Roots Archives Forum

Anyone know? thanks!!

It's a slave who's life was written about in the book »Roots« by Alex Haley. It was also done as a brilliant TV-series.

Listen to Ranking Dreads song with the same name and you get a more or less complete summary of it.

also a wicked track by the Revolutionaries
serious tune!!!!

My favourite version of all songs bearing Kuntas name is probably Ray I's track with the incredible dub-cut on the flip. Crystal 7".

I know what you mean Kalcidis.

Alex Haley's 'Roots' had been around for a while (not sure when first published), but there was a major TV dramatisation in the mid 70s (1976?) which was huge around the world, not just in America. To put it on TV at the time the US was celebrating the bicentennial of its separation from Britain had a powerful impact on many.

'Roots' was indeed a worldwide phenomenon.
The most watched TV programme at the time.

It had the Oprah touch

Kunta Kinte was an african man who has been caught in Africa to be shipped for slavery to America when he still was a teenager.
All his life long, he kept his african identity.
He also endeavoured to relay his culture to his born-american children and always hoped he will go back to his father's land.
The novel ("Roots", Alex Harvey) & the TV programms tells about the story of Kunta Kinte & his following generations who saved the memory.
Now, he is the symbol of the african culture resistance.

Sadly, though people don't seem to realise it Kunta Kinte was after all was said an done an invention of the wroter's. he claimed at the time that he lineage was well researched but it turned out to be untrue.

the idea though was a sound one, and no wonder the name has become associated with Slavery and ll it entailed.

The famous Revolutionaries dubplate Kunte Kinte - finally issued by Pressure Sounds a couple of years ago, and still available - uses the TV programme's theme tune. Whatever the story regarding the "truth" of Haley's book, the series provided a dramatic human insight into the traumatic events of slavery. It left a deep impression on many of those who watched it.