Misty in Roots began life as a Southall

Southall

Southall is a large suburban district of west London, England, and part of the London Borough of Ealing. It is situated west of Charing Cross. Neighbouring places include Yeading, Hayes, Hanwell, Heston, Hounslow, Greenford and Northolt...

-based British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 roots

Roots reggae

Roots reggae is a subgenre of reggae that deals with the everyday lives and aspirations of the artists concerned, including the spiritual side of Rastafari and with the honoring of God, called Jah by rastafarians. It also is identified with the life of the ghetto sufferer, and the rural poor...

 reggae

Reggae

Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...

 band in the early 1970s. Their first album was 1979's Live at the Counter Eurovision, a record full of Biblical

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

 Rastafari

Rastafari movement

The Rastafari movement or Rasta is a new religious movement that arose in the 1930s in Jamaica, which at the time was a country with a predominantly Christian culture where 98% of the people were the black descendants of slaves. Its adherents worship Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia , as God...

an songs. It was championed by BBC Radio 1

BBC Radio 1

BBC Radio 1 is a British national radio station operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation which also broadcasts internationally, specialising in current popular music and chart hits throughout the day. Radio 1 provides alternative genres after 7:00pm including electronic dance, hip hop, rock...

 DJ

Disc jockey

A disc jockey, also known as DJ, is a person who selects and plays recorded music for an audience. Originally, "disc" referred to phonograph records, not the later Compact Discs. Today, the term includes all forms of music playback, no matter the medium.There are several types of disc jockeys...

 John Peel

John Peel

John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, OBE , known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey, radio presenter, record producer and journalist. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004...

, helping to bring roots reggae to a white audience. At this early stage, the band was a collective with five lead singers and various musicians, though by the time of the second album the band had slimmed down to just three members. Along with Steel Pulse

Steel Pulse

Steel Pulse is a roots reggae musical band. They originally formed at Handsworth Wood Boys School, in Birmingham, England, composed of David Hinds , Basil Gabbidon , and Ronald McQueen .-History:...

 and Aswad, Misty in Roots were one of the most popular English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 reggae bands in the late 1970s.

In 1979 Clarence Baker, a member of the collective, was severely beaten and injured by the SPG

Special Patrol Group

The Special Patrol Group was a unit of Greater London's Metropolitan Police Service, responsible for providing a centrally-based mobile capability for combating serious public disorder and crime that could not be dealt with by local divisions....

 during the protest in Southall against the National Front

British National Front

The National Front is a far right, white-only political party whose major political activities took place during the 1970s and 1980s. Its popularity peaked in the 1979 general election, when it received 191,719 votes ....

 provocation. The punk band The Ruts

The Ruts

The Ruts were a reggae-influenced British punk rock band, notable for the 1979 Top 10 hit "Babylon's Burning", and an earlier single "In a Rut", which was not a hit but was much played and highly regarded by the UK BBC Radio 1 disc jockey, John Peel.-Career:...

 who were partners of the People Unite cooperative honoured him in their song "Jah War" which appeared on their album The Crack

The Crack

The Crack is The Ruts first album, released in 1979 and containing the UK hit singles: "Babylon's Burning" and "Something That I Said"...

.

After a break from recording in the 1990s, they returned, releasing a new album in 2002 and continuing to play concerts .

Discography

• Live at the Counter Eurovision 79 (1979)
• Misty Over Sweden (1979)
• Wise and Foolish (1982)
• Earth (1983)
• Musi-O-Tunya (1985)
• Forward (1989)
• The John Peel
  John Peel
  John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, OBE , known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey, radio presenter, record producer and journalist. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004...
  
  Sessions (1995)
• Jah Sees Jah Knows (1997) (2 CD version includes bonus CD of Live at the Counter Eurovision '79)
• Roots Controller (2002)

External links

• Misty in Roots website
• Guardian article
• [ Allmusic biography]