![]() ![]() This thesis explores changes that occurred in popular music during the 1960s and early 1970s through case studies involving three significant albums released in 19: Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, Sly and the Family Stone’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On, and Stevie Wonder’s Talking Book. From this brief outline, we can see that, far from just being ‘Paul’s granny shit’, as John Lennon described it, the track can be read as an expression of the effects of the British Empire, and their impact on post-World War 2 Britain. Enoch Powell gave his notorious ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech in 1968. The song was released at a time of great racial tension in Britain. The lyrics’ characters, Desmond and Molly, could be Irish, Jamaican, even Nigerian, or any mix of these. At the same time, the beginning and end of the track has music hall influences. The pop-ska of the track’s music was taken from the Jamaican ska style that had become popular with British Caribbean communities in the early 1960s. The track’s narrative form appears to have been influenced by McCartney’s knowledge of calypso drawn from Liverpool’s diasporic Caribbean population. In the nineteenth century, the Irish were considered to be ‘white negroes’. Liverpool was a port city built on the slave trade, which, in the second half of the nineteenth century became home to large numbers of diasporic Irish, many of whom continued their journey to the United States. The song’s title comes from a saying McCartney heard used by a Nigerian conga player acquaintance of his. The song was written by Paul McCartney, while the Beatles were staying at an ashram in India. In this article, I want to examine the track as the site of complex negotiations around identity and diaspora. It is often considered to be a trite but enjoyable piece of fluff. ‘Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da’ is a track on the Beatles eponymously titled double album, released in 1968.
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