Music
Nearly four decades after lending his unmistakable voice to UB40’s golden era, Birmingham reggae pioneer Admiral Jerry is back — not to bask in nostalgia, but to remind Britain that some battles are never truly over.
His new single, Chant Down Babylon, released alongside an evocative music video on Windrush Day, is more than a song. It is a reckoning. A love letter to resilience. A warning that the promises made to one generation must not become broken inheritances for the next. Premiering on June 22, the annual commemoration of the Windrush Generation, the video arrives at a moment when questions of belonging, identity and racial justice continue to reverberate across Britain.
Directed by Amsterdam-based production house Jah Mission, it forms the centrepiece of The Empire Windrush EP, a project produced by Aldo Dice of Birmingham’s Farda Dice Studios. It is named after the HMT Empire Windrush, the ship that carried hundreds of Caribbean migrants to Tilbury Docks in 1948 to help rebuild a nation emerging from war.
For Admiral Jerry, however, Windrush is not simply history — it is family history. Born and raised in Handsworth, Birmingham, one of Britain’s most influential centres of reggae, Rastafari culture and sound system tradition, he grew up surrounded by music that carried both joy and resistance in equal measure.
“Handsworth is central to my very being,” he said. “It’s a militant ghetto rich in Rasta culture and roots music that made me see the world through tribulation and suffering, while instilling in me a deep love for music.”
His storytelling has always drawn from lived experience. As a first-generation black Briton of Jamaican heritage, Admiral Jerry found himself navigating two very different worlds. A gifted student, he moved from grammar school to private education, only to discover that academic success did little to shield him from prejudice. Recording tracks such as Up and Coming MC and Demonstrate in 1985, and touring with the band, proved transformative.