Post by Michael Frean

This weekend I took some time out from my slightly futile job search to go to Guildfest. One of the fantastic performances at this lovely festival was from Neville Staples. Neville used to be in a 1980s ska band called the Specials. Their lead singer Terry Hall sadly passed recently. Here he is singing Ghost Town which was a massive hit back then.The Specials were a very exciting band as they were multi-racial and many young people identified with them. What did they sing about? Racism. urban decay, youth unemployment etc In fact many of the issues that are still relevant for young people today over 40 years later. They were part of the Two Tone label that included many other great bands including Madness UB40 and the Selector who mostly sang about similar themes. In those days young people followed music pretty closely.. there weren’t many other alternatives as the internet and social media hadn’t been invented. The Two Tone label unified young people as unemployment was also pretty high back then and racist groups such as the National Front were gaining momentum. Does music still unify today’s youth in light of the many challenges they face and if not what does? I’d love to know your thoughts

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