Don Letts

Born in London in 1956 into a family of Jamaican origin, Don Letts established himself at the crossroads of reggae, dub, punk and post‑punk — first as a DJ and later as a filmmaker and musician. In the mid‑1970s he ran the Acme Attractions shop before playing records at the Roxy, the central club of the London punk scene, where he introduced reggae and dub into an environment still short on punk records, helping to foster a dialogue between these cultures. That position quickly brought him close to The Clash, for whom he made several videos, and it provided material for his first feature, The Punk Rock Movie (1978), filmed at the heart of that moment. After an EP, Steel Leg v the Electric Dread, recorded in 1978 with Keith Levene and Jah Wobble, Letts continued a career between image and music. In 1984 he co‑founded Big Audio Dynamite with Mick Jones, a former member of The Clash — a project mixing rock, funk, hip‑hop, dance‑rock and a taste for sonic collage; he remained with the band until 1990, then launched Screaming Target. Don Letts has also directed films and documentaries about punk, reggae and their legacies, while continuing his work as a DJ, notably on British radio. His solo release Outta Sync appeared in 2023.