After his smashing Somerton performance and recording Everytime A Ear di Sound, the first time Mutabaruka delivered it live was at Reggae Sunsplash 1981, again working with Jimmy Cliff's band.

"Me get bout $2,000 to perform at Sunsplash," he told The Sunday Gleaner. The band had to get paid out of that. "Me did feel good. This was like an international show," he said.

And in the audience was the organiser of a concert at UCLA in Los Angeles, California, who was impressed with Mutabaruka and invited him to appear on the show. Mutabaruka said the concert had "every major Jamaican artiste", naming Dennis Brown and Third World among them.

Performing overseas

It was not, however, his first time performing his poetry outside Jamaica. "The first time I leave Jamaica and go perform it was in Cuba," he said. Jimmy Cliff was performing in Varadero and Mutabaruka said his poetry "come cross", even though there were those who "did not know how it would go cross".

"It come cross wicked," he said.

He points out that that was the time when Jamaica was distancing itself from Cuba and "every man was nervous. Some people never want dem passport stamp".

At the UCLA concert, as it was in Somerton and at Sunsplash, "nobody never see anyting like dat". He performed without a shirt, in short pants, white chains on his hand and clutching an American and a USSR flag.

When he reached the line about America and Russia ... , "me hol up de flag, dash dem whe an break de chain".

"That create a frenzy," Mutabaruka said.

The next time he went to the US, it was for a six-week tour, "every show sold out".

And he has kept on travelling and making a splash since then.

- Mel Cooke