Pulse of a Nation

http://torontosun.com/News/TorontoAndGTA/2006/07/31/1711394-sun.html

Pulse of a nation

19 albums and a Grammy later, reggae band proves its staying power

Toronto Sun
Nicholas Davis

Mon, July 31, 2006

In the early 1970s Great Britain was facing its worst economic crisis since World War II.

There was high unemployment and high inflation, and this made for uneasy tensions among Britain's racially divided population.

This atmosphere gave rise to the National Front, a right wing political party that claimed 17,000 members in 1973.

By 1977, 200,000 people voted for them across the country in local elections. Between 1976 and 1981 followers of the National Front in Britain waged a violent race war which accounted for 31 black people being killed in what were deemed racist murders.

The 1970s in Britain also gave rise to the Rock Against Racism movement. RAR sprung up after an Eric Clapton concert in Birmingham where Clapton stopped the concert to show his support for a right wing politician. The RAR's theme was "Love Music Hate Racism." And the music they loved the most was punk rock.

RAR brought together white punk rockers and black reggae bands. One of the reggae bands that toured with the punk rockers back then was Steel Pulse.

"The punk rockers hated everything the establishment was about," remembers David Hinds, the lead singer of Steel Pulse. "The establishment hated reggae so they used reggae bands as opening acts."

Steel Pulse was a young roots, reggae band at the time and for them it was an ideal marriage. It gave them an opportunity to regularly play together in front of a live audience and it allowed them to try out their very political songs in front of a receptive crowd.

"We were singing about the Ku Klux Klan, going back to Africa and Rastafarianism," Hinds says. "There wasn't a big audience for this kind of music in the mainstream. The only place you could really hear reggae music like ours and Bob Marley's was on pirate radio stations or in dancehalls."

But Steel Pulse's association with punk music didn't go down well with the black community in England.

"We got associated with a lot of punk rock bands to the detriment of our reputation in the black community," Hinds says. "They thought we were a punk rock band playing reggae. One of the most popular local black DJs, a guy named Barry Curtis, made it known to the whole community that he thought we were supporting the Ku Klux Klan. Even though that was the furthest thing from the truth, it was hard to repair that image. It wasn't until we released a song called Handsworth Revolution that we started to get acceptance in the black community."

OPEN FOR BOB MARLEY

At the same time, Steel Pulse was starting to get support from reggae bands outside of England. One group who threw their support behind them was Bob Marley and the Wailers.

"When Bob Marley and the Wailers asked us to open for them we felt real good about what we were doing," says Hinds.

This led to more good things for Steel Pulse. What started out in 1975 as a group of friends in Handsworth (Hinds, Basil Gabbidon, Selwyn Brown, Steve Nesbitt, Alphonso Martin, Michael Riley and Ronald McQueen) with little musical experience and from poor West Indian immigrant families, became one of the world's best reggae bands.

GRAMMY WIN

Steel Pulse has released 19 albums, won a Grammy Award (nominated for many more) and has headlined every major reggae music festival in the world.

"To be honest with you, we didn't think we could do it," says Hinds, whose band plays in Toronto Sunday. "We just thought we had something to say and we would just play in small clubs in the city. We never thought we would get this big and make such a mark in the music industry."

---

Steel Pulse headlines the Irie Music Festival this Sunday at Ontario Place. The festival runs from Friday to Sunday at Nathan Phillips Square and Ontario Place. For more visit iriemusicfestival.com.