«We know where we came from. We came on boats, onplanes, with passports and on the back of trucks. Weworked three jobs and sent the money back home. Webrought our motherland to life in our kitchens, ourbedrooms, our churches, our songs, our dance, our sex,our pidgin, our patois…"
Joshua Idehen's collected works has been a long time coming. Songbook comprises verses from Mercury-nominated and MOBO-winning albums by Sons of Kemet and The Comet Is Coming, alongside watershed poems of spoken word legend, newly captured in book form. From Poejazzi and Benin City to a string of supreme collaborations, Idehen's impact resonates far and wide across the landscapes of poetry and jazz/electronica. Cross-examining colonialism, masculinity, mental health and ways of healing, his writing is an essential provocation, a diasporic dance, a comedy roast, an intervention, a cannonball from which no one is safe, least of all himself.
“The poet laureate of UK jazz” Kate Hutchinson, The Guardian
“Idehen's words are always worth leaning in for.” Q Magazine
