Two Tone and Asian Underground: Movements, Moments and Minorities

The Two Tone movement appeared in the wake of punk in the late 1970s and was based on the commercial success of The Specials and other ska revival bands such as Madness, The Selector and The Beat. It quickly became a mass movement, one of the fundamental particularities of which was its multiracial nature as it attracted young black people of Caribbean origin and white youngsters. There has consequently been a tendency to celebrate Two Tone and to see it as the culmination of the anti-racist struggles of Rock Against Racism. Twenty years later the Asian Underground scene appeared, as British Asian artists ranging from Asian Dub Foundation to Nitin Sawnhy came to the fore. Comparing the two movements and the contexts in which they emerged allows the dominant vision of Two Tone to be challenged and suggests that Asian Underground developed, at least partly, as a reaction to the limited nature of Two Tone’s appeal to all ethnic minorities.