SNL: Some properly hardline leftists
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Artist:
Misty in Roots were a collective that grew up in London's deprived Southall in the 1970s; a run down part of the south, largely inhabited by persons whose families had arrived from Bangladesh and the Caribbean, with high unemployment and little investment in the area - in Conservative Britain, where was the profit in improving the lot of "immigrants" and their families? The choice was between sweatshop labour or subsisting on Unemployment Benefit in one of Europe's most prosperous cities. Thus developed People Unite; and when, in 1979, the racist National Front demonstrated against the very presence of people who already had nothing (in a sequence of events that included the police killing a New Zealand born teacher opposed to racism), they were at the fortefront of the opposition.
It was around this time that, bitter and angry, they found themselves on stage in Brussels at a Socialist benefit night run by a European Workers' Collective called CAFIT. All the anger and frustration of those marginalised poured out, and the live recording became a huge success.
Sadly, this did little to improve conditions, and the collective duly dwindled from its original ideal of a mass group during an era of unrepentant profit-oriented capitalism. Interestingly, the whole concept of "crews" or "clans" so familiar to hip-hop and rap is an echo of the original concept espoused by Misty in Roots, although the overt socialism is less apparent in these money-oriented days. People Unite continued to put out Misty in Roots tracks, but they never topped that one night in April 1979. The two tracks here are "Judas Iscariot" followed by "See Them A Come".
Locating MOG account...
Comments (6)
Only see the one track posted here, but it pretty much moves the earth. Most excellent. Many thanks....
........exciting. That second track has some killer keyboards
It's not really one nine minute long track, ivy....
Baudolino, it was an intense listen, and I appreciate learning about this. Thanks.
Solid message/music..totaly new to me.
Ah, silly of me....