Wednesday 20 April 2011

Adrian Sherwood Interview


...A lot of what you did - and with you just saying before that the racial atmosphere was a lot more tense in the early 80s, and you were mixing up punk and reggae and black and white artists - had an inherently political aspect. Did you see what you were doing as political?
AS: I think that reggae was carrying a political message because they were talking about sufferation, Garveyism, the back to African movement, pan-Africanism, the rasta thing, which was about the improvement of black people and the proudness of being black and the need for revolution. And over here you had the punk movement which was like 'I'm so bloody bored, can't we do what Guy Fawkes failed to do - blow up the place'... disenchanted white youth. And they were all kids who went to school together, and a lot of white kids were into reggae so it brought it all together. And on our front I had Mark Stewart, who was very politicised, and he had made The Pop Group albums, saying we tolerate mass murder, we're all prostitutes etc. By the time I was working with him and we were doing all his records which were all coming through On-U, and Tackhead after that... all that stuff was like news on the beat, as we called it. We were cutting up information, and Mark was our Gysin or Burroughs or something.
But I was brought up listening to the news in England, and you think 'Oh those poor Israelis how they're suffering' and you never heard anything about what they did to Palestine, or what went on. You were depoliticised from quite an early age in this country. But in the 70s there were loads of movements for workers' rights, the political situation... it was all put much more in your face, and it's only now I think we went through a gap for 20 years where I think people are comfortable with making money, they bought into the whole Thatcher thing. So I think with On-U, we were attempting to be as political as possible. I had to learn things - I learned lots of things off people about what really goes on. I didn't know the txtent of what goes on in the Middle East, about American Foreign Policy, the destabilising of governments like Nicaragua. I had to be taught that myself. I wasn't taught that by my parents or the school system...
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Adrian Sherwood with Bonjo from African Head Charge

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