Allan Hope CD (born 26 December 1952),[1] better known as Mutabaruka, is a Jamaican Rastafari dub poet, musician, actor, educator, and talk-show host, who developed two of Jamaica's most popular radio programmes, The Cutting Edge and Steppin' Razor.
His themes include politics, culture, Black liberation, social oppression, discrimination, poverty, racism, sexism, and religion.
Mutabaruka was born and raised in Rae Town, Kingston, Jamaica,[1] in a household with his father, mother and two sisters.
Mutabaruka attended the Kingston Technical High School, where he trained in electronics for four years, going on to work for the Jamaican Telephone Company until eventually quitting in 1971.
In school he read many "progressive books", including Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice and others that were then illegal in Jamaica, such as The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
[3] He went on to record collaborations with both Gregory Isaacs and Dennis Brown, on "Hard Road to Travel" and "Great Kings of Africa" respectively.
[3] Mutabaruka gave a lecture at Stanford University in 2000 on the difference between education and indoctrination,[11] In 2001, he served as narrator for filmmaker Stephanie Black's Life and Debt, a documentary about the impact of global economic policy and the IMF on the economy and people of Jamaica.
In February 2010, Mutabaruka was honoured by the National Centre for Youth Development (NCYD) and the Rotaract Club of Mandeville for over 30 years of outstanding work in the field of the arts.