This documentary looks at the movement "Rock against racism" and its rise in the late 1970s. This very influential network brought together in a very innovative manner young Black and young White people in hundreds of gigs and other events across the country.
The spark
which led to the rise of Rock against Racism was the reaction by a group of
left wingers to Eric Clapton’s drunken racist tirade at a concert in Birmingham.
A letter to the music press brought hundreds of replies, and the network became
much more powerful than its initiators had thought possible. In the following
months, dozens of local concerts were organized following the RAR recipe: black
reggae groups and white punk groups playing on the same bill, the black group
always top of the bill. The result was both the mixing of musics, as different
influences met each other, and the mixing of different audiences which up to
then had been subject to de facto unthinking racial segregation : reggae
music had been for Blacks and punk music for Whites.[1]
[1] With a
small number of notable exceptions such as mixed race woman singer Poly Styrene
from the punk group X ray Spex.
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