Simon Ashberry reports on a band who'll be bringing their radical message to Bradford next month.

Radical Asian dance outfit Fun-Da-Mental will be back on home territory as part of Bradford's May Day celebrations.

The group have a gig lined up at Bradford University on May 2 which is part of a week-long series of events organised by the city's 1 in 12 Club to mark the traditional socialist holiday.

Fun-Da-Mental were formed by Aki Nawaz (aka Propa-Ghandi) in 1991 with fellow Bradford musicians Inderjit Matharu, Amir Ali and Khalid Khan.

The band are currently promoting their new album Erotic Terrorism which has just been released on their own London-based label Nation Records.

And Aki is unrepentant about the hard-hitting nature of the album, which samples excerpts of controversial quotes by former Tory Minister Norman Tebbit.

"Now is the time when a fearlessly delivered, intoxicatingly-formed message of empowerment, militancy and vigilance is most needed," he said.

Aki, who featured in a recent BBC2 television documentary about prominent Muslims, said Fun-Da-Mental's uncompromising politics were still relevant in 1998.

The idea of the group was born out of a visit to New York the previous year when Aki, a former drummer with the Bradford punk group Southern Death Cult, began to draw parallels between the political oppression in the heart of the Bronx and what he saw on British streets.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.