Episode Three: Testament Transcript

Joe Fenn  0:05  

Welcome to the Portico Podcast. This is Rewriting The North, a celebration of place and writing in the North of England.

Testament  0:17  

Yo, my name is Testament. I'm a hip hop artist. I'm a rapper, and I'm also a writer. But today here I stand in St. Stephen's Gardens, on St Stevens Street in Salford. On a cold autumnal day in the north of England. So the reason I'm in Salford today is to share what I've been finding out about this poet from the Victorian times, Robert Rose, a mixed race writer like me, but I'm in 2021, and he's in 1849. 

But one of the things that special for me when I found out about Robert Rose was that he was known as the Bard of Colour. That's the title he gave himself. So he probably would look similar to me. He was mixed race, dual heritage. I am half-Ghanian half-English. But Robert Rose was half-Guyanese and English. It's kind of a thrill because I've been looking at his poetry, his work and studying his life for the last two years or so. And now I'm literally on St Stephen Street, yards away from where he would have lived. And St Stephens Gardens, this would have been a graveyard for St Stephen's Church, which is no longer here. I'm going to be taking you on a journey from St Stephen Street in Salford, where he once lived, down the road, across the River Irwell into the City of Manchester, a journey that he would have taken... and on the way, sharing his story. Now let's walk. 

Robert Rose's story really speaks to me because he's someone who's not native to Manchester, but moved here from another city, and became part of the furniture of Manchester life and cultural life. I've also moved from another city to here as well. He was a person of colour. His father was white, and his mum was black. And my father is white. And my mum's black. He wrestled with words. He wrestled with writer's block, which like I definitely do as a writer. 

So Robert Rose, we don't have much information on when he was born. But we know that he was born in what they did called Berbice, which we now call Guyana. He was born to a West Indian merchant, some English white dude, probably from the north of England by his associations, and we're not quite sure who he was. It's a mystery. Who made a ton of money out of the plantations. Robert doesn't really talk about his father at all. He talks a lot about his sisters who loved and misses. And he talks about his mum, who we take to be a slave or a person of colour, or certainly someone who didn't have the hierarchical status of his dad. And then he was sent as a boy to go and get educated in England. And we know that he went to a private school in Northumberland. It seems like his dad wasn't really involved. 

So once he moved to England, it was a benefactor, who was a friend of his father's, who kind of looked after him. So he kind of had a patron who would give him an allowance of 300 pounds a year, which was a ton of money at that time, so he could live wealthy and he was constantly... he was a bit of a rebel. He would get involved in boxing matches, there's he got in trouble for assaulting police officers. He was a bit of a troublemaker and a bit of a party animal. According to one of the newspaper articles, on Robert Rose's death, they mentioned that his benefactor was a Liverpool MP. Now all the Liverpool MPs of that period, were all very much "let's keep slaves, we want this free workforce." So he definitely seems to have a political collision with his benefactor and probably his own father. So the turning point, which sort of moved him from Liverpool to Manchester, was when he attended a banquet in honour of Lord Brougham. I don't know if I'm pronouncing his name right. But he was someone who had campaigned against slavery and all the great and the good of Liverpool came to this banquet. Robert Rose decides to get up and gives his speech applauding Lord Brougham for his work in the House of Commons. It gets put in the newspapers that Robert Rose, this young poet, has got up to give this speech in praise of Brougham's efforts, and his patron didn't like that at all. And by the end of that year, Robert Rose had actually written a poem. And this poem was a rallying cry to stop slavery all over the world - to go further.

Reform by Robert Rose, the Bard of Colour

Ah, who can witness what our chiefs have done

Without confiding in what yet will be ?

‘Tis Freedom tells her battles will be won, And nations cry

aloud “We will be free”

For souls like thine now aid our glorious cause,

And baffle the dark arts of wily foes.

We are not slow,-for on our side the laws

And Reason prove our strength, will hurl down those

Who proudly stand in selfishness apart,

And turn deaf ears to Misery’s plaintive tale;

But thousands,-millions,-now indignant start

Driving them onward, as the rushing gale

Sweeps the vile dust along,-strike with despair

The loathsome monster, writhing Tyranny.

AY, there are millions with warm hearts that dare

To break Oppression’s chains or nobly die.

And that was what really got him in trouble. So he could assault police officers, he could get into trouble, he could be a playboy running around Liverpool, but stand up against slavery and fight for the rights of dark-skinned people... You're in trouble. It reminds me of when I started writing raps as a young angry man and wanting to change the world. It was a song called Come The Revolution. But the lyrics go like this: 

Don’t spend your time on earth without purpose

The addictive fiction of capitalism isn't worth it

My spirit's free in God so I can freestyle verses

But citizens will judge you by the products you purchase

Hypodermics turning children with a shot in their arm

Light pollution fools the hooligans lost in the dark

Singing ‘we shall never be slaves’ are you sure you aren't?

Cos a chain can be wages paying off your credit cards and overdrafts

Now even the homeless are hidden 

Can you see the contradiction in the United Kingdom?

Anonymous Money’s making unanimous decisions 

Stealing raw materials to fee our raw materialism

Listen 

Let me explain the enigma 

Now the only thing we demonstrate is we’re ignorant

So-called progress suppressed the real predicament

I look at the sky and find its all gone digital

Fat cats withhold facts and win the rat race

But they’re still a rat not some kind of saint

Its like they lost their soul in a decimal place

Mistaking sons and heirs and grace is

A word with a misunderstood usage

While a child is exploited a world away from which we live

Apathetic to the truth of what our future is

Are you connected to the truth of what your future is?

We got a third world mentality in a first world state

We got time on our hands, it leaves a blood red stain

Scott-heron told the truth about the home and the hate

Revolutionaries asking can we spare some change?

Cos there’s no fair game without political thought

People get bought like the media get paid to distort

Scapegoat asylum seekers and claim there’s no justice 

People want an opinion but only online they’ll discuss it

There’s nothing I can do except rhyme and reason

It's all globalised, both the good and the evil

We have a choice to make and there is music inside us

The revolution has died… 

That’s why I’m speaking in the one-minute silence

So we have crossed the river. And here we are in Manchester. And we have made it to the fabled Poet's Corner. And you know what, you can tell it's Manchester because it has started raining, happy days. So if you look out on the sort of bended elbow of Long Millgate where it curves around, if with your back to Chetham's Library, you can look out and you can see what is now the National Football Museum. But in front of that is a water feature with a bit of greenery behind it. And at the moment, it's not coping with the rain. We have a water feature in Manchester that can't cope with rain. But where this water feature is, is where the Sun Inn would have been and the Sun Inn was also dubbed Poet's Corner. Because in the 1830s 1840s, a group of poets met in the upper room of the Sun Inn. And there they would have poetry readings, and they drew tremendous crowds. Even though he found an adopted family here at Poet's Corner, there was still such a yearning for his childhood. He'd been in England since a boy but still, I think felt connection to his mother, felt connection to sisters. No more does this sort of homesick feeling from Robert Rose come out in a wonderful poem called Home of My Childhood.

Home of my childhood, thou art ever dear!

   O’er ocean’s waves sweet visions of thee come;

Through the dark changes of each rolling year,

   I fondly turned to thee, my far-off home!

At Eve I oft direct my gaze above,

   to the pure beauty of each Vesper star;

Thus dost thou shine my early home of love,

   Thou art my light, soft glimmering afar! 

My Country! although wrapped in mental night,

   For knowledge o’er thee scarce its ray hath spread, 

Can I forget where first I hailed the light?

   Land of my birth! They shores I long to tread… 

So the rain was getting a bit much at Poet's Corner. So we've decided to get underneath the iron overhang. Very ornate, it's lovely, Victorian design, of Victoria Station. And looking across the road here at Poet's Corner, I'm gutted that there's no commemoration, there's no memorial here to remind us that there was Poet's Corner, the place where right in the middle of the Victorian age, working class poets would assemble in front of a live audience, to discuss ideas, and to speak to not just the city, but to the nation.

Reflecting on Robert Rose's outsiderness, the sense that he spent pretty much all of his life in England, but has this connection to a foreign place. It reminded me of me on my journey of feeling like an outsider in this great city of Manchester, which I definitely feel attached to. But at the same time, part of my identity is abroad. And on days like this, when you're in the middle of industrial Manchester, tall grey buildings looming over you, an overcast sky that seems to be spitting at you constantly. I can imagine Robert Rose reminiscing on his childhood. It also reminds me of my heritage, and my mum's heritage of being on a equatorial climate right by the sea. A few years ago, I wrote a tune for a wonderful group called Ariya Astrobeat Arkestra. It kind of reminds me of that. It's a track called Sankofa. 

I go on daydreams, to escape these grey weary clouds

that shroud mundane streets another Monday

means another bill keeps coming until one day we

trip to the motherland on African breakbeats

Love it when plans come together like the A-Team

Yet some people’s attitudes so frustrating

I say please and thank you walking down my avenue

But inhabitants lookin rude, like they want to mace me

…Take me on a jet plane please

to where kelliwelli on the roadsides’ just a couple of cedis

Ladies in Makola market counting their takings

And Elmina castle, means the scars of our slavery

… the colonials called it the Gold coast

But I’d so rather call it Ghana my home from home…

Precious the way locals respect the old folks I’m in the UK

even so, my mind travels by tro-tro 

My soul knows deep, I gotta visit it soon star

Start movements moving like Kwame Nkrumah

Or distant relatives’ll think I’m only a rumour

I need some palmnut soup with fufu to consume but

Accra’s not so far when I listen to Highlife

I’m at the coastline in no time in my mind’s eye

Homowa celebrations: God is Wonderful

what we just want to do Homecut the root

One- two….it goes Sankofa

Now we're gonna head off to the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester. A place in Robert Rose's lifetime was known as the Exchange. It was kind of like the Wall Street of Manchester, the Cotton Exchange, which is a very interesting place, but also a place that was often used for parties, as well, a place of music and dance. So you know what, as I bop up the road, I'm going to beatbox. Let's go.

In we go.

I'm walking into the Great Hall of the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, which is an extraordinary building. You've got these massive pink marble Corinthian pillars going up to the ceiling with gold leaf at the top and you've got these three huge domes which with colored glass letting blue light in. And the most freaky thing about this building is the theatre space itself. It looks like a giant alien spacecraft has been left in the middle of this Victorian Hall. You can hear the sounds of construction and the stage carpenters, building new bits of set. Before this was a theatre, this was a Cotton Exchange. This is where stuff would be traded. Far across in front of me, on the far walls, you can still see market trading boards, which has got you know, New York and Paris and Liverpool, the prices of different things up there. And this would be a place very much known to Robert Rose. This is a former Cotton Exchange, a place which in all its grandeur was actually built on the blood of slaves. 

So in the daytimes it was known as the Exchange. But at nights sometimes it'd be used for balls. So fancy dress balls held here, and the great and the good would come and dance in a masquerade. We don't have evidence for sure to say that Robert Rose would have come to a ball in this place, but it's extremely likely. Here's a poem he wrote about a fancy dress ball in 1845. 

The Festival of Fancy by Robert Rose the Bard of Colour. 

Diogenes is here,-an honest man

He looks ! for,-hath be with himself began?

A negro's hugging his vile chains in bliss;

Ah! what would Wilberforce have said to this?

Amazing sight. I, the monster Caliban,

In white kid gloves, picks up a lady's fan;

Socrates in a foolscap: and wise Solon,

So wise, indeed, he cannot point a colon.

Alexander seems a coward, and some jelly

Is stuffing into his luxurious belly 

….

Oh, motley group! Sailors who never saw

A sea, and Soldiers who ne’er sword did draw;

…

Still, in our daily walks, we love to ape

What is beyond us.

There's a dichotomy between what is presented and what's real. It's a masquerade ball. It's a fancy dress ball. So people are playing parts that are not real. And there's a sense that he really is an outsider, sort of watching the hypocrisy between how people present themselves to who they really are. And I wonder if he felt that himself. The last stanza talks about sailors who never went to sea and soldiers who never drew a sword and poets who never picked up a pen. Well, it could be describing the attendees of the ball, but it could also be describing himself. Has he achieved what he wanted to do? There's all this pressure on him as a poet, as the Bard of Colour, yet he never finished his master work. In the last few years of his life, his drinking got pretty serious, and he descended into alcoholism. And the newspapers at that time report that he went on this massive binge, where he didn't sleep for seven or eight days, and was drinking loads and loads of alcohol. All we know is that he wandered the streets of Salford in a stupor shouting, "It's a comedy. It's all a comedy." And he ended up eventually being put in a prison cell and dying in police custody. It's a tragic end for a remarkable character. Being one of the first famous people of colour in Manchester's history, someone who made an impact on the cultural life and on the lives of the poor in the city, and he strived to make a change and to speak truth to power. And that's a spark, that's a flame that I would like to pick up and carry. And that hope which is expressed in Robert Rose's work and writings... That's something which I take inspiration from today.

Joe Fenn  19:58  

That was a new commission from award-winning theatre writer and MC, Testament, walking from Salford to Manchester and I'm Joe Fenn, speaking to you from the historic Portico Library in Manchester, home of Northern England's biggest literary award, the Portico Prize, a celebration of place and writing in the north of England. If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe and leave us a review on iTunes and tell your family and friends about it. 

The Portico Library is a registered charity. You can find more about our work at www.theportico.org.uk

The Portico Podcast is funded by Arts Council England. The producer is Nija Dalal-Small. Concept and programming by Sarah Hill, with special thanks to Dr David Cooper. Join us next time.