George the Poet: ‘I was a little bit lonely at Cambridge’

Spoken word artist George the Poet is returning to the University of Cambridge to discuss his career since leaving the city and his research into the impact of black music.

The London-born performer has won critical acclaim for his innovative brand of musical poetry, both as a recording artist and social commentator and seen his work broadcast to millions of people worldwide in his BBC show “Have you Heard George’s Podcast?”.

Now he is back in Cambridge in conversation with his former tutor Dr Sharath Srinivasan, from the Department of Politics and International Studies as part of the Cambridge Festival, which is supported by the Cambridge Independent. They will talk about education, life lessons and how George incorporates his sociology studies into his award-winning podcasts, spoken word performances and his research on the socio-economic potential of black music.

“My time in Cambridge was multifaceted. I was obviously thrown into an intense academic space and I love that everyone around me was so into what they were studying,” he says.

“It was a little bit lonely at the time. There weren’t many people from my world, but I feel like it’s changed and that’s something that I noticed every time I come back. And at the same time it is when I actually became a poet, when I became George the poet. I became very reflective because I was far away from home and what I was studying caused me to really look back on the world and revisit and revise some of my opinions.

“I was able to, for the first time, really detach myself from my community and think a bit more scientifically about the experience that I saw growing up.”

George Mpanga, although from London, is of Ugandan heritage and that experience has played a part in the content of his podcast, which has won a prestigious Peabody Award and 5 Gold British Podcast Awards, including the highly-coveted Podcast of the Year. More accolades followed in the years to come, including an NME Award, two Gold ARIAS, three New York Festival Awards and more. In 2021 The University of London presented George with an honorary doctorate in literature.

He is now embarking on a PhD at UCL’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, under the supervision of the institute’s founder, Mariana Mazzucato, and reader in educational leadership At UCL’s Institute Of Education, Dr Karen Edge.

“My PhD is about the extent to which black music can facilitate Black Liberation. There’s all sorts of black music that has been at the forefront of the mainstream at different points in the past century, from jazz to hip hop to now the rise of Afro music. And it rarely, if ever transformed the collective condition of the places that produce the music. So I just want to understand what’s going on there,” he says.

“The way I’ve approached it is to look at the economic situation that the music starts in, whether it is in America, in Britain, in Ghana. I find that most people on the face of this Earth don’t get to choose the economic programme that runs their government and therefore runs their communities and neighborhoods. So even if they do have a mind to come together, and change the direction of their communities - we saw it in this country during the 80s with the decline of the manufacturing regions of the country - even when people strongly express desire to organise themselves in a particular way. There are forces much bigger than that much more organised, which essentially dictate the direction of their local economy.”

In particular, George has been looking at how black music frequently starts out with a political message but becomes commercialised and loses its power to change society.

“I think about Bob Marley. Reggae is such a unique sound and comes from a very particular setting: Rastafari Jamaica, urbanisation in Kingston, and they had all of the makings of basically a saving grace for the people of Jamaica. It was a worldwide success. The foremost stars of reggae had an altruistic heart. They had altruistic messages and they would have done anything in their power to ensure that reggae left a legacy economically for Jamaicans. But you know, the economic value of reggae gets exported out of the country, ends up in the labels that end up signing the talent, and the political potential of the music is diluted for all sorts of reasons.”

He is grateful, however, to hear from members of his own audience that his poems have had an impact on their lives.

“What I do know is that individuals always come up to me and say that it helped them. I met someone just the other day in another country that told me that and he knew a lot of my words, quite like verbatim. And he’s an older gentleman. And he was telling me that the poetry, which is actually from the Cambridge era, really helped him through specific experiences. So people told me that a lot and I’m grateful for that.”

And with his podcast, George has been able to find a much wider audience for his work as well as the questions he is now asking about art, music and its power.

“Podcasting has been great,” says George.

“The first thing that drew me to it was having a long form, piece of content. Being able to speak to someone for more than five minutes at a time to really map out my world. I feel like that has opened up dimensions of art that I couldn’t find anywhere else. I wanted to show how elastic podcasting can be. If you want it to be cartoonish, I’ve got episodes that are cartoonish. If you want to be super serious factual, I’ve got that as well. Fiction, musicology, sociology, I’ve been able to bring all of these things to life through podcasting. And I’m very grateful for everyone that’s been with me on that journey.”

He adds that he is very much “looking forward” to coming back to Cambridge. “When I was in Cambridge, I felt like a nobody. I felt unsure about my place in the world. And it’s great to come back as a voice and a father. I’ve grown so much from Cambridge, so I’m looking forward to soaking up the energy and the conversations that we will have.”

Cambridge Conversations: Beyond the lecture theatre with George the Poet at 6pm Tuesday 26 March, Cambridge Union Society, 9A Bridge Street, CB2 1UB. Tickets for this and the hundreds of free events at Cambridge Festival are available at festival.cam.ac.uk.