![]() ![]() The song moves thematically from the shuttering of British industries, to the abandonment of half-American children and their Vietnamese mothers at the end of the Vietnam War, to the discrimination meted out to Puerto Ricans in New York. "Straight to Hell" was perhaps the most downbeat song the Clash ever recorded, both lyrically and musically. The Clash, as flag-bearers for a certain engaged left-wing political sensibility within the British punk movement, became revered icons for many progressive musicians…like M.I.A., who uses a looped sample from another Clash song, " Straight to Hell," to provide the musical backbone for "Paper Planes." The song's grim message, recorded in 1979, sounded prophetic when the riots erupted just two years later: ![]() Rioting erupted in Brixton again in both 19 today, the city remains the heart of London's Afro-Caribbean immigrant community and ground zero in Britain's struggle to reinvent itself as a multiracial society.Įven before the first Brixton riots occurred in 1981, the city's widespread racial tension, poverty, and social discontentment were evident enough to inspire the Clash to record " The Guns of Brixton," which borrowed a reggae beat and the iconography of the cult-favorite film The Harder They Come from Brixton's predominantly Jamaican culture. ![]() Railton Road became known as "The Frontline," as if Brixton were at war with the rest of the country. Hundreds of people were injured and dozens of buildings were burned. In 1981, heavy-handed police efforts to crack down on street crime on Brixton's main street, Railton Road, touched off widespread rioting. By the late 1970s, the city had become the scene of ferocious tension between Black residents and white authorities. In the 1950s, Brixton became a mostly-Black enclave as thousands of immigrants poured into the area, especially from British West Indian colonies like Jamaica and Trinidad. (Brixton has the same symbolic importance in the UK as, say, Watts or Newark has in the U.S.) Brixton, a working-class suburb located just south of London, played a leading role in late-20th-century Britain's struggles over race, immigration, and urban decay. M.I.A.'s choice to use a youth choir specifically from Brixton was surely no accident. ![]()
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