R.I.P. Benjamin Zephaniah: A Revolutionary Mind
Go back 09 December, 2023
Last Thursday came with tidings of bad news: the loss of Benjamin Zephaniah. The world has lost a multi-talented artist, with an inexhaustible energy to change it.
Author, dub-poet, MC, playwright, actor, professor, husband, activist… There are few things that Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Zephaniah could not be identified as. Born to parents of Barbadian and Jamaican descent as Benjamin Springer in 1958 in Handsworth, Birmingham; Zephaniah grew up in the Jamaican heart of the Midlands. As many youths of Jamaican descent in the 60s and 70s, Zephaniah got his first taste of bass by listening to ska and bluebeat records that his father played on a radiogram in the almost sacred front room of their house. In the early 70s, he started to rebel and attended his first sound system dance. It was the legendary Quaker City Sound System, one of Birmingham’s heaviest, that helped shape Benjamin Zephaniah’s musical taste and Rastafari identity. And it was on this very same sound system that Zephaniah first toasted lyrics, kick-starting his poetry career. In this aspect, Benjamin and Gladdy Wax have been trodding the same road for a while, since Gladdy also started out as a toaster on Quaker City.
I was vaguely familiar with some of this great man’s work, but I really got to know Mr. Zephaniah in 2019. That’s when I bought a copy of his, then freshly released, autobiography at Brixton’s Black Cultural Archives. I knew I had to read the whole book at once when I put eyes on the first two sentences: 'I hate autobiographies. They're so fake'. Only when I had read the last sentence, I was able to put the book down.
Dedicating the book to himself, Zephaniah walks the reader through his interesting life, from his childhood in Handsworth to his early sixties in the British countryside, writing (among other topics) about music, Rastafari, racism, criminality, activism, and love. Apart from being an incredibly talented writer and artist in general, Benjamin Zephaniah devoted his life to fighting injustices in our often wicked society. After being diagnosed with a brain tumor about eight weeks ago, Mr. Zephaniah passed away on 7th December 2023, aged 65.
Our condolences go out to his family and loved ones. Rest in peace, Professor.