REVIEW:

Right between the I and the I

by Stefan Abeysekera in Melbourne

'Cheqpoint in Heaven' poems and songs by Krisantha Sri Bhaggiyadatta

My first response was unexpected laughter along with acknowledgement of deep poetic verity (sounds pedantic and paradoxical, but true) underlined by staccato hey-listen drums. Who expects to hear ballads sung in English and hear about people you knew back in Lanka: Wendy Whatmore and Colombo's Seventh Heaven, "Bullsheet Councils" and "Thraada Tradition", generated by prodigious thought and wordplay? Yet let's face it, beneath the laughter was disquiet because the truth is too often unsettling.

I really wish I could get some of the young Lankan musicians here in Australia to listen to this: they are talented yet their subject matter leans towards the safe and fashionable.

These poems and songs fell into my lap a couple of weeks ago and it's been a stimulating challenge zigzagging into the headspace of a poet who knows East and West. Born in Colombo, 'unschooled' in Kandy and Toronto, a trekker through India and China, he is uncompromisingly honest about injustice and united endeavour across the globe, with poetry in the great oral planetary tradition, enervated by African, Amerindian and Caribbean impulses and revivified by the spirit of South Asia.

The first track, "the most wanted: gods don't dare" gets straight to the point. Underscored by those insistent staccato drums and a questioning bass Krisantha launches into one of his leitmotivs: "lined up dead or alive in the pale/ see-through garbage bag of the bad dreams/ of history, we, the dark faces..."

The US imperium and the malign influences of corporation colonialism are placed in their proper planetary context, as in the hourly news when a CNN announcer says: "We'll be back to the war on Afghanistan after this commercial break", immediately absolving the viewer from necessary reflection.

"Is the absence of war a commercial break?/ is peace the gushing of oil kushwards?" OK, it's out in the open in case you didn't get it the first time: what does it mean when the president of a country is chosen by an oil corporation, which also choose what you see of the world? In "Heaven Ain't Up There," there is this coruscating portrait of rulers and ruled (of those in 'Colombo's 7th heaven' too): from the time we're born we're told heavens somewhere else, up in the skies, in the next life, across the seas, after you learn English from the bbc.

It possesses a hypnotic refrain which may not be as simply romantic as it first sounds: cos heaven ain't up there, it ain't in those skies its right down here, right between the I and the I We need such truth-tellers to point how naked these emperors really are, veiled as our eyes are by the glamour that is spun in Hollywood-Rome.

The book has a great cover - relief from a naughty and delightful vaamana rupa from the rebuilt Kelaniya temple which had been destroyed by the Portuguese. It all relates to the stated object of this poetic, to call for reparations from the European Union for the 500 years of robbery of the Island.

For me the final track "Cheqpoint" is the high point (amongst many) of the album. Krisantha takes no prisoners, all greed and evil bulls-eyed, a fulsome broadside against hypocrisy. From the notes: "The rule of merchants fostered by international capital maintains the country (Lanka) in perpetual crisis - almost 50 years of 'in/dependent' 'emergency' rule."

The piece is spun in lilting baila/ditty style counter pointed by laidback funk: here's the tie-wearing terrorist, the greenback ego tourist, the theorist of relatives on high high places, the thoga thugga trader of thraada tradition... so here's the nobody, the somebody, the all-island wannabe where it all comes down to a cheq....point!

In Krisantha Sri Bhaggiyadatta's poetry, Lanka is always a living symbol, warning, and hope for the world. He ends "sell we rap" with: ... for lanka still need you and love you. This is above all, is poetry to be heard and listened to with friends.