Tank
Asian Dub Foundation
Virgin Music
REVIEW BY JAMES VASSILOPOULOS
Once in a decade, a band comes along with a unique mix of creative, new music and politics of depth and definition. The Asian Dub Foundation (ADF) is this group. They have been banging out the tunes for 10 years now, unconcerned with shallow musical fashion. While not as well-known as punk-rock group the Clash, they are just as talented and significant, and as politically astute.
They make sharp comments, like that British workers are sick of getting a "Blairful of Thatcher", which would translate for us as a "Beazleyful of Howard". Before songs at concerts, they provoke thought by saying, "in the end everyone on this planet is an immigrant in some way or the other, everyone".
The ADF is hard to categorise musically, being strongly influenced by a number of musical styles. Their music is angry, bouncy and jumpy. It is as rapturous as a chocolate lover in a cocoa factory; as ecstatic as your footy team winning the grand final. There is the thumping beat and bass of jungle music, which is as sprinty as a red sports car speeding deliriously on a freeway unrestrained by speed limits. There is the screeching of punk guitars. Vocally, there is the influence of rap music. There is the Asian inspiration of the Punjabi drum, the dhol, and the Bhangra style dance music that coerces limbs to dance almost involuntarily. There are also classical Indian music samples. Then there are the reggae sounds and the dub that vibrate spines like an earthquake tremor.
Musical influences of the ADF include the rap group Public Enemy, reggae-star Jimmy Cliff, ex-Sex Pistol John Lydon's Public Image, Miles Davis, Fela Kuiti, Radiohead, Pakistani Nusrat Fatah Ali Khan and the world music of Manu Chao.
Pandit G, a founding member of the ADF, when interviewed by Socialist Review, explained that it was both music and politics that inspired them to form a band. In the mid-1990s there was a musical revolution going on "that was the drum'n'bass jungle. People in the reggae, dance, rave, R&B scenes created drum'n'bass jungle, with reggae at the heart of it."
At that time, some saw Britpop as the voice of youth. For example, the popular band Oasis was all about hedonism and individualism. The roots of this phenomenon of it being uncool to be political occurred much earlier. According to NME journalist Steven Wells, in the mid-80s there was a reaction against the rebelliousness of punk and ska towards a defeatism and self-pitying introspection, with bands like The Smiths coming into being. The explanation for youth alienation shifted from the system towards the individual. As Wells explains, "Ghost Town" [a song from the ska band The Specials] replaced by the supine whine of 'I was looking for a job and then I found a job/And heaven knows I'm miserable now'".
The ADF formed through the Community Music project in Farrington, London in 1993. This is a project that got working-class and migrant youth from the public housing estates into music. They called themselves the Asian Dub Foundation — Asian because they have Asian origins, dub as a platform to express their ideas, foundation because they wanted to also educate people. The ADF started as a soundsystem. This is a term that comes from reggae music, where a soundsystem is a turntable, mixer, amplifier, huge speakers and an MC who sings. From Jamaica the soundsystem went to the United States and was the musical system that was used in the formation of rap music, where soundsystems were powered illegally by hooking them up to electricity wires. Fun, groovy, and egalitarian outdoor street parties would happen spontaneously. Chandrasonic the guitarist was added to the ADF soundsystem and they became more like a band.
From the outset they were strongly anti-racist and political. Their first gig was a benefit for Quddus Ali, a skinny 17-year-old who was walking in Whitechapel Road when he was beaten and kicked by eight white youths. He ended up in a coma for four months and suffered permanent brain damage. This attack occurred one week before a far-right British National Party councillor was elected. The ADF wrote a song about this racist attack called "TH9".
The ADF is not your average bunch of musos who dabble in a little bit of politics for credibility and profile. They have a political astuteness that is almost unique in the rock world. They are not like the lead singer of U2, Bono, who recently said that George Bush is "passionate and sincere" about ending world poverty. Their activism is at the core of their music, like Joe Strummer from the Clash.
When answering the question "are you political?" They answer indignantly, "yes, we are fucking political". They have a 10-point political program covering issues of asylum, making the police democratically accountable, and abolition of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Pandit G said in an interview with Melody Maker that "the structures have to change fundamentally" to address wealth distribution. Part of their program is as specific as an opposition to teachers taking performance-based pay and suggesting that they should strike over the issue.
The ADF has rich and varied references to the "politics of life" in their songs. Their 1998 CD Rafi's revenge contained a track about the Naxalite peasant uprising in India. The song contains the lyrics: "Again and again until we have taken the power/again and again until the land is ours", showing ADF's highly developed political positions. The Naxalite uprising on May 25, 1967, occurred at Naxalbari in the north-eastern tip of India. It was a communist-lead armed insurrection. The aim was ending feudalism in the countryside and improving the miserable lives of the poor. Although the rebellion was crushed within a few months, it spread to other parts of India and was a positive example of what can be done when thousands and thousands of oppressed people stand up. A live version of the song is dedicated to the Liverpool dockers, who fought for more than two years.
The ADF don't just talk, they do. In 2002, Pandit G was awarded the Member of the British Empire by the Queen for services to music, especially his work with Community Music. He refused the award, stating that "I've never supported the honours system. If you want to acknowledge projects like Community Music then fund them. To bring people into the establishment won't actually help the organisations."
They don't just do, they win. In November, 1986, Asian man Satpal Ram was attacked by six white men outside a restaurant in Birmingham. He pulled out a pen-knife to defend himself against the attack and stabbed one of the assailants, who later died after refusing any medical treatment. Ram was convicted of murder and destined to rot in jail. The ADF, along with Primal Scream and Massive Attack, were integral to a community-run campaign that won a big victory by getting Ram released (although he had already spent 15 years in jail).
The ADF has worked on a range of political projects, from producing a soundtrack to Gillo Pontecorvo's classic film The Battle of Algiers to performing benefit concerts for the Scottish Socialist Party. In Brazil, they worked in the arts centres of slum areas and on their CD Enemy of the Enemy they performed a song that sampled the single-string instrument the berimbau, telling the story of simultaneous protests in 19 prisons called 19 rebellions.
Tank, inspired by the US-led war on Iraq, is the ADF's sixth CD and it is a solid contribution to their amazing body of work. Listening to the CD produces a wide range of feelings and visions, like images of insects with vibrating proboscides, and of pouncing, praying mantises in an enchanted forest. My favourites include the song "Round Up", inspired by the war on our civil liberties. This is a funky rap song with the sounds of an Arab flute and a piano, producing a hallucinogenic effect. The meditative "Melody 7" song conjures up images of whispering gargoyles. The song relaxes you so much that you feel like you're in a coma. ADF proves that we don't have to dance to mindless porridge, but we can dance proud to jumpy music and intelligent lyrics.
From Green Left Weekly, November 30, 2005.
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