30 Years Of La Haine At London’s Royal Festival Hall With Asian Dub Foundation’s Live Soundtrack

This performance is part of the 30th anniversary celebrations of La Haine the 1995 Cannes winner of Best Director for Matthieu Kassovitz, as well as winning three Cesars including for best film. For this showing, Asian Dub Foundation performed a live soundtrack as a trio of Steve Chandra Savale, Jamil Ahmed and Brian Fairbairn. The film was shot in colour and then edited and printed in grainy black & white to give it more impact. In order to get the co-operation of the residents of the banlieue La Haine was filmed on the cast and crew lived on location for 6 weeks.

Asian Dub Foundation were playing beneath a huge screen, facing the audience rather than the screen. At times it was hard not to watch the band rather than the film, for the opening scenes they played some moody drum & bass (reminiscing of Th9 on their first album) which as the opening riot scenes unfolded, had some Chandrasonic guitars accentuating the violence caused by the police shooting a resident of a banlieue in the head while interrogating them in custody. This was based on a true incident two years before and La Haine mirrored the simmering tensions in France at the time, soon becoming the first film of its kind, openly talking about structural racism and police brutality.

Asian Dub Foundation, live soundtrack of La Haine, Royal Festival Hall, London - 2025.01.19, © Pauline Di Silvestro

Asian Dub Foundation, live soundtrack of La Haine, Royal Festival Hall, London - 2025.01.19, © Pauline Di Silvestro

As the three central characters the film is based around : the angry young Jewish skinhead Vinz played by Vincent Cassel, his muslim North African friend Said played by Said Taghmaoui and the brilliant Afro-Caribbean friend Hubert played by Hubert Kounde, take us on a journey into the Banlieue’s on the point of collapse, rioting has erupted and the local disaffected youth are battling the police.

For the first scenes of them rolling spliffs, the music became deeply dubby, with the sharp conversations, they go around the estate seeing all the damage, going to hang out on the roof to eat merguez, the arguments have a funky flavour to them, the futility of the police attitude towards the poor inhabitants is distressing to watch now, as it was when I first saw this film way back when. Senseless hate instead of finding ways to make living on the estates a happier experience.

Asian Dub Foundation, live soundtrack of La Haine, Royal Festival Hall, London - 2025.01.19, © Pauline Di Silvestro

Asian Dub Foundation, live soundtrack of La Haine, Royal Festival Hall, London - 2025.01.19, © Pauline Di Silvestro

They are in Hubert’s burnt out destroyed boxing gym discussing how the burnt-out car got there, over some very Indian blues over a dark bassline, who stole the cops gun, screams the wailing synth affected guitar lines, could it be Vinz trying to prove a point once more? The music was powerful in different ways to the original soundtrack. When they then go in search of some debt collection and have a weird toilet scene that’s broken up by an old Russian guy coming out of a loo to tell them what it was like to be sent to Siberia to their utter consternation, highlighted by fraught drumming, it stands it illustrate no matter how bad the problems they were fighting, others had it worse, even if that is a message seemingly lost on them, no matter how often it’s brought up later in the film.

They argue with the racist police going into downtown Paris to collect the money owing to Said, from the campest character in the film, who may or may not have been someone Said rented himself too. They get into another fracas with the police on leaving his apartment, Said and Hubert being arrested as Vinz does a bunk, the music got a lot more angsty, with Steve firing off all sorts of effects. Getting out of the nick and back to the mean decaying streets is no relief, even if the inherent humour is never far from the banter, they share with everyone they come in contact with, no matter how scary the guitar and bass sound. They get released in time to miss the last train back to the banlieue reuniting with Vinz the trio gatecrash an art opening, enjoying the free bar and food, before failing to have the social graces for the situation and getting thrown out.

They try to get back home things take once last super dark twist against a maelstrom of noise the very unhappy ending plays out. Asian Dub Foundation then freaked out a bit over the end credits and played an outro coda to allow the audience to give them the standing ovation they deserved at the end of a thrilling viewing of this french classic. As La Haine so beautifully says it… The important isn’t the fall, it’s the landing. And Asian Dub Foundation understood the assignment.

Live review of Asian Dub Foundation at The Royal Festival Hall, London on 19th January 2025 by Simon Phillips, photography by Pauline Di Silvestro.

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