Grime Punks Bob Vylan rose to prominence after their appearance at Glastonbury 2025. They are now firmly placed in the top ten albums and singles charts.
They delivered a passionate scream of defiance in their song “We Live Here”:
“Neighbours called me n****r
Told me “go back to my own country”
Said, since we arrived
This place has got so ugly
But this is my f***ing country
And it’s never been f***ing lovely”
Bob Vylan 2020
The lyrics may be inspired by a notorious scene in the 1980 movie “Babylon” (dir. Franco Rosso) which depicts the open racial hatred that was common in Britain at the time. The protagonist, Blue, (Brinsley Forde M.B.E. of Aswad) and his friends get into an altercation with a white woman (Maggie Steed) living in the neighbourhood. Her vitriol is too much for his friend, Beefy (Trevor Laird), to take. The dialogue is sampled at the beginning of the song. The rest of the dialogue is pretty much repeated.
WOMAN
Look at you! Good for nothing.
Noisy, stinking filth. Lazy.
You’re everywhere. Jungle Bunnies.
This was a lovely area before you come ‘ere!
Lovely!
…
You f*** off back to your own
countries you jungle bunny!
BEEFY
This is my f***ing country lady,
and it’s never been f***ing lovely.
It’s always been a f***ing tip.
For as long as I can remember.
So, don’t tell me, right!
The film was suppressed in the United States for 40 years until it got its first showing in 2019. Mamoun Hassan was the executive who sponsored the production of the movie by the National Film Finance Corporation and was delighted that the film had finally reached a wider audience. US critics lauded what they saw as a prophecy of the violence around the death of George Floyd and an inspiration for the Black Lives Matter movement.
Mamoun was invited to present the film in Canada during the Calgary Film Festival. In this blog post, he tells how he fought against the establishment to get the movie made:
1.23 https://moviemasterclass.com/babylon-premieres-in-calgary-with-an-introduction-from-mamoun-hassan
As a postscript, Mamoun would have been pleased by Bob Vylan’s work to raise the profile of suffering of Palestinians at the hand of the Israeli military, although he would probably have been critical of some of their language.
Mamoun’s United Nations (UNRWA) backed short film, Some of the Palestinians – shot in 1970’s Palestinian refugee camps, was a prize winner at the London Film Festival – then repressed by the UN. Any reference to it has been removed from the UN archive.
Mamoun’s son, Sherief Hassan, restored the film from a print that was used as part of the subtitling process so it can be viewed today:
More on the blog https://moviemasterclass.com/some-of-the-palestinians-restored
We record the above as a tribute to the legacy of Mamoun’s work.
The Estate of Mamoun Hassan.