Rebel Dread

Letts is a brilliant entrepreneur, an inter-disciplinary artist and eloquent speaker about what life was like in the punk era, and despite his (correct) refusal to see things in these tiresomely nostalgist or sentimental terms, there is a pang in recognising the spark of that time.

With five decades to plow through, director William E Badgley manages to skilfully compact the Rebel Dread’s political awakening and leftfield creative escapades into an insightful document of an integral fragment in British pop history.

Letts gives thoughtful context to the way he was able to straddle the racially delineated worlds of dub reggae and punk rock, drawing parallels between the merging of subcultures in 1970s London, and the intersection of hip-hop and rock’n’roll in 1980s New York.