SCRITTI POLITTI Promotional photo of UK pop trio about 1982/Alamy
Qalam strives to explore the interpenetration of different cultures. To this end, we have decided to launch a series of playlists in which music mediates between different geographical and ideological spaces. Our first playlist is called ‘West to East: One Hundred Best Songs’. It will be updated several times a week, and its curation will focus on how Western pop culture has reflected the realities of the East, whether they are musical, geographical, religious, or political. (The terms ‘West’ and ‘East’ should be taken as broadly and arbitrarily as possible.)
Scritti Politti is a crucial band to explore in any understanding of the inner logic and esthetics of British post-punk. They began in the late 1970s as an art-punk collective with a fluid, undefined line-up, and at one point, a hammer and sickle hung on the wall of their London squat. By the early 1980s, their focus had shifted from Marxism to the post-structuralist philosophy of Jacques Derrida, whom they even celebrated in a song of the same name. This move, a curious blend of academic philosophy and mainstream pop music, helped them find some chart success.
Their philosophical, anxiety-prone leader, Green Gartside, became interested in reggae and funk, even collaborating with Annie Lennox. ‘Asylums in Jerusalem’ is a track from their debut album, and though its title might evoke only images of war today, the song is far from a tale of bombings. Although the album was released right after the start of the 1982 Israeli-Lebanese conflict, the song was written much earlier and references Nietzsche’s words about psychiatric asylums near Jerusalem, reserved for mad desert prophets.