The group’s campaigning single Free Satpal Ram, about a south Asian man jailed for murder after an alleged racist attack, led me to become an activist – with their lead singer as my mentor
I
t wasn’t New Labour, my politics A-level or the Tipp-Exed Woody Guthrie slogan “this machine kills fascists” on my friend Simon’s bag that set me on the path to activism. It was a CD single I found in a west London record shop, which I only picked up because it was by a bunch of brown guys.
It was the summer of 1998, and I was 17 years old and browsing records in the Harrow Virgin Megastore, when I came across Free Satpal Ram by jungle-punk-rap band Asian Dub Foundation – a buzzing, brilliant, ramshackle protest song about a south Asian man who had been sent to jail after defending himself in an alleged racist attack in 1986. While at an Indian restaurant, Satpal Ram was stabbed with a broken bottle, and retaliated by stabbing his attacker with a penknife; the man later died. Ram was convicted of murder the following year.
I played the CD on my cousin Vimal’s stack hi-fi system, and afterwards was changed for ever. Sitting on the edge of his bed, reading the lyric sheet, I was shocked and furious at what I had heard. Maybe it was the buzzsaw guitars, mixed with the furious rapping, the Bollywood sample and the jungle drums, but that heady mix of music made me want to stand up and do something.
