Levi Roots' Sound Clash receives its world premiere at Fringe

“We’ve just been sent the director and the choice of actors who are going to play me,” he continues, while I imagine having the same conversation with Alan Sugar or Richard Branson. 

“So, later on,” he continues, “I will be looking through the list of who will take on the mantle to play Levi Roots in the movie.”

It’s Friday afternoon, just over a week before Roots comes to Edinburgh to sing in front of a couple of Scotland’s biggest sound systems. Just under two weeks before Sound Clash: Death in the Arena, the musical he has conceived opens at the Pleasance Courtyard. The latter sounds a bit like a Reggae Romeo & Juliet; a bass-heavy mash-up of Shakespeare, West Side Story, some dystopian world-building and dancehall culture. 

READ MORE: Banksy: Insider takes us into the secret world of Banksy: Radio Review

If Alan Sugar was to make a musical I’m not sure this would be what he’d come up with.

Sound Clash: Death in the Arena, Roots explains, is an offshoot of the upcoming film in a way. “Everything couldn’t fit within the movie and the saddest thing was that the producers have taken out my musical side of things and wanted to concentrate on what people know about me, which is the Dragons Den part, the sauce, blah blah blah. 

“But most people who know me will know that the most inspirational part of my life personally is the musical side of my life, not the dragonslaying bit. It’s the sound system side.

“I spent my life in the back of a sound truck with Sir Coxsone; that’s one of the most famous sound systems that there has ever been in the United Kingdom. I’ve been part of that since 1975. And I still feel like I’m part of it. I wanted to do something to capture that part of the story.”

And so he came up with an idea for a musical inspired by the sound systems and his love of Shakespeare, teamed up with playwright Alex Wheatle, producer Adrian Grant (the force behind Thriller - Live), director Ray Shell and choreographer Jade Hackett and now, some two years later, the result is about to receive its world premiere at the Fringe.

What does this prove? That Levi Roots is not a man who sticks to his lane, I guess.

 “No, I love to dub things up,” he agrees. “When somebody put a challenge at me - ‘you can’t do that,’ or whatever - I love to pick up the challenge and try to prove them wrong.

“But also to prove myself right. Whoever you are, it doesn’t matter where you come from, you are capable of doing fantastic things, you are able to have the focus to stick with it for the long-term.”

Focus is a word Roots uses a lot in our short time together, whether he’s talking about music or business or life. Finding his “focus” is the thing, he believes, that transformed him from a convict to the head of a multi-million business, after all. 

READ MORE: Billy Joel reveals his love of history and Winston Churchill

Levi Roots is both the name he goes under now, but it’s also the brand. The name is also a signifier of how he changed his life. He is no longer Keith Valentine Graham, the young kid who came to London from Jamaica and spent his teens getting into trouble.

In short, the Levi Roots story, and the reason it’s getting made into a movie, is because, at heart, it’s a redemption song.

Keith Valentine Graham was born in 1958, the fifth of six children. His parents moved to London when he was just four. He stayed behind. He wouldn’t see them again for years. He was brought up by his grandparents, then moved to London when he was 11. At that point he couldn’t read or write. 

That wasn’t the worst problem, though. “Coming out of school you dare not turn right because there are some guys who are going to rip your head off. Skinhead guys, the fascist guys,” he recalls.

“But, you know, when you turn left it’s nice and lovely because this wasn’t the fascist guys. These were the fashion kids who loved everything Caribbean and wanted to know all about me. Joey and Michael, two brothers. When I first came over they were Irish boys and they absolutely loved the Jamaican thing and wanted to learn so much.”

Sometimes, the racism couldn’t be avoided. “It’s understanding at 11 years old that not everyone you see is going to be your friend and learning to fight your way through,” he says. 

“But then learning to fight took you down a spiral in another way. You shouldn’t be learning to fight as a young child, you should be learning how to educate yourself. But the more important thing was that survival on the street.”

The teenager he became could give as good as he got. That was part of the problem. Aged 15, he was sentenced to six months in Pentonville for assaulting a police officer. In his late twenties he was convicted of unlawful possession of a firearm and conspiracy to supply class A drugs.

That second spell in prison was to be the making of him, however. His mum brought him his guitar and he wrote the songs that would become his album Free Your Mind which earned him a Mobo nomination in 1998. 

He also met a drama teacher in prison called Teresa, “one of the heroes who’s going to be in the movie,” Roots explains. “She inspired me to change my life and become the best person I could be.

“She threw the complete works of Shakespeare at me when I first met her in prison. She said, ‘Read that. And if you can read that, when you come out you will be the real Levi.’

“And I read it in a matter of six months.”

Keith Graham - “Scottish Keith,” as he calls the man he was - went into prison and Levi Roots came out. 

Music was the thing he threw himself back into. But in time he also started a sideline selling his sauce, though it was only when he went on Dragon’s Den in 2007 that the business really took off. A couple of the dragons, Peter Jones and Richard Farleigh, chose to invest. The next thing he knew his Reggae Reggae Sauce was being stocked by Sainsbury’s and flying off the shelf. His brand is now said to be worth around £30 million. 

This all might seem a long way from the music. Or is that just silo thinking? Levi, can business be a creative act? 

“Yes it is. I really do think so. The Levi Roots brand is not the sauce. So, in some ways my business answers your question. And I think there are a lot of businesses like mine. It’s not about the product, it’s about the people that run it.

“And if that’s the case then it’s art. Because art comes from within. It’s about the person who creates the picture. 

“I am an artist painting pictures about food and taste and flavours.”

What are you proudest of, I ask him? Building a successful business, or rebuilding yourself?

“I think it’s a bit of both. I have changed my life and I’m grateful for that because I know the horrible person that I was before, the unfocused person. And I know the person I have become. And I hover above myself sometimes and I can see Keith down there who used to get me in trouble and couldn’t focus and I say, ‘Stay down there boy, because this is where I am at.’

“But that is one thing. That's the me thing. But I think what this means to Caribbean people - my eyes are really open to that, and how this business with a sauce in a bottle has become a champion for them. And I can feel the love.”

He has changed. Has the country he lives in? Is the UK a different place to the one Roots arrived in all those years ago? “That’s not a fair question,” he says, smiling. This country has been kind to him, he points out. It has made him who he is. He has no reason to complain. But, at the same time, he says, look at what the Windrush generation has faced in recent years; being deported, not able to use the NHS because they can’t prove they came over with their parents. 

I have to ask him about “Scottish Keith”. Scotland’s relationship with the Caribbean is essentially the story of the slave trade. Some 90 per cent of Jamaicans have Scottish names, Roots reminds me. But now that can be a connection rather than a source of division, he suggests.

“I went on a pilgrimage recently to find my Scottish connections, The Grahams, and found that they are a bloodthirsty lot. But I think it’s a good thing when we make that connection; to see that we are all part of this land that we live in together and we’ve had our histories together and there’s got to be a way that we can both intertwine.” 

Stories change, develop, become entwined. Shakespeare and sound systems. Dragon’s Den and dreadlocks. Levi Roots is a Windrush child. Maybe we all are to some extent now. Maybe we’re finally open to hearing those stories.

“Who would have thought a Rastaman with 3ft long dreadlocks and a bloody guitar would go on Dragon’s Den?” he asks. “It wouldn’t have happened 20, 30 years ago. But I think times have changed now and I think the public’s eyes are open.”

Sound Clash: Death in the Arena is at Pleasance Courtyard (Pleasance One), Edinburgh from Wednesday to August 28 (except August 8). Levi Roots will appear as a special guest at Love in the Arena at Summerhall, Edinburgh, tonight alongside Messenger Sound System and Mungo’s Hi Fi