George the Poet on Music, Memory, and the War on Blackness (Part One)
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Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti. On the show today, George the poet, the author, poet, and spoken word performer.

George is seen by many as one of the UK's most compelling voices in poetry, music and social commentary. Originally hailing from St Raphael's estate in Neasden, George has spent over a decade working at the intersection of arts and politics to shed light on how race and inequality still shape Britain today. His innovative brand of musical poetry has won him critical acclaim as a recording artist and a social commentator, and seen his words broadcast to billions worldwide.

In 2018, he was appointed as a member of the National Council of Arts in England, and the same year he wrote The Beauty of Union, a poem read at the royal wedding for Prince Harry and Meghan. In 2019, George turned down an offer to become an MBE, citing the British Empire's treatment of his ancestral homeland, Uganda.

His podcast, Have You Heard George's Podcast, uses fiction and music to tell stories about city life, society, history and creativity and has received five British podcast awards. George recently joined us on stage at the Kiln Theatre to discuss the themes of his new memoir, Track Record: Me, Music and the War on Blackness, locating his personal story alongside a broader social history of race and identity in Britain.

Hosting the discussion was writer and presenter Shantae Joseph. Now this episode is coming to you in two parts. If you want to listen to the live recording in full and ad-free, why not consider becoming an Intelligence Squared Premium subscriber? Head to intelligencesquared.com forward slash membership to find out more, or hit the IQ2X button on Apple. Now let's join our host, Shantae Joseph, with more.

I am really, really excited about this conversation. George the Poet, I'm so excited to be sat with you. We're going to have a hearty chat today. Let's do it, man. You already know. You already know. Obviously, you are a poet, author, spoken word performer. Your podcast won five awards.

- Podcast awards. I barely got one, I barely scraped one by the tip of my teeth. - Congratulations. - I think that's incredible. And you have written this incredible book, track record, "Me, Music and the War on Blackness." I have read it cover to cover. I think it is brilliant.

I really hope you all, if you haven't got it already, please, please, please buy it afterwards. George will be signing copies and you can get one. Trust me, you're going to really enjoy this read. Thank you. So I want to start by saying that we're here in Kilburn. We are both Northwest Londoners. I grew up across Neasden and Cricklewood. You grew up in St. Russ Estate.

How did North West London shape you as a person? As you guys will know, as you will know, it's a very diverse place. And with that just comes so much exposure to different perspectives, different cultural experiences. And I was fortunate enough to take that for granted for the first 10, 20 years of my life.

And as I reflect on all the different directions that I've gone in and the things I've been able to draw on, it all comes down to being in this community. Thank you. Yeah, for real. And...

I mean, I'm not too far from here now. I'm kind of a little bit more west than I was before. But every time I come back to Crookwood or even come back to Kilburn, it's changed so much. And in what ways do you kind of feel like being back here, it's different?

Well, London's changing, innit? So it is busier. It unfortunately for me feels like it gets less and less personal. Every year, you know, social spaces are going away, which is why it means so much to have you guys all here tonight. Recently, I went back, I actually did an event in one of the main spots that me, my mom and my brother used to go to when we were young.

Wilsdon Green Library. And that place has changed a lot, man. You know, it's changed a lot. So it's kind of bittersweet. Yeah. But we're still here. We're still pulling together. And I think that is what I want to continue to lean into. Yeah.

And I do enjoy reading a lot of your reflections growing up in the book. You talk about doing Brentsum University. And I remember doing the one in Camden because my mum worked there. But how do you think those sort of community programs really helped to give you a flavour of the arts, like something you'd really enjoy?

I mentioned in the book obviously that Brent Summer University, which was a summer program of just different entry schemes into creative careers, all sorts, that was a launch pad in many ways for my artistic life. And it also was a connector. We were able to make connections across neighborhoods, across communities at a time when it was getting harder and harder.

So yeah, big up Ricky, the brains behind BSU. I recently was talking to him. But that's something that, again, it's a big loss for the community to not have that anymore. But yeah, I'm grateful that we got to experience it. And let's get into the book. So for those who will be picking up a copy of this today, what can they expect? All right, so let me explain, yeah.

The book was, it started off quite autobiographical and that was easy. That was easy writing and it was easy reading for my editor. But I started just before the pandemic and things got weird, as you'll remember.

And the more intense these social divisions appeared in traditional media, social media, in our lives, the more I reflected on my decision the year prior to turn down an MBE. And the more I got into my studies, I was doing a PhD, the more I had to really confront some bigger questions beyond my personal experience. I was trying to situate

my personal experience in its global and historical context, which is why the book became not just me, but music and the war on blackness. Yeah.

And I want to go back to that as well, because you obviously talk about rejecting your envy. And we were talking before and you were like, I almost even forgot to put that in the book because so much happened in that time. So you were obviously doing a lot of media during 2020, like a lot of interviews. You know, I feel like you were being called upon a lot to answer questions that...

that were bigger than you in a sense what was it about that time that made you think okay I really need to change the trajectory of that book was there anything that happened or any incidents or any conversations you had that made you think okay this is bigger than me now you know what Shanti I realised I didn't have answers I was not prepared and I felt that

As a generation, we were considerably less prepared than our parents, than some of the Black British movements that came before us. We were struggling to articulate...

not all of us, some of us were very on point with this and that was inspiring to me, especially when roads must fall and all the activity in Bristol was going on and Birmingham as well. I was looking at these young people in uni and they were holding my feet to the fire. They were making me feel like I need to go back to school. But I knew that as someone with such a public platform, I was insufficiently prepared for the moment George Floyd was murdered.

conversations were going on about black empowerment and they were starting to drift in the economic direction and I even dipped my toe in the pool and started to try and share some of my ideas about the economic future of black life but

I just had a guilty conscience. I knew that my ideas were unrefined, my politics were undercooked, and I just thought that is a shame if someone like me, with a background of literally studying politics, and with an opportunity to speak to a national audience, if I'm unprepared, what does that suggest for incoming generations? And why do you think you were unprepared? There was just something...

superficial about the way we were talking about things at the time. You remember Blackout Tuesday when people started posting a black square. Like a lot of the gestures and the rhetoric at the time was well-intentioned but in terms of me trying to articulate why, I grew up in North West London in a neighbourhood that was predominantly black

one of the highest rates of child poverty in the country, despite our parents coming from all different walks of life, Dominica, Jamaica, Somalia, Uganda, Congo, and despite them all having varying levels of education and experiences, we all found ourselves in the same economic situation. I just felt like...

There's a very specific experience to articulate here. And I don't have the language. I don't know why we've all ended up in the same boat. I know growing up in St. Raph's that all of these mums and dads wanted the best for their kids and emphasised the importance of education.

And I saw people transform before my eyes as I articulate in my book. And I knew the opportunities that were available to us and how I just broke out of certain cycles because of the school I happened to go to, yada, yada, yada. But I didn't see these, I didn't see this nuance coming out in the public conversation. - Yeah. - Yeah, sure thing.

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Add your favorite entertainment to any Fios Home Internet plan, like Netflix and Max, or Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+. With Verizon, stream more of what you love and save. Call 1-800-VERIZON and get Fios Home Internet today. 18 plus terms apply. In the book, you talk a lot about a difference in politics between black liberalism and black radicalism. And one thing that you mentioned that actually really stuck with me was this idea of

you know capitalism wants you to believe that you personally have succeeded because you worked kind of very hard it was just on you and you talk about like the fact that there are so many people who grew up in your your area who didn't kind of their lives didn't turn out the same way yours did and sometimes that was like a matter of circumstance and opportunity and happy

and happenchance, but capitalism will tell you that you are the exception because of a specific set of circumstances. But actually, it's a lot more complicated than that. Yeah. I just read this morning that Jeff Bezos announced some changes to the New York Times editorial section where, long story short, they will be placing emphasis on ideas that promote, in his words, free markets and...

individual rights or personal rights, personal property rights. And that's the New York Times opinion section that he's talking about, right? So what we're dealing with here is an ideological, let's call it tilt, an ideological thrust where we're being...

discouraged, disincentivized to look at our experience on a collectivist level. We're being discouraged to talk about structural inequality. In the book, I talk about racial capitalism, the racial identity of capitalism from its inception. And these ideas are not mainstream.

what is, and you can tell the clues are all in the music, which is why music is such a prominent character in my story. When you listen to hip-hop,

In its early stages there was African conscious hip-hop, there was feminist hip-hop, there was fun party hip-hop and there was a little bit of street gangster hip-hop. Now it is a standard that the starting point of hip-hop is the most super gangster, individualistic, get money kind of hip-hop. So what happened there? There was an ideological shift.

It's the same drive that you've seen in the so-called left politics of the UK and the US. There's a shift that is encouraging us to look at our worth and to look at our society through a very individualistic lens. And that is...

it connects to what I was saying about the George Floyd moment, the reason why so many in our generation felt insufficiently prepared to rise to the occasion. Yeah. And I think in some ways as well, there's

in this country, there's just a general denial where I feel like even if you have an idea of why you are experiencing something, even if you have a name for it, you're kind of routinely told that it doesn't exist. And so when you're confronted with that, you then start to doubt your reality. And I will never forget during that time, I felt very disconnected to self because the ideas that I had about my own life, the things that I know I had experienced,

I was being told every day that it's not real. You're not experiencing racism. There's no such thing as white privilege. What is a microaggression? That's not real. And then after constantly explaining myself again and again, you know, you kind of start to feel a little bit like dead inside. You're like, well, maybe what everyone's saying is right. And you start to kind of blame yourself for the bigger structural problems that are happening because you're being told all the time that they're not real and they don't exist.

And I think that's a very important campaign that has run on us from early. If you don't have an education system that ever mentioned to you Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, and why the overthrow of Patrice Lumumba as instituted by the West was pertinent to the future of not just Africa, but global capitalism. If you never hear anything about this,

And, you know, at our big age, we're supposed to articulate what exactly is going wrong with Caribbean countries, with African countries, why the working class experience in Britain is deteriorating. You know, you never, like, I was late into my life before I ever heard about the colonial boomerang.

the idea that policies instituted in the colonies would eventually come back and hurt the working class over here. But now that you see the deterioration in conditions and people that went to uni and did exactly as they were supposed to do in this country, experiencing the insecurity of precarious work, not being able to afford housing, now that you see all of this,

you would need to be able to connect it to the history that led up to this moment.

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And I would even ask on that as well, what do you think it is about

experiencing that, like, the inequality, like, you know, doing all the things that you are told to do because they're right and still suffering because you're a part of this working class, but you still don't really feel compelled to, like, rise up or speak out. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Like, there's, like, a... Not to say that people are lazy, but in a weird way, are they kind of disenfranchised from kind of taking...

not taking up arms, but really feeling compelled to make noise about their experiences. They're kind of told to just pull yourself up by your bootstraps and keep going. But again, that's why I talk about media and the ideological...

war that we're in as an ongoing campaign because when you look back into even English history, let alone British history, there's a long tradition of working-class resistance. There's a long tradition of working-class self-education and organizing and people getting together and articulating the bigger picture of where their politics are headed locally and nationally and people really

fighting, right? But in our lifetime, we don't see that. We've seen the breakdown of unions. Or like by the time we've come of age, what is a union? We don't even talk about labour organising anymore. We don't even talk about, like, it has taken me a lot of research to understand that once upon a time, the British working class felt passionately, or the elements of the British working class felt passionately

tied or in camaraderie with working classes of the global south. You know what I'm saying? When I do my research, I can see picket signs with people protesting not just apartheid South Africa, but protesting the abuse of Indians in British India. You know what I mean? Protesting Vietnam, protesting in solidarity with other working class people, but

It's not a coincidence and it hasn't been an accidental process that has led us all to be a bit hands off. We had one of the most influential prime ministers of all time deny the existence of society, Margaret Thatcher. You know what I mean? So that really happened. Love that mmm in the audience. And I kind of want to talk a little bit about

the comparison that you make in the book between being in Uganda and being in the UK. 'Cause like this comes up quite a lot 'cause I feel like, like you said, you were writing this book during 2020 and all of this stuff was happening. There was a lot going on in that time and you were also kind of educating yourself. And what did you kind of learn about yourself, your own history, your own heritage, and I guess how that shapes you, but also shapes your politics, your personhood?

I always used to joke with my friend Edith in Uganda that Uganda was my actual first love. Like the first, the closest I ever felt before obviously falling in love with my wife. It was the closest I ever felt to like being infatuated and just not being able to stop thinking about something. So when I was 19, I went back to Uganda. I talk about this in the book.

I had been as a child, but going as a young adult was very different. I spent about four or five months out there, came back and I started university. And for about four months after returning, every night I would wake up heartbroken that I wasn't in Uganda. It had a deep spiritual, emotional impact on me. And yeah, I think...

We were talking backstage about how growing up here, there's an element of defensiveness, of gaslighting, of just wondering if you're going crazy. And when you listen to my early poetry, that comes out in quite sharp criticism of my community. That's my muse. That's the thing I can't...

find peace with. I'm just angry at so much stuff that we saw growing up. But Uganda became a little bit of an escape for that. But it's also taken for me to understand that my brothers and sisters over in Uganda are experiencing the same struggles that I

articulated over here for the working class, job insecurity, expensive, unaffordable housing, just feeling alienated from their neighbours, more and more atomised, myopic kind of life in a social sense. So I don't want to over-romanticise the Ugandan experience, but it is definitely refreshing as a young person. I'm not that young no more. But...

It was refreshing to be in an environment where I was just engaging with different problems, not the problems of being a formerly colonised minority in the imperial court. Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by myself, Mia Sorrenti, and it was edited by Bea Duncan.

Don't forget, Intelligence Squared Premium subscribers can listen to the event in full and ad-free. Head to intelligencesquared.com forward slash membership to find out more, or hit the IQ2 extra button on Apple for a free trial. And if you'd like to come along to one of our live events, you can visit intelligencesquared.com forward slash attend to see what we have coming up. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us.

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