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Cultural diversity and popular music in the UK

Two Tone and Asian Underground: Movements, Moments and Minorities

Jeremy TRANMER

Résumés

Le mouvement Two Tone est apparu dans le sillage du punk à la fin des années 1970 grâce au succès commercial de The Specials et d’autres groupes qui ont fait renaître le ska comme Madness, The Selector et The Beat. Two Tone est rapidement devenu un phénomène de masse ; l’une de ses particularités principales était son caractère multiracial dans la mesure où il attirait des jeunes gens noirs d’origine caribéenne ainsi que des blancs. Il est donc courant de considérer Two Tone comme l’apogée des luttes antiracistes de la campagne Rock Against Racism. Vingt ans plus tard est apparue la scène Asian Underground lorsque des artistes britanniques dont les parents venaient du sous-continent indien se sont fait connaître – de Asian Dub Foundation à Nitin Sawnhy. Comparer les deux mouvements et le contexte dans lequel ils sont nés permet de remettre en cause la façon dont Two Tone est habituellement perçu, et montre que son incapacité à trouver un écho auprès de toutes les minorités ethniques a conduit au moins partiellement au développement du mouvement Asian Underground.

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1Numerous musical movements have appeared in the United Kingdom since the Beatles revolutionised British popular music over 60 years ago. These include Mersey Beat in the 1960s, glam rock and punk in the 1970s, gothic rock in the 1980s, Britpop in the 1990s and, from the beginning of the twenty-first century, grime. Two of the more unusual British movements are Two Tone (or 2 Tone), based on the ska revival of the late 1970s, and Asian Underground, which emerged in the 1990s. They would seem to have had little in common as they emerged at different times, and were centred on different music genres, attracting different audiences. This would no doubt explain why they have always been examined as two distinct phenomena. A great deal has been written about Two Tone by journalists and fans (Augustyn; Eddington; Thompson; Rachel, Walls Come Tumbling Down; Rachel, Too Much Too Young; Marshall), as well as by former members of leading bands (Panter; Black; Suggs; Staple), although very little academic work has been published about it (Stratton 191-215). The only attempt to link it to another movement or form of music is with reggae (Stratton 191-215) as both are Jamaican genres which became popular in the United Kingdom. Academics have taken a keen interest in Asian Underground (Hyder; Sharma, Hutnyk and Sharmi; Jazeel, “Anokha emerging”; Jazeel, “The world is sound?”; Banerjea; Ahmad Nobil), but they have only ever compared it with the scene that existed around bhangra (Bakrania; Huq 29-48). Again, this is hardly surprising as they are both associated with the Asian community.

2Despite their respective singularities, both Two Tone and Asian Underground were closely linked to an ethnic minority and had members who were involved in anti-racist struggles. This article will not simply compare these two phenomena, but will examine the relationship between them. It will argue that, although they were the products of two distinct conjunctures in post-war British history, Two Tone had an indirect impact on Asian Underground in two ways. It will suggest that the limits of Two Tone and of the anti-racism that it was associated with contributed firstly to creating the conditions necessary for the emergence of Asian Underground and secondly to shaping the form of anti-racism adopted by some of its members and expressed in their music. It will thus nuance the dominant celebratory discourse on Two Tone and shed some new light on the origins of Asian Underground. This article will begin by presenting these two movements, before examining more closely the contexts in which they appeared. Finally, it will explore the indirect influence of Two Tone and its anti-racism on Asian Underground. This analysis will be based predominantly on a reinterpretation of the existing literature on the two phenomena, although some primary sources, such as the publications of anti-racist movements in the 1970s and 1990s, will also be used.

Two groundbreaking movements

3In many ways, the two musical movements differed a great deal. Two Tone was at the heart of the British ska revival of the late 1970s. In 1979, Jerry Dammers, the founder of The Specials, created a ska-based record company which he named Two Tone, a name which came to be used to categorise the bands that signed with the label (such as The Specials, Madness, The Beat, The Selecter, and The Bodysnatchers) and even other ska bands, including Bad Manners, who were with other labels.

  • 1 Simon Reynolds has described it as “one of the few examples in pop history of a revival that is not (...)

4Ska had originally appeared in Jamaica in the late 1950s and flourished in the 1960s (Augustyn). It was associated with artists such as Prince Buster and Dandy Livingstone. The former was very influential, and many of the Two Tone bands paid homage to him in one way or another. The Specials’ first single, “Gangsters”, was a reworking of Prince Buster’s single “Al Capone”, and the band also covered other songs by Prince Buster (“Too Hot” and “Enjoy Yourselves”) and by Dandy Livingstone (“Rudy a Message to You” becoming “A Message to You Rudy”). Madness named themselves after a Prince Buster song. Their first single, “The Prince”, referred to him directly, and they covered “One Step Beyond”. The Beat recorded their versions of Prince Buster’s “Rough Rider” and “Whine and Grine”. Nevertheless, it would be simplistic to define Two Tone as being a merely revivalist phenomenon that simply copied 1960s ska.1 It was also influenced, directly and indirectly, by trends within the British music scene in the late 1970s. It might be more appropriate to describe Two Tone as ska-punk as it was in many ways a fusion of the two musical genres. Although heavily influenced by Jamaican ska, it integrated aspects of punk. For instance, it is noticeable that covers of 1960s ska songs were played at a faster tempo, and new songs (such as The Specials’ “Rat Race”, “Too Much Too Young” and “Ghost Town”) often contained a considerable amount of social commentary. Ska-punk was also shaped by the rejection of reggae, a genre that some punk bands such as The Clash had previously actively engaged with (Letts).

  • 2 The 1981 documentary film Dance Craze (directed by Joe Massot) captures the enthusiasm of live perf (...)

5Two Tone attracted a large number of young fans, as can be seen by the commercial success of many singles and albums. “Gangsters” by The Specials reached number six in the charts, and the following year “Too Much Too Young” reached the number one spot, while their first two albums (The Specials and More Specials) both made the top five. Madness had a succession of nine top ten singles between 1979 and 1981, and “House of Fun” became number one the following year. The Beat also had four top ten singles (the most successful of which was “Mirror in the Bathroom”), while The Selecter had a top ten hit in 1979 (“On My Radio”) and a top twenty hit (“Three Minute Hero”) the following year. Madness, The Beat and The Selecter all released albums which broke into the top ten. All of these bands organised successful tours, and venues were frequently sold out.2 The high point of Two Tone occurred at the turn of the decade. One sign of this was the November 8, 1979 edition of the weekly BBC 1 music show Top of the Pops, which featured Madness, The Specials and The Selecter. In the summer of 1981, The Specials’ single “Ghost Town” was number one in the singles charts for three successive weeks. However, in the wake of this, the band split up, and in the following months Two Tone singles and albums were less successful. Some bands changed musical direction, while others split up.

6Asian Underground emerged twenty years later, although the exact origins of the movement are open to debate. As early as 1988, the label Nation Records was established by Kath Canoville and Aki Nawaz for bands which wished to create a fusion of different forms of world music and dance music. In the mid-1990s, it released albums by Asian Dub Foundation (Facts and Fictions) and Fun Da Mental (Seize the Time and Erotic Terrorism, for example), whose leading member was Aki Nawaz himself. Both bands produced a mixture of musical genres including traditional South Asian music, rock, punk, rap and dance. By the mid-1990s, a distinct scene was appearing around music whose main characteristic was the fusion of Eastern and Western genres (Huq 33). Outcaste Records was created in 1995, specifically to showcase Asian-inspired music, and the first artist it signed was Nitin Sawhney (“Outcaste”). Outcaste went on to release three of his albums. Club nights such as Outcaste, Bombay Jungle and Asian Vibes began to be organised on a regular basis in London and attracted large numbers of fans. The most significant of these nights was Anokha which was held at the Blue Note club and was the brainchild of Talvin Singh. In 1997, he put together the compilation album Anokha – Soundz of the Asian Underground, which featured among others Singh himself, State of Bengal, and Amar. The album contributed to popularising the term Asian Underground. The following year Singh released his first solo album, OK.

7Asian Underground releases were not particularly successful in terms of sales. None of Asian Dub Foundation’s singles or albums broke into the top twenty, and Nitin Sawhney’s and Talvin Singh’s albums did not even reach the top forty. However, Asian Underground musicians did receive critical acclaim. Asian Dub Foundation’s album Rafi’s Revenge (1998) and Nitin Sawhney’s album Beyond Skin (2000) were nominated for the Mercury Music Prize. Talvin Singh won the Mercury Music Prize Award for OK in 1999 and the same year was invited to perform at the Labour Party’s annual conference (MacAskill). In 2000, Asian Dub Foundation’s album Community Music was given 10/10 in a review in the prestigious music weekly New Musical Express (Morton). The success of Asian Underground was recognised by the BBC in 2002 when its youth radio station Radio 1 created the regular Asian Beats show, presented by Bobby Friction and Nihal Arthanayake.

  • 3 It is important to note that not all bands with Asian members who rejected bhangra were part of the (...)
  • 4 John Pandit of Asian Dub Foundation noted that this was one of the dangers of the commodification o (...)

8Asian Underground music was eclectic, but it defined itself predominantly in opposition to bhangra, which had dominated the Asian music scene in the United Kingdom.3 The origins of bhangra can be traced back to Punjabi folk music and dance (Bakrania 36-41). Punjabi immigrants who had settled in the United Kingdom moved away from more traditional forms and adopted aspects of Western rock. This new form of music was hugely successful among the British Asian community, and in the 1980s some clubs organised bhangra afternoon events so that young people could attend while pretending to their parents that they were at school or college (Anjum). However, some Asians viewed bhangra as repetitive and predictable, disliked the essentialist vision of the relationship between bhangra and the Asian community that was sometimes presented by the British media, and were put off by the macho atmosphere of some bhangra events (Bakrania 33-69). These were the people who were attracted by Asian Underground and saw it as an alternative to bhangra. Asian Underground did not replace bhangra but came to exist side by side with it (Huq 33). However, by the mid-2000s, Asian Underground was clearly in decline. Several explanations have been provided for this state of affairs (Kalia). Some have claimed that it was a victim of its own success as some Asian artists entered the mainstream of popular music. Others, including Nitin Sawhney, have suggested that Asian Underground suffered as a result of reactions to the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001 in the United States and those of July 7, 2005 in London and the subsequent rise in hostility towards the Asian community. Finally, for some sections of the music industry, Asian Underground was simply a trend that they grew tired of (Ahmad Nobil 79).4

Ethnic minorities and anti-racism

  • 5 When creating The Specials, Jerry Dammers made the deliberate decision to include white and black m (...)
  • 6 In Jamaica, rude boys were poor, disaffected young men, who sometimes engaged in criminal activitie (...)

9One of the specificities of Two Tone and Asian Underground is that they were both closely linked to a particular ethnic minority. Two Tone was very much a multiracial phenomenon. Its very name was deliberately chosen to suggest the unity of young black and white people. This was also reflected in the chequerboard design and the graphics used by the label and bands. Fans also dressed in black and white clothes. Many Two Tone bands were multiracial, which was relatively unusual in the late 1970s, and had black members of Caribbean origin.5 This was the case, for example, of The Specials (Neville Staple and Lynval Golding), The Beat (Ranking Roger/Roger Charlery and Saxa/Lionel Augustus Martin), The Selecter (Pauline Black, Compton Amanor, Desmond Brown, Charley ‘Aitch’ Bembridge and Charley Anderson) and The Bodysnatchers (Rhoda Dakkar). Moreover, Two Tone was inspired by Jamaican ska, as mentioned above, and by Jamaican culture in general. The Selecter named themselves after the Jamaican term for a DJ (‘selector’), while many young people of both sexes adopted a look inspired by the Jamaican ‘rude boys’ of the 1960 (suits, thin ties and especially pork pie hats).6 As its name suggests, Asian Underground was closely linked to the Asian community. Most of the musicians were Asian, as were many of those who went to the club nights (although the appeal of Asian Underground clearly went further given the positive reception some musicians experienced). Dave Watts, a prominent member of Fun Da Mental, was of Afro-Caribbean origin, but he was an obvious exception. The musical fusion of Asian Underground was also significant since it corresponded to the positive sense of belonging to two cultures experienced by many young second-generation British Asians (Robinson 188).

10Members of both movements were openly opposed to racism. In the case of Two Tone, this hostility took on a symbolic form (the systematic use of black and white graphics and imagery and the references to Jamaica, for example) and a more openly political form. Two Tone bands such as The Specials took part in concerts organised by Rock Against Racism (RAR), which was founded in 1976 and staged several regional and national carnivals as well as hundreds of local concerts throughout the country (Renton; Goodyer). Many of RAR’s activities featured punk and reggae bands, which symbolised racial harmony as the members of most punk groups were white, while most members of reggae groups were black. RAR took an immediate interest in Two Tone, publishing an article about it in the fanzine Temporary Hoarding in late 1979 (Xerox 5) and using references to Two Tone and the chequerboard imagery on its posters, such as one produced in 1980 with the slogan ‘Keep Britain Two-Tone’. The Specials played at the last major event put on by RAR, a regional carnival held in Leeds in 1981.

11Asian Underground was not closely associated with a particular anti-racist movement, but some of the music produced by its bands conveyed a positive image of Asians in the United Kingdom. Asian Dub Foundation’s “New Way New Life” (2000), for instance, portrays a community which is advancing (“Young Asian brothers an sisters/ Moving forward side by side”), partly thanks to its thriving music scene (“And we’re supposed to be cool / Inna de dance our riddems rule”). Asians were challenging the racism that they had suffered from (“Now de struggle continues / To reverse every wrong / When we reach de glass ceiling / We will blow it sky high”). The idea of reacting to racism had been present in the band’s work since their first album. One of the tracks on it, “Th9” (1995), urges Asians to fight back against the far right and to use violence if necessary (“Kick the fuckers in the head” … “Now the wrath of the Asian will hit you like a blast”). In “Dogtribe” (1994) Fun Da Mental expressed anger at racist violence (“Enough is enough”) and proclaimed the right of Asian people (and Afro-Caribbeans) to defend themselves physically when attacked. The video accompanying the song shows the story of a young Asian (played by Aki Nawaz) who is attacked because of the colour of his skin.7 He tries to tell members of parliament about the attack, but none of them listen. He therefore joins a group of young men who are prepared to take matters into their own hands. At the end of the video, they violently destroy material belonging to the far-right Combat 18 organisation.

12It can thus be noted that there were clear similarities between Two Tone and Asian Underground. Both movements were the product of a fusion of different musical styles and were linked to an ethnic minority. Nevertheless, while Two Tone emphasised racial unity between people of Afro-Caribbean origin and white people, Asian Underground focused predominantly on the Asian community. Furthermore, the anti-racism advocated by some Asian Underground was based on the Asian community’s right to defend itself, which differed from the vision of anti-racism proposed by Two Tone. These differences can be explained by the fact that the two phenomena were the products of very different contexts, but also by the indirect impact of Two Tone on Asian Underground.

The impact of Two Tone on Asian Underground

13The two contexts are best conceptualised as differing conjunctures. The notion of a “conjuncture” was pioneered by Stuart Hall in the field of Cultural Studies in the 1970s. Conjunctural analysis has been broadly defined as “the analysis of convergent and divergent tendencies shaping the totality of power relations within a given social field during a particular period of time” (Gilbert 6). Jeremy Gilbert notes that this type of analysis has been adopted by academics such as Lawrence Grossberg and uses the latter’s analysis of American “kids” in the 2000s as an example. According to Gilbert, Grossberg concludes that the situation of American kids at this period in time is “clearly a product both of long-term features of capitalism in general, of medium-term changes to practices and ideologies of child-rearing since the 1950s, and of much more recent developments in the labour market and the deployment of new technologies” (Gilbert 8). The conjuncture of the 2000s in the United States is thus composed of the coming together of short-term and long-term trends in several domains. This approach can be applied to the two phenomena under study here and the moments in which they appeared.

14In the late 1970s when Two Tone appeared, the United Kingdom was in many ways still living in the shadow of Enoch Powell, a prominent figure in the Conservative Party, who in 1968 had given an openly racist speech in which he condemned mass immigration, claimed that immigrants and their offspring would never be truly integrated, and stated that violence would ensue if immigration continued. The speech received a great deal of publicity and paved the way for an increase in racism in the following years (Beckett 442-443). Consequently, the 1970s were characterised by a climate in which racism was part of the everyday life of ethnic minorities: racist humour on television was deemed acceptable, and verbal and physical attacks on people of colour were relatively commonplace. High levels of unemployment by post-war standards were considered by the National Front to have been fuelled by mass immigration, and it gained some support for this vision in local elections. In 1978, the leader of the Conservative Party and future Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, spoke on television about immigration and sympathised with British people who believed that the United Kingdom was being “swamped by people with a different culture” (Thatcher). In addition to the ambient racism in British society, the first generation of young Afro-Caribbean people born in the United Kingdom suffered from racist policing and faced disproportionately high levels of unemployment.

15Unemployment and the fear of it were experiences they shared with young white people, who, statistically speaking, were more likely to be unemployed than their elders, creating the potential for common ground. Furthermoreas noted by Dick Hebdige in his seminal Subculture. The Meaning of Style, written before the ska revival had gained pacealthough British youth had a complex relationship with Afro-Caribbean music and culture, sections of the young white population had been fascinated by them since the appearance of mass immigration (Hebdige). The fusion of ska with punk and the adoption of the Rude Boy look thus allowed Two Tone bands to tap into this interest. Finally, Two Tone emerged into a cultural and political space where a dynamic anti-racist movement had existed since 1976. Music was at the heart of RAR, which had already succeeded in regularly bringing together punk and reggae bands on the same bill. Moreover, RAR had been gaining momentum since the two Carnivals Against The Nazis, held in London in 1978. Two Tone was influenced by the anti-racism of RAR, which was based on a vision of racial unity, and contributed to strengthening RAR by seeming to embody this vision.

16The conjuncture of the late 1970s which saw the appearance of Two Tone was thus characterised by the coming together of long-term and short-term factors in the fields of music, politics, and economics, which contributed to shaping Two Tone, as well as its approach to anti-racism. Unsurprisingly, the conjuncture of the mid-1990s which produced Asian Underground was somewhat different. In the 1990s, ethnic minorities still faced racism, as exemplified by the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence in 1993 and the reactions of the police. And the far-right British National Party won a local council seat in the Isle of Dogs, East London, the same year. However, overt, everyday racism was probably less prevalent than twenty years previously, and the country increasingly saw itself as multicultural. This was particularly the case after Tony Blair became Prime Minister in 1997. His Labour government adopted a more positive vision of cultural diversity and the contribution of ethnic minorities to British society than its predecessors, although the true nature of Labour’s commitment to ethnic minorities can be questioned, and it is important not to underestimate the racism that they continued to face in many areas of society (Power Sayeed 7-55). Yet, in the words of the historian Alwyn W. Turner, the United Kingdom was by the 1990s “a country that prided itself on a tolerant diversity, and that saw itself as a modern nation while still cherishing its past” (319). It was even prepared to address the issue of racism in the police, as evidenced by the publication in 1999 of the Macpherson report, which acknowledged the existence of institutional racism in the police.

17The Asian community was much more visible than in the past. This had been notable in the field of popular culture since the beginning of the 1990s. Gurinder Chadha’s films Bhaji on the Beach (Channel Four Films, 1993) and Bend It Like Beckham (Kintop Pictures, 2002) received critical acclaim (and the latter also achieved commercial success), as did East is East (Damien O’Donnell, FilmFour, 1999), the screenplay for which was written by Ayub Khan-Din. In 1998, the BBC 2 TV channel began showing the comedy show Goodness Gracious Me (1998-2001), which was based on the eponymous BBC Radio 4 programme (1996-1998). The four main roles were played by Asian actors, and the sketches revolved around the everyday experiences of British Asians and their interactions with non-Asians. Three years later, BBC 2 began airing another comedy show in which the main roles were played by AsiansThe Kumars at Number 42 (2001-2004). It was so successful that it was later moved to a slot on BBC1 (2005-2006). Finally, the band Cornershop were nominated for the Mercury Music Prize in 1998 for their album When I Was Born for the 7th Time, the same year as a remixed version of their single “Brimful of Asha” reached number one in the charts.

18Asian Underground thus appeared in a general context which was relatively favourable to ethnic minorities and was part of the growing visibility and self-confidence of the Asian community. It also had an impact on the vision members of the community had of themselves:

British Asian composer Shammi Pithia says this form of nightlife was transformative for the community. ‘When I went to the nights, I saw Asian people in a different light,’ he says. ‘Usually I would associate the community with family and being at home but there, people could do their own thing and enjoy themselves like anyone else. There was a sense that this music was for us and by us, and that was very powerful’. (Kalia)

19Moreover, through this musical phenomenon, young Asians took Asian-influenced music to a wider audience and demanded to be seen as an integral part of British musical history. On the back cover of the seminal album AnokhaSoundz of the Asian Underground was a picture of a man wearing a parka coat, one of the main accessories worn by fans of the mod subculture which appeared in the mid-1960s. Mods frequently sewed to the backs of their parkas the red, white and blue Royal Air Force roundel, which had been used to identity British planes during the First and Second World Wars. This was sometimes accompanied by “The Who”, the name of the most famous mod band, with an arrow pointing upwards from the letter “o”. However, on the album cover, the roundel was saffron, white and green, the colours of the Indian flag. And under it were the words ‘Asian Underground’ with an arrow pointing upwards from the ‘i’. This can be seen as a playful attempt to locate Asian Underground in the mainstream of British culture, as well as an example of the hybrid identity that many British Asians used music to construct (Bakrania 5). It was particularly significant since at the time the album was released the charts were dominated by Britpop bands including Oasis and Blur. Britpop, which was dominated by white bands, sought inspiration from British music and subcultures of the 1960s, such as mod, and rejected foreign influences (Clément). Consequently, Asian Underground can also be seen to a certain extent as a response to Britpop, from which Asians were excluded. This was made clear in the lyrics of “Real Great Britain” by Asian Dub Foundation which deals with national identity and condemns nostalgia for the 1960s (“Time to reject the sixties charade”). Asian Underground also benefited from the evolution in musical classifications propelled by the music industry. The 1990s saw the appearance of a growing market for the vast ‘World Music’ category of non-Western music. Asian Underground, much of which incorporated aspects of traditional Asian music and was not performed in English, could consequently be marketed as part of this category.

20The final aspect of the conjuncture of the mid-1990s is anti-racism. The radical positions of Asian Underground bands such as Asian Dub Foundation and Fun Da Mental were shaped by the evolution of anti-racism since the 1970s. Following the racist murder of Gurdip Singh Chaddar in Southall in 1976, Asian Youth Movements were created in parts of the country with a significant Asian population (Ramamurthy). Members of these movements believed strongly that Asians communities had the right to defend themselves if they came under attack from racists. For example, in July 1981 members of Southall’s Asian Youth Movement played an active role in attacking and burning down a pub where an Oi! concert which had attracted large numbers of racist skinheads was to take place. The following year twelve men from Bradford were arrested and tried for making Molotov cocktails to defend their community against attacks by members of the National Front. This approach was defended by Fun Da Mental in “Dogtribe”, the lyrics of which include the slogan “Self defence is no offence”. Asian Dub Foundation recorded the song “Free Satpal Ram”, which defended an Asian man who had stabbed and killed his attacker in a restaurant and was sentenced to prison.

  • 8 Both movements had been established and were run by members and sympathisers of the Socialist Worke (...)
  • 9 The desire of members of ethnic minorities to have a greater say about matters directly concerning (...)
  • 10 It is important to note that although young Asians underlined the specificities of their own identi (...)

21At the heart of the approach advocated by Asian Underground was the idea that the Asian community had to lead its own struggles to defend itself. The notion of black and Asian leadership of anti-racism had increasingly come to the fore in the 1980s and 1990s and was the result of a critique of the main anti-racist organisations, particularly the Anti-Nazi League (ANL), with which RAR had a close relationship.8 The ANL, which existed from 1977 to 1981 and from 1992 to 2003, was very active in campaigns against far-right parties and movements, but did little to fight against racism in society as a whole (Gilroy 171-172). It therefore disbanded in 1981, as the National Front had been marginalized, and reformed in 1992, when the British National Party was considered a major threat. However, in the intervening period, racism had obviously not disappeared. For some, the limited scope of the ANL’s campaigns was due to the fact that its leadership was predominantly white. This type of analysis led to the creation in 1991 of the Anti-Racist Alliance, which was based on the principles of black leadership and the self-organisation of the black community (Copsey 167-168).9 Unlike Two Tone, Asian Underground did not align itself with a particular anti-racist organisation. However, the thinking and practices of some of its leading figures were clearly influenced by changes taking place in anti-racism. This can also be seen in the use of the word ‘Asian’. From the late 1970s onwards, ‘black’ was used by socialists and activists to refer to people of Afro-Caribbean and Asian origin. However, from the early 1990s, this blanket term was criticised in some quarters as it hid the specificities of the Asian community and promoted a false essentialism, whereby all non-whites had exactly the same things in common (Modood 859-876; Goulbourne 355-373). In the Asian Underground movement, the term ‘Asian’ was used systematically, sometimes along with ‘black’ or Afro-Caribbean if the two communities were being referred to (for example, in the lyrics to “Dogtribe”).10

22The conjunctures in which Two Tone and Asian Underground appeared clearly had a major influence over the forms they both took and help explain the differences between them. Although Asian Underground appeared over 15 years after Two Tone, it could be argued that it emerged, at least partly, as a result of the limits of the latter. Before looking at Two Tone itself, it is important to remember that it was closely linked politically and culturally to RAR and musically to punk. There is an ongoing debate over the relationship between RAR and Asians. Having noted RAR’s incorporation of punk and reggae, Kalra, Hutnyk and Sharma observe that the “British Bhangra scene was running parallel to these developments, but there was no involvement of Asian bands in RAR. Bhangra bands were playing the circuits of weddings and community events in a context largely neglected by the organizers of RAR.” (Kalra, Hutnyk and Sharma 137). Quoting an article published in the New Musical Express in 1978, they also assert that few Asians attended RAR concerts (Kalra, Hutnyk and Sharma 137). Sabin accuses punk in general of an “almost total neglect of the plight of Britain’s Asians” (203) based on the fact that “Asians simply didn’t have the same romance as Afro-Caribbean youth – especially in terms of the latter’s reputation for being confrontational with the police – and what was equally problematic, they had no music comparable to reggae with which punks could identify” (204). For Sabin, punk’s anti-racism was “selective” (205), as was RAR’s, by implication.

23Less critical accounts of RAR’s attitude to Asians have been written by Ian Goodyer and Joe O’Connell. Goodyer notes “the absence, in the 1970s, of a popular cultural bridge between Asian and white British youth” and the existence of bhangra solely within the Asian community, contrasting this state of affairs with the history of “cross-cultural exchanges” between Afro-Caribbean artists and white audiences (83). He also adds that the Asian punk band Alien Kulture performed at a number of concerts organised by RAR and points out that in areas with large Asian communities such as Southall, significant numbers of young Asians attended RAR concerts (82). O’Connell states that not only did Alien Kulture play at RAR concerts, but two of the band’s members became part of RAR’s national leadership in 1980 (although it should be added that RAR was in decline by this point and was wound down the following year). He interviews members of the band who admit that they were one of a very small number of Asian bands at the time, and certainly the only Asian punk band. They add that bhangra had not yet gained widespread popularity among young Asians in the late 1970s. O’Connell concludes that “Alien Kulture prove that, contrary to the common historical narratives of RAR, British Asians did engage with the movement. However, they were a minority at RAR events” (12).

24RAR clearly found it difficult to engage with young Asians. This has been admitted by leading figures in RAR looking back at the 1970s. Roger Huddle, for example, has written that “[w]e were never able to build the bridges between Rock Against Racism and the Asian community. There wasn’t Asian youth music in the same way as reggae came out of black youth” (Rachel, Walls Come Tumbling Down 192). RAR’s difficulties were thus partly due to the specificities of young Asian people at the time in comparison with young Afro-Caribbeans. Huddle adds that it was “more difficult for [young Asians] to break with their community leaders” (Rachel, Walls Come Tumbling Down 192). He thus touches on the specificities of the Asian community and its values. Members of Alien Kulture have also noted that there was a strong sense of conformity in their community with a great deal of pressure on young Asians to obey their parents. This was also expressed in the lyrics of their songs such as “Asian Youth” and “Arranged Marriage”. The film-maker Gurinder Chadha, who also became involved in RAR, has made similar points (Huddle and Saunders 43-45). It would thus seem that for cultural reasons it was difficult for young Asians to become involved in activities outside their own community and that RAR’s appeal to them was relatively limited. According to Frith and Street, RAR’s musical values did have “an off-putting effect for Asian British youth” (69). It could be added that RAR’s publication Temporary Hoarding contained little of specific interest or relevance to young Asians.

25The emergence of Two Tone did little to change this situation. Given Two Tone’s close connections with RAR and punk, as well as its fascination with Jamaican popular culture, it is perhaps unsurprising that few Asians became involved in it either as musicians or fans. It is also possible that the systematic discursive and graphic use of ‘black’ by RAR and Two Tone may have limited their appeal among the Asian community. Some young Asians may have considered themselves to be black from a political perspective, but others may have felt that RAR and Two Tone were appealing mainly, or solely, to Afro-Caribbeans. It is also important to remember that Two Tone attracted considerable numbers of skinheads, including some who had far-right convictions (Rachel, Too Much Too Young 137-148). Concerts featuring Madness, whose members were all white, attracted skinheads who were sympathetic to the extreme right-wing British Movement. Fighting frequently broke out as skinheads chanted racist slogans, gave Nazi salutes, and attacked other sections of the audience. Madness eventually felt obliged to disown its far-right fans. Even multiracial bands such as The Specials attracted similar elements and experienced similar activities at their concerts. Although skinheads’ racism was directed at all non-white people, they particularly despised Asian people. Hebdige noted in the late 1970s that violence against Asian people (or “Paki-bashing”, as skinheads termed it) (Hebdige 58) was an integral part of the rituals that many skinheads engaged in. Consequently, Two Tone concerts were potentially dangerous events for Asians to attend. This is not to suggest that Asians were completely absent from Two Tone. Gurinder Chadha has spoken of being a fan of The Specials and becoming friends with the band. Yet she also admits that she was seen as “a rarity […] as an Indian girl pogo’ing in the front of their gigs” (Huddle and Saunders 45). Although Two Tone was a multi-racial movement, for a variety of reasons young Asians were far less involved than young Afro-Caribbeans.

  • 11 Interestingly, in 1993 Fun Da Mental played at a carnival organised by Anti-Fascist Action (AFA), w (...)

26Despite their commitment to anti-racism, RAR, punk and Two Tone in the late 1970s/early 1980s were thus not entirely welcoming spaces for young Asians. Consequently, it is not surprising that when music-based movements began to appear from within the Asian community, they primarily emphasised, reflected, and reinforced the specificities of that community rather than the common ground that it shared with other sections of the population. Moreover, the complex relationship between Asians and the attempts to use music for anti-racist purposes reappeared in the mid-1990s. In 1994, the Anti-Nazi League, with which RAR had organised activities in the late 1970s, mounted a carnival at Brockwell Park in London. However, only one Asian band (Achanak) was scheduled to perform, and they were on stage before many members of the audience had actually arrived. This led Aki Nawaz of Fun Da Mental to criticise the organisers and suggest that his band should also have been on the bill (Kalra, Hutnyk and Sharma 148). This episode would appear to confirm that, although Asians were not completely ignored, they were not fully accepted and taken into account by the main British anti-racist organisation.11 This observation sits uncomfortably with some of the commentary on Two Tone and RAR. Looking back at the late 1970s/early 1980s, leading anti-racists such as Red Saunders, one of the founders of RAR, notes that they felt that RAR’s work was complete when Two Tone appeared, as the latter embodied its objectives (Rachel, Walls Come Tumbling Down 222-227). Augustyn writes that Two Tone served its purpose as black people were accepted as British citizens (83). More recently, Daniel Rachel has written that “[f]or a brief, bright, burning moment, 2 Tone shaped British culture. In its glowing embers, the country changed.” While the significance of Two Tone, particularly for Afro-Caribbeans, cannot be denied, the relative absence of Asians suggests that the celebratory nature of some of the conclusions drawn about Two Tone and RAR should be nuanced.

27Two Tone and Asian Underground were musical movements which appeared at different moments of recent British history. Yet they were both closely related to and heavily influenced by an ethnic minority and sought to fight against racism in British society. Two Tone, along with Rock Against Racism, stressed the importance of racial unity between whites and Afro-Caribbeans, while Asian Underground emphasised the uniqueness of the Asian community and its culture. Although Two Tone no doubt contributed to making overt racism increasingly unacceptable among young people, it did not succeed in incorporating significant numbers of young Asians. Not finding a place in a multi-racial movement that defined itself as anti-racist, young Asians developed their own musical movements. From the 1980s onwards, bhangra was the first such movement, and it was followed by Asian Underground. The limits of Two Tone were thus one of the factors that shaped the circumstances leading to the emergence of Asian Underground in the 1990s. Further research, including interviews with Asian musicians, would be necessary to establish the precise role played by Two Tone.

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Notes

1 Simon Reynolds has described it as “one of the few examples in pop history of a revival that is not inferior to the thing it’s reviving. It may even be better than the original sixties ska – more musically expansive more resonant, ultimately more defining of its own epoch”(304).

2 The 1981 documentary film Dance Craze (directed by Joe Massot) captures the enthusiasm of live performances by Two Tone bands, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVexewVb2B4&t=3550s (Accessed 3 March 2024).

3 It is important to note that not all bands with Asian members who rejected bhangra were part of the Asian Underground scene. This is the case of Cornershop, whose founder was Tjinder Singh and whose name came from the racist stereotype of Asians being shop owners. The band did not associate itself with Asian Underground groups, and it produced a rather different blend of Asian-influenced pop. However, as shall be argued below, the success of Cornershop was part of the growing visibility of the Asian community at the time.

4 John Pandit of Asian Dub Foundation noted that this was one of the dangers of the commodification of ethnicity and the exploitation of ‘exotic’ Asians (Bakrania 71-72).

5 When creating The Specials, Jerry Dammers made the deliberate decision to include white and black members (Rachel, Walls Come Tumbling Down 236). Dammers also created the original graphics used by the movement.

6 In Jamaica, rude boys were poor, disaffected young men, who sometimes engaged in criminal activities.

7 “Dogtribe”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRv6VSgbuzo (Accessed 3 March 2024).

8 Both movements had been established and were run by members and sympathisers of the Socialist Workers Party, a small Trotskyite party.

9 The desire of members of ethnic minorities to have a greater say about matters directly concerning them was already evidenced in the 1980s by the decision to create ‘Black Sections’ in the Labour Party (Jeffers 43-57; Shukra 165-189). Some of those involved in the Black Sections later participated in the foundation of the Anti-Racist Alliance (Anderson).

10 It is important to note that although young Asians underlined the specificities of their own identity, they were strongly influenced by Afro-Caribbean culture. It is significant that the word ‘dub’ is included in the name of the band Asian Dub Foundation. Moreover, Afro-Caribbean forms of English are used by the band in songs such as “New Way New Life”.

11 Interestingly, in 1993 Fun Da Mental played at a carnival organised by Anti-Fascist Action (AFA), which believed in using force in the struggle against the far right, and later donated a track to a benefit album for a musical campaign closely linked to AFA. AFA also took a keen interest in Asian Dub Foundation. Its magazine Fighting Talk published positive reviews of the single “Free Satpal Ram” (“Free Satpal Ram” 22) and the albums Rafi’s Revenge (Asian Dub Foundation Rafi’s Revenge 21) and Community Music (The Beat Goes On Asian Dub Foundation Community Music 20), as well as interviewing band member Pandit G (The Beat Goes On. Asian Dub Foundation 12-13). Although AFA had emerged from the ANL in the mid-1980s, it advocated the use of violence against the far right and moved towards supporting community-based activism in the late 1990s. There was thus a certain amount of common ground with bands such as Fun Da Mental and Asian Dub Foundation.

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Jeremy TRANMER, « Two Tone and Asian Underground: Movements, Moments and Minorities »e-Rea [En ligne], 22.2 | 2025, mis en ligne le 15 juin 2025, consulté le 20 juillet 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/erea/19331 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/144q4

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Jeremy TRANMER

Université de Lorraine, IDEA, F-54000 Nancy, France
jeremy.tranmer@univ-lorraine.fr
Jeremy Tranmer is a senior lecturer at the University of Lorraine (Nancy) where he teaches contemporary British political, social and cultural history. His PhD is about the political and ideological evolution of the Communist Party of Great Britain in the 1980s, and he has written numerous articles about the far left (parties and movements). He is also interested in the relationship between the left and popular music in the 1980s and is currently working on music and opposition to the Thatcher governments.
Jeremy Tranmer est maître de conférences à l’Université de Lorraine (Nancy) où il enseigne la civilisation britannique (histoire politique, sociale, culturelle). Sa thèse porte sur l’évolution politique et idéologique du Parti Communiste de Grande-Bretagne au cours des années 1980, et il a consacré de nombreux articles à l’extrême gauche (partis, mouvements). Il s’intéresse également à la relation entre la gauche et la musique populaire depuis les années 80 et travaille actuellement sur la musique et l’opposition aux gouvernements Thatcher.

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