Pleasurable Guilt?

Sometimes writing should be withheld. In 2002, Gary Mulholland produced one of the finest list books about popular music, The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk and Disco. As well as covering many fantastic records, the entries are shot through with insights. They also glow with a righteous passion about the injustices of race, class, gender and snobbery. This book was followed in 2006 by The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk and Disco. It is a far inferior work. Aside from the fact that albums are frequently incoherent and therefore hard to sum up, Mulholland’s pronouncements have a tendency to jar.

            The worst instance comes with his analysis of Misty in Roots' Live at the Counter Eurovision 79. Despite including the album in his book, he describes it as ‘kinda silly’ and ‘pretty camp’. This stopped me in my tracks when I first read it. Had I been listening to a different record? Was I wrong to take this album’s earnest pronouncements on race and class seriously, when really I should have taken them with a pinch of salt? Mulholland thinks so. For him this record was aimed at a ‘white middle-class audience’ who sought ‘damning judgements upon their entire existence’. These judgements include the famous spoken word introduction to this album, which states that:

When we trod this land, we walk for one reason. The reason is to try to help another man think for himself. The music of our hearts is roots music: music which recalls history, because without the knowledge of your history, you cannot determine your destiny; the music about the present, because if you are not conscious about the present, you're like a cabbage in this society; music which tells about the future and the judgement which is to come.

The Radio 1 DJ John Peel, who was responsible for introducing this record to many people, was so taken with these words that they were included in the order of service at his funeral. Mulholland argues that, while they are supposed to sound ‘simultaneously spiritual, authoritative and stoned’, the speaker ‘just sounds gay’. He is similarly snide about ‘How Long Jah’, the track on the album that says most about racism. It is introduced with a cry of ‘how long must we feel the pain?’. For Mulholland this complaint sounds like a ‘granny with a backache’.

            This writing represents a hollow game of one-upmanship. Mulholland wishes to come across as being more insightful than other listeners while also attempting to best them in terms of liberal credentials. He wants to say that, not only is racism wrong, but it is perpetuated by the fact that white listeners take roots reggae so seriously. For Mulholland, a greater move towards equality would be for white people to take the piss out of these musicians in the same way they take the piss out of everyone else. This involves calling someone ‘gay’. Aside from this peculiar attitude, what I find most unforgiveable about this writing is that it did affect my listening and presumably the listening of other readers as well. I questioned whether in listening to this album I was just indulging in some form of pleasurable guilt.

            The music speaks more loudly, though. Misty in Roots certainly condemned whiteness - ‘Satan said I’m free, but I’m not free’ – and by extension could be said to be admonishing their white audience. This wasn’t a game of assuaging guilt, however. The group always preached togetherness. They were a fulcrum of the Rock Against Racism movement. They pointedly named their record label, ‘People Unite’, and launched the career of the white punk band, the Ruts. ‘How Long Jah’ asks how long must we feel the pain. It couches the problem in monetary terms: we are ‘economical slaves’ who cannot escape ‘money the controller’. Live at the Counter Eurovision is not preaching at a white audience, it is instead enfolding this audience in shared injustices and is suggesting ways to move forwards as one.

            And it definitely is not camp. In fact, what is most astonishing about Misty in Roots is that they sought unity and spoke of shared experience despite being the victims of institutionalized racism. In the same month that the album was recorded, Britain's far right party, the National Front, had planned to hold an election meeting in Southall, the multi-cultural district from which Misty in Roots hailed. The group helped to organize the anti-fascist response. In the resulting ‘Southall riots’ the teacher Blair Peach was killed by the police. The police’s Special Patrol Group also beat Misty in Roots’ manager Clarence Baker into a coma. He was then charged with assault despite the fact he was unarmed. Tragically, ‘How Long Jah?’ was not only speaking the truth at the time it was released, but it remains true today. Another generation has been born in slavery. Black lives matter.