Politics have shaped Latin Quarter's sound from the very beginning. The band came together in 1983 when Mike Jones, who supplied the lyrics, joined forces with Steve Skaith on vocals and guitar plus Richard Wright on guitar; Jones and Skaith had already started crafting socially conscious material while active in the political organization Big Fire. Yona Dunsford, handling vocals and keyboard, and Carol Douet on vocals entered the lineup in December 1983, and nearly twelve months afterward Greg Harewood on bass, Richard Stevens on drums, and Steve Jeffries on keyboard completed the roster, allowing the group's blend of folk, reggae, rock, and new wave to take clearer form. Their debut album, Modern Times, appeared in 1985, and the single "Radio Africa" emerged as Latin Quarter's biggest success, reaching the U.K. charts on three separate occasions across a two-year period. Deeply political lyrics nevertheless unsettled British radio programmers; although the anti-Apartheid protest song "No Rope As Long As Time" drew attention from American college-radio DJs, most of the band's singles received only limited late-night exposure in the U.K. In 1987 Stevens and Jeffries departed, replaced by Martin Lascalles on keyboards and Darren Abraham on drums, as the group prepared its follow-up, Mick and Caroline. Frustrated by the absence of a label genuinely invested in their work, Latin Quarter disbanded in 1990. Interest revived the next year when the Bhundu Boys delivered a remix of "Radio Africa." The band reconvened in 1993 to record Long Pig and continued with Bringing Rosa Home in 1997.
