I had the pleasure of attending a poetry reading by South Africa’s Keorapetse Kgositsile at UCLA’s Hammer Museum on March 27, 2012. Later, Professor Kgositsile signed copies of his latest collection of poems, This Way, I salute you. Factoid: Kgositsile is the estranged father of Los Angeles based rapper Earl Sweatshirt (Thebe Kgositsile) of Odd Future. Ironically, Kgositsile’s boy appears to be in the middle of his own rite of passage through the lyricism of hip-hop. See links below.
Keorapetse Kgositsile is a South African poet and activist, and was an influential member of the African National Congress in the 1960s and 1970s. One of the most significant poets in the Pan-African movement, he was also the founder of the Black Arts Theater in Harlem. He is the author of If I Could Sing, To the Bitter End, When the Clouds Clear, and The Word Is Here. He was South Africa’s National Poet Laureate in 2006.
LINK to Hammer Mueum event
Rites of Passage
for uriel, thabang, Mabitse and Papers
Your time on time
has created history’s arse
there are no crossroads
Your passage through here
teaches us weight of mission
teaches us slime of promise
from mouth greased with stench
of crimson dollar or rand
or whatever currency demands
floods of your blood
all over this land
you must reclaim
In this world
there are no children’s wars
you are a man now
patriot and comrade now
you now know
the slime of race
you know now
the brutality of class appetite
you know now
who must bleed and drown
in the fire of your mission
and resolve
Mayihlome!
Although he proudly describes his son’s precocious intelligence—“He read even before he started school,” he says—Kgositsile resists the suggestion that, through hip-hop, his son is carrying on the family business, and he suggests that Thebe’s emergence as a second-generation lyricist might be “coincidence.” He is not a fan of “commercially promoted” hip-hop—“I really don’t think it’s about anything of relevance, socially, other than young people saying they’re hurt”—and his verdict on his son’s career is carefully noncommittal. “Frantz Fanon said that each generation must find its own mission,” Kgositsile says. “If he’s part of those that have found their mission, then I’m very happy.
The New Yorker – Where’s Earl
New York Times - After Exile, Career Reset Earl Sweatshirt Is Back From the Wilderness
Los Angeles Times – Mystery solved: Earl Sweatshirt, his mother and his poet-father communicate with the New Yorker