Rafi's Revenge is an album from 1998 by Asian Dub Foundation. The album mixed jungle-style drum and bass, bhangra, dub, breakbeat and punkish guitars with politically and socially conscious rapped lyrics.
The lyrics railed against racism, both in life and the "institutional racism" highlighted by the murder of Stephen Lawrence. It also drew on the history of the Indian Subcontinent, with Naxalite based on the Naxalite peasant uprising in West Bengal in the 1960s.
They also dealt with contemporary issues: Free Satpal Ram campaigned for the release of Satpal Ram from British jail (a cause also taken up by bands such as Primal Scream), and highlighted (alleged) miscarriages of justice in the British system in general: "Birmingham Six, Bridgewater Four, Crown Prosecution totting up the score / Kings Cross Two, Guildford Four, Winston Silcott, how many more?" Elsewhere, they highlighted issues like the increasing spread of CCTV cameras, 'Black White' promotes inter-racial relationships, while 'Operation Eagle Lie' alleges racist policing to be commonplace - "a black man on a double-yellow, yea he's a criminal / a racial attack, investigation minimal".
The album was shortlisted for the 1998 Mercury Music Prize.
Rafi in the title is a reference to the late Mohammed Rafi, a Bollywood playback singer.
Read more about Rafi's Revenge: Track Listing, In The Media
Famous quotes containing the word revenge:
“I can’t tell you what art does and how it does it, but I know that often art has judged the judges, pleaded revenge to the innocent and shown to the future what the past suffered, so that it has never been forgotten.... Art, when it functions like this, becomes a meeting-place of the invisible, the irreducible, the enduring, guts, and honour.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)