Asian Dub Foundation
Community Music

THE REVIEW

Southall.
The city-neighborhood of almost one hundred thousand Indo-Pakistanis west of London sprang up like a mushroom near the Heathrow international airport. The neighborhood's rapid growth took place between the 1950s and 1960s, when immigrants from Punjab, a region in the north of the Indian subcontinent, mostly flowed in.

In 1977 Bhangra, the rural music of India, had transferred to Great Britain as more immigrants settled, initially blending with rock-reggae and later with black and hip-hop. ADF was born in 1993 at the London youth community center "Community Music," when bassist Dr. Das, 17-year-old rapper Deeder Zaman, and activist composer Dj Pandit G decided to form a sound system to play anti-racist concerts. Later, guitarist Chandrasonic and turntablist Sun J completed the original line-up.

After "Facts and Fictions" and "Rafi's Revenge," where you hear a band blending rock-electronica and dub, the latest "Community Music" seems to have reached the long sought-after balance. This album offers us a listen steeped from the first "Real Great Britain", which merges a jungle beat with a wild rap, with original and classic Bhangra melodies. Already in the second track, "Memory War", we encounter a dub-electro-clash sung against the political system: "Who control the past control the present, and who control the present control the future…”, surely a piece remembered for creating an atmosphere of anti-racial anger, which continues with "Officer XX" and its electro-dub.

But it is the Bhangra melodies, and a joyful riff, that emerge like a spring breeze in "New Way, New Life", with a beautiful video shot in the Pakistani market that anticipates the listening of a real mix of dub sounds lasting 4:27 and entirely instrumental, "Riddim I Like". Without any video but with a real masterful rap that takes your breath away, sung in English and Arabic, with an appropriately balanced soundscape, is the time to listen to "Collective Mode", a blend of reggae-dub-electro-clash and rap flows as the best and most melodic track on the album. Another jungle base and lyrics against global markets make up "Crash".

In the following tracks, ADF brings us the sounds and melodies typical of their DJ-Set nights, with two different instrumentals: "Colour Line" jungle-dub; "Taa Deem" reggae-dub. The next ones are "The Judgement", a track with a reggae-dub flavor, including female vocals with a full voice and accompanied by Indian melodies in the background; and "Truth Hides", an instrumental with spoken words about "hidden truths." "Rebel Warrior" is a remake of a namesake reggae track from their first album; remixed with jungle-tribal rhythms, it talks about a defender of his own culture from daily westernization. The ADF collective concludes with two more instrumental tracks, "Committed To Life" and "Scaling New Heights". An anti-war proclamation ends the album: "I hate war in all its forms/physical… psychological… spiritual… emotional… environmental…/ because I wish I had been born into a world where it was unnecessary".