness, ‘it’s been this way since the 2012 olympics’, and the government-funded media channel is the BNPBC.  
 

Review

The danger of doing a clearly demarcated dualistic piece is that the audience’s expectation is already set up to see the argument for the middle ground coming. Skilfully, Baba and Dizraeli – both equally keen to eradicate injustice, while differing wildly in their approaches – keep the audience guessing as to the final proposal, with Baba arguing for civil disobedience and Diz for dissidents. Baba arguing a liberal pro-capitalist stance and Diz that of a rebellious anarchist.

Diz sees Baba as a fascist, Baba sees Diz as a dope-smoking rebel for the sake of it. He accuses him of wanting ‘to volunteer to sit in a wheelchair because it feels fair.’  Rather than move the debate slowly towards a middle ground, or allow one side to win over the other, the question of left, right, or middle ground is ingeniously left open at the end, with the over-riding theme being the duo’s ability to remain friends while espousing dialectically opposed views, one wanting to ‘salvage a failed state’, the other being accused of wanting ‘Che's fate’. But even then, the audience is left wondering whether liberalism and compromise will really win the day in a brilliant dramatic final coup-de-theatre.

While the poets’ words scintillated, they tended at times to be eclipsed by movement, with lots of generic ‘yo, bruvva’ finger-pointing, irrespective of the characterisation, leaving the audience unclear as to the boundaries between rap show and theatre genres. And while Baba’s speeches were anything but preachy, the ending of one of them, ‘go in peace’ accompanied by a ‘V for victory’ sign gave mixed messages. Was this deliberate or not? In light of the stock movements used, it was hard to tell. 

Despite this, it is clear that these performers are masters of their art. Their work embodies, as they say, ‘the substance our minds are made of’. They compel, they impel, they use words well and they can spell. They rhyme Castro with narrow. They think their stories through as they spew forth their points of view. if you’re interested in political debate, don’t leave it ’til it’s too late. Go see the show. Yo! 

 

Reviewed by Leon Conrad 06 August 2008

Website :

www.babasword.com