3The soundtrack of revolt : the 1970s
During the 1970s, music carried the demands of populations relegated to the margins of society and brought immigrant identities to the forefront of political and artistic scenes. With a staggered timeline between Paris and London, rock, reggae, and punk music became the preferred instruments of protest against racism and, more broadly, against the marginalized status imposed on entire segments of new generations born in Paris and London.
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Jeunes Bengalis manifestant à Brick Lane après un meurtre raciste, 1978 © Syd Shelton
The Notting Hill Carnival, the series of Rock Against Racism concerts in London, the Rock Against Police concerts in the Paris region, as well as all the artistic events emerging around the anti-racist movement in France, are living proof of music’s role as a tool of protest and the essential part played by migration phenomena in this context.
A revolutionary tune
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Paul Simonon, The Clash, Concert Rock Against Racism à Victoria Park, 30 avril 1978 © Syd Shelton
The Notting Hill Carnival helped anchor Caribbean music, especially reggae, at the heart of London’s cultural space. The Rock Against Racism concert series turned the London music scene into a stage for contesting racial injustices. Similarly, the Rock Against Police concerts organized in Paris and its suburbs demonstrated the resonance between music and struggles on both sides of the English Channel.
These artistic events, emerging around the defense of immigrants’ and minorities’ rights, amplified music’s protest function. Over the course of the decade, what began as protest by marginalized populations evolved into major concerts, which became must-attend events for all causes shaping the political landscape at the dawn of the 1980s.
It was accompanied by a new, more institutional, and all the more spectacular, urban geography, as seen in the SOS Racisme concert held at Place de la Concorde in 1985, or the concert for the release of Nelson Mandela at Wembley Stadium in 1988.
GB. ENGLAND. London. Notting Hill Carnival. 1975 © Chris Steele-Perkins/Magnum Photos
The Notting Hill Carnival : from festivity to manifesto
The organization of the Notting Hill Carnival was a response by London’s Afro-Caribbean community to a series of riots at the end of August 1958. Gangs attacked a young woman, Majbritt Morrison, who was married to the Jamaican musician Raymond Morrison.
Within activist circles, the idea of responding to these violences by affirming a positive and festive Afro-Caribbean identity gradually took hold. The first “Caribbean Carnival,” held in the Saint Pancras Town Hall in 1959, owed much to the figure of Claudia Jones, activist and founder in 1958 of the West Indian Gazette, a newspaper serving London’s Afro-Caribbean community.
By 1966, the event had become an annual gathering held at the end of August. The organizers faced numerous difficulties in gaining official acceptance; the police repeatedly tried to ban the Carnival, especially after 1976, when actual riots interrupted the conclusion of the event.
Musically, the Carnival helped anchor reggae at the heart of London’s urban space. Over time, it evolved from a multi-ethnic event into a parade influenced predominantly by Trinidadian music and then by reggae throughout the 1970s. A whole universe specific to this Jamaican musical style developed: the sound system culture. From its origins as a tool for political and identity affirmation, the Carnival has become a festive and international event.
The 1970s in France : a new engagement with the streets
A bas les foyers prisons, Affiche anonyme © Musée national de l'histoire de l'immigration, Palais de la Porte Dorée
In France, new forms of protest emerged after May 1968. With a renewed engagement in the streets and the rise of new causes, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ activism, and environmental movements, a movement defending the rights of immigrants began to take shape.
This movement initially focused on working conditions, following the strikes of 1968, in which many immigrant workers participated. Housing conditions soon became central to the struggles, particularly concerning the dormitories and accommodations in which many immigrants were (poorly) housed.
Finally, the issue of legal status came to the forefront, in reaction to restrictive laws regarding entry and the renewal of residence permits, such as the 1972 Marcellin-Fontanet circulars, which linked the issuance of a residence card to having both a work contract and housing.
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Afiche du foyer Daviel © Musée national de l'histoire et des cultures de l'immigration
The immigrant rights movement relied on artistic forms suited to protest, including street theatre, concerts, and musical parades during festivals. The first Festival of Popular Theatre of Immigrant Workers was held in 1975 in the gardens of a church in Suresnes, made available by CIMADE.
The festival, repeated in 1976, 1978, and 1979, gradually evolved into a more music-centered event, featuring artists and musical groups such as Nass El Ghiwan, the singer Idir, Djamal Alem, and Pierre Akendengué. This period saw the emergence of a new generation of foreign artists, often in connection with French singers sympathetic to the immigrant cause, such as François Béranger, Bernard Lavilliers, and Claude Nougaro. In the same spirit, the creation of the Africa Fête in 1978 was supported by emblematic figures such as Manu Dibango and Touré Kunda.
Punk and reggae in Great Britain : a new youth culture
The origins of punk in Great Britain can be traced back to reggae and ska. Just as rock ’n’ roll drew on Afro-American rhythms, punk and its protest-oriented message found part of its inspiration in Jamaican music as it existed in London.
The two scenes intertwined, sharing producers, inspirations, and even musical styles, creating a “reggae-punk interface” that would later underpin their joint activism against racism. Examples include the feminist and female punk band The Slits and reggae groove, produced by Dennis Bovell, collaborator of Linton Kwesi Johnson—or the influential figure Donn Letts, DJ and documentary maker on British countercultures.
The punk movement and reggae musicians shared a rejection of Thatcher-era society and symbolized a period in which, as journalist Adam McSmith writes in his essay No Such Thing As Society, “there was more politics in British popular music and political activism from its performers than at any other time before or since.” The song Ghost Town by the ska band The Specials illustrates this perfectly: addressing urban violence and social decay in Britain over a reggae-inspired bassline, the track introduced the two-tone style (combining ska sounds with punk energy) and topped the UK charts.
Paris : french counterculture
In the 1970s, the term “counterculture” was used to describe youth protest movements challenging the cultural dominance of social gatekeepers and moral authorities. Post-’68 ideologies, ecology, feminism, the pursuit of new perceptual experiences through drugs, sexual liberation, rock music, interest in the Third World, the Black Panthers, immigrant rights, and anti-racist activism—all these elements drove Western youth to question their parents’ assumptions and dream of alternative worlds. This upheaval of traditional values was accompanied by a freedom of expression that was not always welcomed.
A striking example of this counterculture is the scandal caused by Serge Gainsbourg’s 1979 reggae version of La Marseillaise, which deliberately subverted a national symbol. Ten years earlier, at Woodstock in August 1969, Jimi Hendrix had delivered an iconoclastic rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner. His aggressively electric version became a counter-anthem for a generation opposed to the Vietnam War. In London, the Sex Pistols had similarly subverted God Save the Queen during the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977. Gainsbourg’s act was very much in tune with the spirit of the “no future” generation, as described by the magazine Actuel and its director Jean-François Bizot in the early 1970s.
Anti-racism on the march
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Affiche du concert Rock Against Police donné pour les jeunes immigrés et prolétaires des banlieues à Paris dans le 20ème arrondissement le samedi 19 avril 1980. Dessin de Last Siou © Last Siou - Collection François Guillemot - Photo © Bertrand Huet / Tutti
In both France and Great Britain, rock and reggae emerged as the preferred musical styles of protest, whether against the established order or, more specifically, against the increasing racist remarks and acts on both sides of the English Channel.
For a decade already, a racist discourse had been rising on the right of the British political spectrum. As early as 1968, the statements of Conservative MP Enoch Powell, predicting “rivers of blood” if the UK continued to accept immigrants from the Commonwealth freely, legitimized a reflexive rejection of these populations. Immigration was politicized in Britain a full ten years before France, with the creation of the far-right National Front in 1967, sparking the revolt of artists concerned about this toxic climate.
In France, a series of concerts titled Rock Against Police was organized in Paris to denounce police violence targeting the children of immigrants. Although smaller in scale than the British movement, the very organization of concerts under this title demonstrates the connections between musicians and political struggles across the Channel—materialized, for example, by visits (Linton Kwesi Johnson in Paris, Rachid Taha in London) and media coverage (such as reports by the agency Im'Media).
The trend was confirmed by the March for Equality and Against Racism in autumn 1983. The march, which set off from Marseille in October and arrived in Paris in December, came with its own “soundtrack”: listened to by marchers on their walkmans and shared at evening stops, it featured Bob Marley and Renaud, who even joined the marchers upon their arrival in Paris.
Insurrection in Britain’s inner cities (mid-1970s)
Misty in Roots, concert Rock Against Racism - Militant Entertainment tour, 1979 © Syd Shelton
By the mid-1970s, economic crisis hit Britain’s urban centers, primarily inhabited by disadvantaged populations, the so-called “inner cities.” Rising unemployment, cuts to public services, and the advance of the British National Front targeting Black communities created a highly charged atmosphere.
In this context, a true anti-racist insurrection emerged with the formation of the Southall Youth Movement in 1976, founded by young people of Asian descent after a racially motivated crime. They declared loudly: “Here to stay, here to fight.”
That same year, the Notting Hill Carnival became a site of clashes between youth and police. In 1977, the Battle of Lewisham saw confrontations between National Front demonstrators and anti-fascist groups, who organized under the Anti-Nazi League. The insurrection reached its peak in 1978 with the Anti-Nazi League’s Rock Against Racism festival, attended by 80,000 people at Trafalgar Square.
Mobilization in France’s working-class districts
In France, the concentration of immigrants and their children in the suburbs of major cities made these neighborhoods prime sites for contestation against inequality, as well as extraordinary hubs for associations and community initiatives around sports, culture, media, citizenship, reception, and mutual aid.
By the early 1980s, tensions between youth and police were particularly pronounced. Initiatives to defend and publicize these conditions multiplied: the creation of a media agency run by and for immigrants (Im'Media) and mobilization of mothers of young victims of violence in the heart of Paris (the “Mothers of Place Vendôme,” for example). Once again, music, especially rock, proved a key channel for protest, with concerts such as Rock Against Police (in Paris in 1980, then in Vitry and the suburbs of Lyon and Marseille).
On the outskirts of the city, French suburbs, working-class neighborhoods, and squats were no longer just spaces of marginalization but also incubators for new artistic forms that renewed aesthetic codes. The development of squat culture and the occupation of abandoned factories (such as the Palikao) led to the emergence of a new music scene, notably including the band Bérurier Noir.
A youth on the move
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© Musée national de l'histoire et des cultures de l'immigration
At the beginning of the 1980s, an entire generation adopted the codes of a new youth culture: dressed in jeans pants and jackets, listening to rock or reggae, and, for some, actively engaging against racism.
Until then, the anti-racist cause had been championed by historical associations formed at different periods: the Ligue des Droits de l’Homme (LDH), created in 1898 during the Dreyfus Affair; the Ligue Internationale Contre le Racisme et l’Antisémitisme (LICRA), founded in 1928 amid the xenophobic and anti-Semitic unrest of the interwar period; and the Mouvement contre le Racisme et pour l’Amitié entre les Peuples (MRAP), established in 1949 by résistants and former deportees. Since the 1972 Pleven Law, which criminalized incitement to racial hatred, these associations have been able to act as civil parties in criminal courts.
With the 1983 March for Equality and Against Racism, followed by Convergence 1984, the anti-racist cause moved out of the courts and traditional activism to occupy the streets and concert halls. “La jeunesse emmerde le Front National!” (“Youth tell the National Front to go to hell!”) shouted the band Bérurier Noir, making the far-right party, which was gaining increasing electoral support in the 1980s, an emblem of the very ideology they opposed.
