“ – the dangerous words, the padlocked words, the words that do not belong to the dictionary,
for if they were written there, written out and not maintained by ellipses,
they would utter too fast the suffocating misery of a solitude …”
Jean Genet
Introduction to “Soledad Brother – The Prison Letters of George Jackson”
I wrote a post about the history of the movement "Rock Against Racism" but as we lurch from bad to worse in a post-Brexit, Donald Trump world, I'm now going to post a video playlist of specific anti-Fascist or anti-Nazi songs. The songs don't really require any smart-arse comments from me but can stand alone and speak for themselves.
1) Leadbelly "Mr Hitler"
2) Woody Guthrie - "All You Fascists Bound To Lose"
3) Linton Kwesi Johnson - "Fight Dem Back"
4) Tom Robinson - "Power In The Darkness"
5) Gang Of Four - "Outside The Trains Don't Run On Time"
6) Crass - "The Gasman Cometh"
7) Steel Pulse - "Ku Klux Klan"
8) Dead Kennedys - "Nazi Punks Fuck Off"
9) Men They Couldn't Hang - "Ghosts Off Cable Street"
10) The Specials - "Why?"
11) Fire Engines - "We Don't Need This Fascist Groove Thang"
12/13) Minutemen - "Political Song For M.Jackson To Sing" / "Fascist"
14) The Fall - "Who Makes The Nazis?"
15) Propaghandi - "The Only Good Fascist Is A Dead Fascist"
Punk rock had very close ties with reggae. Groups like the Clash had grown up in multi-racial communities and been heavily influenced by reggae music and culture. Reggae DJs played the music before the live bands in punk clubs. Both were music of protest and in the late 1970s there was plenty in Britain to protest about. Another protest group were the far-right political party (and in true Nazi tradition street fighting thugs) The National Front. With the state of the UK economy they were beginning to make some political headway with the usual dreary simplistic argument of immigrants taking British jobs. Music turned its force on them partly due to a spark from their own industry. Eric Clapton, who seemingly was oblivious of the Afro-American blues roots of his own music, made some inflammatory anti-immigrant and racist statements from the stage during one of his gigs. David Bowie's iconography of the character of the Thin White Duke was also unfortunately timed, as he rode around in a limousine like a 1930s Fascist dictator from Mitteleuropa.
There's a very good retrospective here containing some wonderful photos, so I'm just going to present videos of some of the bands who were involved, many like Ruts and Misty in Roots who went up and down the country touring with Rock Against Racism. It's impossible to measure what effect the campaign had, but it was most definitely a battle for the hearts and minds of British youth, to stop them being won over to the National Front's cause. When the whole country swung to the right with Mrs Thatcher, the National front beset by splits and personality clashes faded away. But they were replaced by other fascist and far-right groups and of course the anti-immigrant argument is being loudly trumpeted today by mainstream politicians. Time for another Rock Against Racism? I can't quite see any of the Simon Cowell created bands carrying it off.
How many of the below bands do I possess albums of? All of them excepting Sham 69...
1) The Clash - "White Man In Hammersmith Palais"
Of all punk bands, the Clash were most heavily influenced by reggae, producing their own reggae originals and covering reggae classics. Their song "White Riot" was influenced by the 1977 Notting Hill riots when the Caribbean carnival erupted in violence at police treatment of the community.
2) Misty In Roots - "How Long Jah"
It's ironic but Misty in Roots played more RAR gigs than anybody else, yet initially they were never part of the main stage, but a sort of side act on a flat bed truck at the head of the anti-racist marches preceding the gigs. Seems just a little bit like segregation to me. But they more than most had direct experience of racial violence when their manager was beaten into a coma by the police at an anti-racist march in their home town of Southall, West London.
3) The Ruts - "Staring At The Rude Boys"
The Ruts came from Southall as well and were close band mates with Misty. Their sound was heavily influenced by reggae and like Misty they were solid supporters of the RAR campaign playing up and down the country.
4) Steel Pulse - " Handsworth Revolution"
This song preceded the Handsworth (Birmingham) riot of 1985. People could see what was happening and tried to alert us to the situation, but seems no one in authority was listening. With songs like "Klu Klux Klan" and "Drug Squad" they painted the experience of the Afro-Caribbean community in the late 1970s better than anybody.
5) Tom Robinson Band - "Winter of '79"
Tom Robinson Band were perhaps the most overtly political band that emerged from 1970s punk, fronted by a gay guitarist-singer, they sung songs for all oppressed and minority groups.
6) Sham 69 - "If The Kids Are United"
Sham 69 were a working class band who sung about beer and fighting and attracted a far-right skinhead following. It took a lot of too-ing and fro-ing to get lead singer Jimmy Pursey to agree to play a RAR gig, as he himself had received death threats. It was crucial when the band did eventually play, as it forced their fans to confront the message of the concerts and see the multi-cultural nature of the bands.
7) Aswad - "Drum And Bass Line"
Aswad were from West London and when they weren't away touring they would go to the local playing fields and play football every Sunday, the same pitches my team played at & occasionally we saw them down there.
8) Stiff Little Fingers - "Doesn't Make It All Right"
Hailing from sectarian Ulster, SLF lived in the middle of another low rent form of apartheid that separated two communities there. This is a cover of a Specials' song, one of the best anti-racist songs ever written. Check out the original version if you get the chance.
9) Elvis Costello & The Attraction - "Two Little Hitlers"
Yep Elvis played an early RAR gig, before jetting off to the US and making strange Country & Western hybrid music.
10) Au Pairs - "Steppin Out Of Line"
Another new wave band that fused rock with reggae and dub. Singer Lesley Woods gave up the music business to become a lawyer. oh well.
11) Specials - "Racist Friend"
The Specials were a living, breathing embodiment of anti-racism. A multi-ethnic band playing Caribbean influenced Ska but with lyrics pertinent to the situation out on the streets of the UK. They became best known for their excoriating comment on post 80's riot-torn Britain "Ghost Town" and "Free Nelson Mandela"
In my teens I listened to a lot of music genres (though the word hadn't been coined then, even though music audiences were quite tribal). And one that was very influential was reggae. I'm not sure how I came by it, although I lived in London where it was very prevalent, also I was into punk and New Wave which were both acknowledging their affinity for reggae. John Peel almost certainly had something to do with my love for it, as he promoted reggae artists on his show along with all the other music he introduced the likes of me to.
But as I grew older, reggae fell away from my music loves and was replaced by US rap and hip-hop. However now in my early 50s I find that I am returning to reggae with a renewed enthusiasm to expand my old musical favourites in the genre and explore further. I still love rap and hip-hop, but I am delighted that I've rehabilitated myself to embrace reggae as well. There is plenty of crossover between reggae and rap or reggae and dubstep, while industrial funk 80s band 23 Skidoo even did a straightish reggae song in amongst all their musical experimentation.
Anyway, for what it's worth, here are my fifteen favourite reggae songs. Normally when I do one of my music charts I'm a bit snarky about the bands or the video. but in this case it is straight up veneration.
1) Ras Michael And The Sons Of Negus - "None Ah Jah Jah's Children No Cry"
First and foremost reggae is a spiritual music. And in Ras Michael's words and phrasing you really get a sense of that as he sings of a world to come free of pain and misery. The drum beat also has direct links back to a style of traditional African drumming though this style of reggae made it its own.
2) Misty In Roots - "How Long Jah?"
A British Roots Reggae band from West London who were very active in the Rock Against Racism movement playing gigs on the same stage as The Clash, Specials and The Ruts. Roots Reggae connects the spiritual messages of Rastafari directly with the lives of its followers usually in city ghettos, linking the two within the lyrics.
3) Scotty - "Clean Race"
This song is more demonstrative of the playful side of reggae as deejay Scotty morphs in and out of singing and 'toasting'. Many early reggae singles had an instrumental version of the song serve for the B-Side and certain artists 'borrowed' these tracks and did their own vocals over them. Toasting is improvising or chatting over the beat as Scotty does to wonderful effect here asserting his prominence in the hierarchy over both record producer and the public who buy his music. And yet the song is utterly catchy. In reggae, deejays are not those who produce the beat and spin the records as in hip-hop, they are called 'Selectors' in reggae. A deejay in reggae is the singer over the beat.
4) Dillinger - "Cocaine"
Reggae became big in the UK and other European countries because of the emigrant Caribbean populations living here. But on the back of Bob Marley it made some inroads into the US and here Dillinger wonderfully observes US culture through the eye of a near neighbour. Many reggae artists took their names from US gangsters (Dillinger, Capone) or cowboys (Clint Eastwood & General Saint).
5) Wailing Souls - "Kingdom Rise, Kingdom Fall"
A band with more line up and band name changes than most who have been around since the 1960s, again here the vocals remind the listener of the devotional spiritual nature of the music.
6) Barrington Levy - "Murderer"
One of the most prolific reggae recording artists, he started singing at age 14. He has also crossed over working with artists such as Snoop Dogg. The 7" single has always been important in reggae, at times more important than albums, but Levy has always committed to albums as much as singles.
7) Soul Vendors - "Swing Easy"
Trojan, Studio One & Coxsone records were perhaps the most significant record label in the 1960s and early 70s, releasing 7" single gem after gem by a multitude of artists. This was one of them by a group I can tell you nothing about. But the song itself sounds so mournful and plaintive, despite it's upbeat title. A song packed with emotion despite its lack of lyrics.
8) Althea & Donna ' "Uptown Top Ranking"
This was a hit when I was growing up and I hated it because I hated pop music (still do). But when I rediscovered it a few years ago, I fell in love with it because it is both poppy and yet completely from outside the pop realm with its uncompromising patois delivery. Teenagers when they recorded this, sadly one of them died very young from cancer.
9) John Holt - "Police And Helicopter"
A singer associated with a sweet voice and songs of love often backed with strings, here issues a defiant and wrathful political song to his government.
10 Steel Pulse - "Handsworth Revolution"
Another British band who were brilliant on stage, this 1978 song forecast the riots of the 1980s, particularly the one in their home borough of Handsworth in Birmingham. Even though it is somewhat of a call to arms, it still drips with a sense of spirituality, hinting at a different kind of calling.
11) Burning Spear - "Marcus Garvey"
Oh what a voice!
12) Sylford Walker - "Chant Down Babylon"
A song I only recently discovered once I had come back to reggae, through the happenstance that it was on the same YouTube page when I was searching for Scotty. Again I know nothing of him. But put it this way, it's the first song on my reggae playlist.
13) The Congos - "Fishermen"
One of the qualities of reggae (and particularly of dub) is a certain liquid or watery sound as befits a music made mainly within a group of islands. Ostensibly this song appears to be about the noble profession of fishing, but actually it's a paean to ensuring the smugglers successfully bring in the collieweed, or marijuana.
14) Keith Rowe - "Groovy Situation"
Reggae also has a fine line in romance and songs to lovers. Gregory Isaacs, Denis Brown and John Holt to name but three. A genre called Lovers' Rock encapsulated this although it largely grew out of London initially rather than Jamaica. This Keith Rowe song predates Lovers' Rock but to me is the finest example of a reggae love song. It starts playful and giggly before his voice goes stratospheric as he proclaims his deep love. Wonderful stuff.
15) Augustus Pablo - "King Tubby Meets Rocker Uptown"
Perhaps the most significant legacy of reggae, one which has spread into many other sorts of music, is dub. Dub uses electronic effects to make the music more spacey with echo and reverb and focuses more centrally on the rhythms of the drum and the bass. More often that not it removes the vocals so that they are instrumentals. Augustus Pablo is one of the finest exponents of dub, but what makes his sound unique is the use of a melodica. Sublime stuff, you can just switch the lights off and bask in his albums for an evening in perfect bliss.
Music and politics make for specious bedfellows. Three minute potted versions of ideologies or praxes tend to sell them a bit short. Or maybe by punching your fist in the air to the anthemic chorus, the walls of Jericho/Babylon/Disneyland will inevitably crumble and fall.But generations of youth WILL persist in believing they can dance their way into wreaking radical change. Mind you, with the boot on the other foot, when politicians try and hitch to the music bandwagon, they just end up looking risible. Anyone remember Red Wedge?
Yes there are the occasional successful yokings, Jerry Dammers' "Free Nelson Mandela" twinned with a Wembley concert being one. But Rock Against racism for example, ended up by being a battle to win hearts and minds of sections of its own audience attracted to skinhead bands such as Madness and Sham 69, while being diametrically opposed to the politics being espoused from the stage. And what prompted the rise of the movement in the first place? Outrage at Eric Clapton expressing support for the views of Enoch Powell.
Anyway, for your delectation and possible amusement, here is a list of 11 political songs. Don't get me wrong, I love all 11, but let's just say some of their sentiments fall a tad short of reality.
1) "Motor City Is Burning" - MC5
Ah the 1960's, the Vietnam War, Civil Rights and students up in arms. Detroit residents MC5 take John Lee Hooker's song and give it some pep to mark the denizens of their home town taking it upon themselves to indulge in some urban clearance. Only everybody forgot the renewal part of the process.
2) "Up Against The Wall" - Tom Robinson Band
THE late 1970's political band with songs such as "Glad To Be Gay" and "Ride On Sister". This ditty named a lot of the issues that saw the Labour government booted out in 1979, and anticipated generational confrontation. But the "Panic in County Hall" line didn't really come to fruition. Instead, under the free market, County Hall is now an aquarium.
3) "Handsworth Revolution" - Steel Pulse
Released prior to the 1980's riots, "If it takes ammunition/ Then we revel in Handsworth Revolution" came true. Except the revolution bit that is. It is still rather a beautiful song, giving a hint to the gospel influence behind it, but "Babylon is falling/ It was foolish to build it on the sand" could have been said of UK reggae music itself, having been eclipsed by rap, hip-hop, grime and dub step.
4) "English White Boy Engineer" - Three Johns
Three lads from Leeds all called John and not a drummer between them. This was an anti-apartheid song that actually reveals great intelligence, but the Three Johns were never a band with the mass appeal for the song to help bring down some regime in a far away land.
5) "We've Got A Bigger Problem Now" - Dead Kennedys
San Francisco punks rewrote their own earlier song about Californian Governor Jerry Brown and updated it for another son of the Golden State made good, Ronald Reagan. In the era of Silicon Valley and Friedman's Monetarism, American punks and fans alike got in their gas guzzling cars and played gigs in towns which would have them. The nation didn't fall. "California Uber Alles" is a nice touch though.
6) "1824 Overture" - Conflict
Don't be misled by the seeming erudition of the title, (the year the Vagrancy Act was introduced), for this song rhymes "SUS" with "bus".
7) "Armagh" - Au Pairs
The Troubles in Northern Ireland was the backdrop to many a song. Some of the actual natives like Stiff Little Fingers directly confronted the issues, others like The Undertones opted to ignore them and concentrate on songs about chocolate and girls. Birmingham band Au Pairs were all about sexual politics, showing that men and women together could make, like music man. This song was about a women's prison in Armagh, which by curious numerological coincidence contained 32 female prisoners, accused of fighting for the unification of the 32 counties.
8) "Illegal Attacks" - Ian Brown
Recipient of the New Musical Express' 2006 "Godlike Genius Award" wears his heart on his sleeve about the recent wars the UK has been dragged into. His planetary sized brain offers that they are in all likelihood "Commercial crusades", but neglects to offer the legal proofs suggested by the song's title. "How many mothers to cry?/How many sons have to die?" is a really rather tired lyric these days. Not quite so god-like after all. But the video is rather good.
9) "Cry No More" - Poison Girls
Poison Girls were a hardcore (politically not musically) anarchist band associated with the likes of communards Crass. But this song rather beautifully enunciates compassion fatigue before we had a name for it, even if that isn't its original intention.
10) "Police And Helicopter" - John Holt
I'm not going to get flippant about this one at all, since it's possibly the most searingly militant song I've ever heard. It's a single issue song about the battle over Jamaica's marijuana production. Holt's slice of roots reggae starts with the class deference of "Yes boss, yes, boss, yes boss" but ratchets up the stakes with the ferocious eye for an eye declaration "But if you continue to burn up de herbs, we gonna burn down the cane fields".And cannabis is supposed to be a becalming drug?
