Jerry Dammers is the most interesting person of Gina Birch
“It would be nice if musicians today would would voice their political concerns. We came in the wake of Punk where people were writing about real things, about real lives, real issues. Punk was protest music really. Looking back on it now, we are part of a much bigger tradition of protest music and that’s a privilege. You know, we thought we were new and young and everything, but now we realise that hopefully there were some songs underneath it all which actually had something to say.”
Jerry Dammers was born in Tamil Nadu, South India and is a British musician who founded the Ska revival band The Specials and the 2 Tone record label. In the 60s he was a mod, then became a hippie before becoming a skinhead and then an anti-apartheid activist. He wrote the protest song ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ which became synonymous worldwide with the anti-apartheid movement and was performed at Mandela’s 90th birthday tribute in Hyde Park sung by Amy Winehouse. He also wrote the ‘What I like most about you is your girlfriend’ and ‘Ghost Town’.
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