The BBC's celebration of 2 Tone is something of an opportunity missed
Truly, 1978 was a time like no other - at least according to the men of a certain age who fanned out across the BBC network this past week to mark the 30th anniversary of 2 Tone, the multiracial music movement best known for producing the Specials' eerie 1981 hit "Ghost Town".
First, the Guardian's music critic Alexis Petridis appeared on Front Row (1 April, 6.30pm, Radio 4) to tell us that the Specials' mix of punk rock and Jamaican ska now sounds "like the product of a distant and alien past". Not for its musical content, but for its message: the Specials founder Jerry Dammers genuinely felt that his music could be a vehicle for social change in an era of rising ethnic tension and economic strife. And Dammers was right.
On Saturday, the comedian and radio DJ Phill Jupitus went on a "personal pilgrimage" to the West Midlands, epicentre of the 2 Tone movement. In This Are 2 Tone (5 April, 10.30am, Radio 4), Pauline Black, singer with Birmingham's the Selecter, told him: "It was not a good time to be living in this country if you were young and black. That was the reason I joined 2 Tone." Up popped a sociologist. "It was a story about Britishness," said Les Back, a professor at Goldmiths.
Early 2 Tone gigs became scenes of violent confrontation as they drew attention from National Front-supporting skinheads. And, according to Back, the clashes of styles within the music itself encapsulated the state of contemporary Britain: "Those gigs were real moments when all that stuff was on the dance floor, getting worked out."
There were also tributes to the Specials on the Beeb's indie-rock station 6 Music, not to mention BBC Coventry and Warwickshire, which devoted plenty of airtime to its local heroes. But strangely, the one place 2 Tone didn't get a mention was on 1Xtra, the BBC's digital outlet for "black music". In the past week the station has been more interested in championing new sounds. On 31 March, Ace and Vis's drivetime show (weekdays, 4pm) featured an interview with Addictive, leading lights of bassline (it's a bit like grime, only with a 4/4 beat . . . come on, keep up), which, funnily enough, is the latest multi-ethnic sound to emerge from the Midlands. Being played pretty much everywhere else on the station was Wiley's "Wearing My Rolex", a lively electro-house track which 1Xtra listeners are so keen on that the station uses several different mixes so it can get around rules dictating how many times in one hour a song can be played.
There's a sense of an opportunity missed here, because while 2 Tone was an influential movement in its own right, it could also have shed light on today's culture. It's not as if there's a lack of material: only last month, the singer Estelle (currently topping the singles charts with "American Boy") lambasted the ubiquity of white female soul singers. Why, for instance, did a black singer like Estelle have to move to New York and change her music to sound more like US R'n'B before she could find success in the UK? And by sectioning off black (and Asian) music into its own stations, has the BBC added to, or diminished, the problem? But alas, as the 2 Tone nostalgia suggests, we're not as good at asking these sorts of questions as we used to be.
Pick of the week
The Country Wife
13 April, 8pm, Radio 3
The comedian Ben Miller leads the cast in this adaptation of William Wycherley’s Restoration comedy.
World on 3
14 April, 11.15pm, Radio 3
Charlie Gillett, Mary Ann Kennedy and Lopa Kothari front Radio 3’s new world music show.
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