Chumbawamba were born in the industrial town of Leeds, which had already been shaken by distinguished musical-political precedents (Gang Of Four, Mekons). Alice Nutter and Dambert Nobacon were typical dissidents of the conservative era of Margaret Thatcher. An anarchic musical commune formed around them, fluctuating between eight and fifteen members. The group's music was simply one of the forms of agit-prop.

Their beginnings were marked by music-hall sarcasm, with the cassettes Be Happy Despite It All and Another Four Years Of The Same Old Shit (referring to the Thatcher government, not to the music contained therein), the single Revolution/ Liberation, and the EP We Are The World, a parody of the solidarity event.

Pictures Of Starving Children Sell Records (Agit-Prop, 1986) and Never Mind The Ballots (Agit-Prop, 1987) thrive on this sacrilegious attitude. Their program of militant rock translates into a chaotic accumulation of genres, into dissolute sarabands whose only constants are multi-voice harmonies and a satirical attitude. Better at rhetoric than at music, the Chumbawamba are in fact children of the glorious British music hall, and their records are, all things considered, heirs to the rock operettas of ten years earlier, although with the ambition of creating Brechtian political cabaret or Fugs-style satirical folk-rock.

The season of wild agit-prop ended with a collection of folk songs, English Rebel Songs (Agit-Prop, 1988),

Slap (Agit-Prop, 1990), on the other hand, marked an enormous leap in quality: the group caught up with the times by assimilating modern dance music (funk, hip-hop and reggae). The umpteenth manifesto, I Never Gave Up, delivered through female vocal harmonies in a circle-dance of galloping horns, and the umpteenth music-hall sketch, Cartouble (perhaps also the best of their career, an impeccable evocation of the ragtime era, complete with bouncing piano, petulant trumpet-and-tuba counterpoint, and threatening double-bass phrase) have a composite and fluid sound.
The Chumbawamba had in fact become painstaking "producers" of their own sound: That's How Grateful We Are has something of the derangement of the early Talking Heads (the exaggerated diction, the rhythmic progressions of acute neurosis) and a hilarious accordion solo. The funky fanfares of the title track and Ulrike, however, are repetitive compositions that quickly lose the listener's attention, regaining it only through samples completely alien to the context. The ideas in Tienanmen Square (the syncopated piano theme that opens it, the mass-dance rhythm, the blare of horns in the interlude) are diluted in contexts that are all too didactic. The record partly erases the impression of provincial Public Enemy, steeped in confused populist ambitions. The Chumbawamba compose sonic puzzles that, if nothing else, challenge the harmonic conventions of dance music.

Shhh (Agit Prop, 1992) suddenly transforms a discourse that had always been barely musical into a careful study of musical forms. Of the anarchist rabble of roughnecks of old, only the Mekons-like country waltz of Nothing That's New and the martial nursery rhyme of Stitch That remain. Their arrangements rely on vocal harmonies, reminiscent of the B52's and Devo, but also of crude vernacular songs, and on the most outrageous contrasts: the hard-rock guitar crunches and disco-music rhythm in Shhh, the light funky rhythm and crowd sampling in Big Mouth Strikes Again, the X-style shouted refrain and violent Southern boogie in Sometimes Plunder. Precisely where the contrasts are harshest, spaces open up for those discontinuities and irrational mutations that increasingly become their forte.
As in all agit-prop phenomena, the vocal part predominates. It is the "song" that guides the dynamics of the score, even though the score can then allow itself any poetic license. Behaved, hummed over a piano figure, Snip Snip Snip, frenetically recited over a vaudeville rhythm, rely entirely on vocal eccentricities. The pinnacle of their epic comedy is Look No Strings, a sort of gospel hymn for piano, harp and handclaps that gives a glimpse of where the Chumbawamba are truly unbeatable.
The record is still weighed down by their predictable and tedious posturing (including the story that the album was supposedly the aborted result of a record blocked by censorship, etc., etc.: it is not only photographs of starving children that sell records), but it is undoubtedly an intensely musical work.

By refining that formula, the singles Enough Is Enough and Timebomb made the Chumbawamba an increasingly popular name.

Shhhlap (Mutt, 2003) collects the two albums.

Anarchy (One Little Indian, 1994) and the second part of Swinging With Raymond (One Little Indian, 1995), the first part consisting only of traditional ballads, continue the progressive approach to the masses with an even more accessible sound and topical themes that are not too inflammatory. The foundations of their songs are the collage techniques and violent rhythmic fractures of hip-hop.

When the anarchist collective decides to descend among the ordinary mortals of dance music, it dishes out the best album of its career: Tubthumper (Republic, 1997). The single Tubthumping is destined to become a party classic, thanks not only to an irresistible refrain and a driving cadence, but also to a structure intricately woven from three themes: a celestial warble by the female singer, a sarcastic rap by the male singer, and a rowdy chorus shouting at full volume, all decorated with trumpet solos and martial rhythms.
The rest of the album is clearly inferior, but there is no shortage of enjoyable and intelligent sketches, thanks to two performers of the caliber of Lou Watts and Dambert Nobacon, Jude Abbott's ubiquitous trumpet, Neil Ferguson's acrobatic keyboards (he also handles the guitars), and Alice Nutter's chameleonic contralto.
The stunning disco-punk of Amnesia flaunts a Caribbean trumpet fanfare, a searing "industrial" guitar riff sent into a loop, a throbbing techno rhythm, Nutter's falsetto singing in the style of disco music, and Moroder-like electronic bubbles. The ironic rap of Tubthumping spills over into Drip Drip Drip, interrupted by the trumpet fanfare and an almost doo-wop falsetto chorus. The atmospheric trip-hop of The Good Ship Lifestyle, driven by a "drum and bass" rhythm, is scarred by a heavy-metal surge from Ferguson and a political chorus. Outsider imitates techno torpedoes, propped up by solemn piano figures and slingshot guitar blasts. The tribute to discotheques is completed by the absurd novelty of Scapegoat (which also constitutes one of the album's political high points).
The reversals of direction are often spectacular. Mary Mary is a cycle of two songs, separated by a heavenly chorus: the first uses a techno break and a Wild West trumpet as a backdrop for Nutter's Romeo Void-style recitation (the group behind Never Say Never), while the second is a powerful male chorus accompanied by a glorious trumpet fanfare. The sampling and mosaic art of One By One combines Deep Forest, Enigma and Enya: the song opens with an organ and a church choir, then unfolds into a Renaissance-style hymn and settles into a funereal trumpet motif.
These are splendid comic vignettes, overflowing with quotations and references, expertly arranged, relying almost always on this alternation of "voices" and themes. Their humor has become elegant and sophisticated. The lyrics are still committed and cutting, but the tone is certainly not that of populist leaders, but rather that of provincial comedians. This is didactic rock and high-class agit-prop.

The art of mixing politics and music is one of the most difficult. It is therefore unsurprising that after only a few years the Chumbawamba's records already sound dated and somewhat pathetic, parades of both musical and political clich�s. True political music (from Dylan to the Dead Kennedys) has never needed to turn itself into a political rally: the music "was" the politics. In the Chumbawamba, an attempt is made to transform politics into music, but unfortunately politics is not, in itself, a very musical affair.

Chumbawamba's pop phase reached its nadir with What You See Is What You Get (Republic, 2000), aka WYSIWYG, a 22-song tour de force of uninspired childish satires; and the hypocrisy of their previous records and populist slogans is now manifest. Jesus In Vegas, Dumbing Down, I'm Coming Out mix funny lyircs and catchy melodies and will certainly entertain wealthy college kids around the world. She's Got All The Friends could be the latest dumb hit from a dumb Brit-pop band. Mostly, the anarchists pay tribute to genres of the past (easy-listening, ska, girl-group, Merseybeat, doo-wop, country) with the musicological depth of an "American graffiti" soundtrack.

Readymades (Republic, 2002), apparently their easiest album, is actually not that easy at all. Apparently, they simply produced a childish hodgepodge of ambient house, techno and synth-pop, sprinkling the proceedings with samples from their favorite folk singers. In reality, the band still finds room for its nonsense folk-rock (Song for Len Shackeleton) and its agit-prop anthems (Don't Pass Go, enhanced with hip-hop breakbeats). Even the dance tracks (After Shelley, If It Is To Be It Is Up To Me, Jacob's Ladder) and the grand pop tunes (Home With Me, Don't Try This At Home) are not as trivial as they sound.

A Singsong and a Scrap (Edel, 2005) marked a return to their folk roots, albeit a rather shallow one; and The Boy Bands Have Won (2008) marked a return to their sociopolitical roots, with 25 brief songs that are saved from obsolete obnoxiousness only by their brevity. They disbanded after ABCDEFG (2010.