Black Man of the Black Mountains – Crying Laughing Loving Lying as a form of resistance.

I am a free man
And my father, he was a slave
I have been broken, but my children will be saved
Labi Siffre - Saved

As an elder millennial, if you didn’t grow up in a household where Labi Siffre was being played, there were two paths that could lead you to his music. The first way in, of course, was through other artists. Our childhoods were saturated with Labi Siffre covers and samples. From the cover of It Must Be Love by Madness to the sample of I Got The… in the infamous debut Eminem single, My Name Is. His work, if not his voice, permeated throughout our collective consciousness.

The second, is pure intrigue brought on by a farcical conversation in a music video by Sasha Baron-Cohen’s fictional idiot, Ali G, and Jamaican-American pop-reggae artist Shaggy. At the end of the video for Me Julie, Ali G tries to remember who Shaggy is. After a string of incorrect guesses, he says “Labi Siffre?” to which Shaggy exclaims, “He’s from Central Africa, man!” which is, alas, a complete falsehood.

In reality, Claudius Afolabi “Labi” Siffre was born in pre-Windrush London in 1945, a few short months before the end of World War 2, to a Nigerian (West African) father and a mother of white British and Black Bajan descent. He describes his upbringing as “middle class” and he was privately educated.

Siffre, now 80, has always been bold in his politics, the politics of self and the politics oppressing his fellow man. In autumn 2025 he sent a cease and desist to Stephen Yaxley-Lennon for his inappropriate use of the oft covered Something Inside So Strong; a song that achieves the impossible feat of being an anti-apartheid anthem and also a reflection of Siffre’s life as a gay man. When approving the now infamous sample of I Got The…  in Eminem’s debut single, My Name Is he challenged producer Dr Dre and Eminem on their sexism and homophobia – imploring them to “diss the aggressors not the victims”. He’s consistently outspoken on social media, using X (formerly Twitter) daily to share opinions on anything from the gender pay gap to US immigration policies. He has never been the type to stay quiet and accept the status quo.

To the casual listener, Siffre’s 1972 album, Crying Laughing Loving Lying is comprised of songs so deeply intimate, it’s as though we’re overhearing him speaking directly to his friends and lovers; “Come on, Michael, you can make it if you want to / It's just not the same without you.” But it is also a record of deep resistance. You only have to listen to the opening line of My Song to know that Siffre is fierce and defiant in life and love.

This is my song, and no one can take it away.

A gentle song, though it is, and a love song through and through, this is also a battle cry. His voice, his love, will be heard on his own terms, and won’t be derailed by bad actors.

Without context, it might not feel like the love songs on Crying Laughing Loving Lying are lyrically revolutionary. Beautiful, yes, but aren’t there a million other beautiful love songs? But here is Siffre, a proudly gay man releasing love songs which didn’t, like so many gay artists before and after him, address a female love interest. Crying Laughing Loving Lying came out a mere five years after the Sexual Offences Act (1967) partially decriminalised “private” homosexual acts. And yet, here was Siffre openly expressing himself to great effect.

In a 2022 BBC documentary, Labi Siffre said “I’m only good at two things, I’m good at music and I’m good at love, but I’m kind of crap at everything else”. It’s a joke, a little understatement. But choosing love, finding joy, when he, as he says, “I have never felt welcome in the land of my birth”, and that “Virtually every day of my life I've been told that as a homosexual I'm a bad person, and that as a black person, that I'm worthless” is a staunch refusal to be oppressed.

Siffre was also choosing to stick his head above the parapet at a time of heightened racial discrimination in the UK. The period from 1970-1972 in which he released his first three albums, the third being Crying Laughing Loving Lying, was a time of racial unrest in the UK. The "patriality clause" of the 1971 Immigration Act created a more hostile environment for people of colour wanting to move to the UK, and local residents, too, were rejecting the increase of Black and Asian people in their communities.

Through the lens of the intersections of Siffre’s identity, his sexuality, his race, his atheist beliefs, anodyne lyrics take on a bold new meaning. In fact, the titular song of the album, Crying Laughing Loving Lying is about as lyrically simple as a song could get. But its composition has such a clear story arc. It takes us on a journey through those four deeply human acts, crying, laughing, loving, lying, and gives us a sense of someone who is fighting the idea of emotions as uncontrollable, and failing, by the end.

The most overtly radical song on the album, is of course, Saved. Brief though it is, it eschews religion and hopes for progress, a future for younger generations that offers more freedom than his own life, and his father’s life before him. It considers morality separately to religion – being a good person because it’s the right thing to do. Perhaps in these times, it’s the song we need the most.

Despite his success and legacy, Labi Siffre is the kind of artist who could happily go unnoticed in his local coffee shop. He is famous on his own terms, retreating from the public eye for decades at a time. Perhaps it is this near-mythical status that makes it a surprise to most people who don’t live locally to Cwmdu that the writer of history’s most impactful anti-apartheid anthem lived in a small village in the heart of Wales’ Black Mountains for almost thirty years.

Unlike many successful artists before and after him, he didn’t retire from England, buy up land and become a recluse with no real connection to Wales. Locals speak of Siffre immersing himself in the community - joining book clubs and playing local music events.

He continued to create throughout his time in Wales. After a seven year sabbatical he released The Last Songs which, though a different sound, was on a par with his previous clever, challenging work. The album was recorded live during The Last Songs tour in 1998 and features such songs as Samaritans - a criticism of those comfortable people who choose to ignore the suffering of those around them, “Jesus meant well but he didn’t understand/We’re commuters not Samaritans”. He used the song in 2023 on social media to refute the then home secretary’s claims that street homelessness is a “lifestyle choice”.

But he also wrote books of poetry during this time - both Blood on the Page and Monument were released in the late 90s. Whilst his music was pure poetry in itself, the books showed a different side to his creativity.

The opening lyrics from Something Inside So Strong are inscribed on the monument to Betty Campbell, Wales first Black headteacher, in Cardiff. It’s said to have been her favourite song. Campbell and Siffre, two Black British pioneers, both renowned as advocates for equality in their respective fields. His impact has woven its way into the fabric of Welsh history.

By contrast, his music in the hands of some of the people who have covered him, makes less sense. It’s hard to understand what artists like 90s mainstay Michael Ball, Pop Idol Rik Waller or Eastenders alum, Shaun Williamson mean when they sing;

The higher you build your barriers
The taller I become
The further you take my rights away
The faster I will run

However, when sung at a Grenfell Tower memorial, or at a vigil for the homophobic murder of Ian Baynham, its meaning shines through clear as day.

Until 2018, Siffre lived happily halfway up a mountain in Bannau Brycheiniog with his two husbands, Peter, whom he met at age 19 and remained with until his death in 2013 and Rudolf, who joined them in the mid-nineties and died in 2016. He said “artists have to have the courage to be vulnerable” and that in itself is a radical act. His insistence on living a quiet life filled with love on his own terms is the ultimate act of resistance.