“The regal dub poet” (Anderson Tepper, The New York Times) Linton Kwesi Johnson (LKJ) is a living legend. Born in 1952 in Chapelton, a small town in rural Jamaica, he moved to Britain as a boy in 1963, joined the British Black Panthers in 1970, and that decade became the voice for British African-Caribbean young people, creating a genre called dub poetry: militant passionate verse about the Black liberation struggle in Britain set to heavy dub. Johnson is the second living poet and the only Black poet to be published by Penguin Modern Classics.

Dread Beat an Blood (“one of the most powerful examples of the pervasive influence that Jamaican and reggae culture had on 1970s England” —Ink 19) by Franco Rosso, director of the incendiary Babylon, is a potent portrait of LKJ and his fervent verse and robust voice, all with his pen and his microphone.

Now presented in a beautiful new restoration from the original 16mm elements by the British Film Institute, and never before seen in North America, Dread Beat an Blood marks the 50th anniversary of Johnson’s groundbreaking 1975 eponymous poem. And Rosso kinetically documents LKJ’s live poetry and reggae performances; his recording and mixing sessions with producer Dennis Bovell (a reggae legend in his own right); and his activism, including a powerful protest for the unjustly imprisoned Black Briton George Lindo, about whom Johnson wrote “It Dread inna Inglan.” The film gained national attention when its TV premiere was delayed by the BBC until Margaret Thatcher was elected, so great was the concern about Johnson’s powers of persuasion.