Mark Stewart and the Maffia

Post-punk renegade Mark Stewart issued his initial solo recordings under the name Mark Stewart and the Maffia, or close variants such as Mark Stewart + Maffia, all produced by Adrian Sherwood. The 1983 album Learning to Cope with Cowardice stood out for its volatile, confrontational blend of distorted dub rhythms and radical politics, and over subsequent decades those recordings left a deep mark on industrial, trip-hop, illbient, digital hardcore, and other strands of subversive counter-cultural music.

A native of Bristol, Stewart first gained attention as frontman of the post-punk cult band the Pop Group. Although the group’s original incarnation lasted only from the late ’70s into the early ’80s, Stewart’s paranoid vocals and the ensemble’s bold experimental approach exerted a lasting influence on the underground. After the Pop Group disbanded in 1980, Stewart joined drummer Bruce Smith and guitarist John Waddington on the self-titled 1981 debut of New Age Steppers, a collective organized by Sherwood that drew players from both Jamaica and the United Kingdom. Sherwood’s On-U Sound label put out the first Mark Stewart and the Maffia EP, Jerusalem, in 1982; the record included Jamaican musicians Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah, Eskimo Fox, and Evar Wellington, all frequent On-U collaborators. The full-length Learning to Cope with Cowardice followed in 1983 and added keyboardist Desmond “Fat Fingers” Coke.

Stewart’s next album, As the Veneer of Democracy Starts to Fade, surfaced in 1985 and showcased the rhythm section of Doug Wimbish, Keith LeBlanc, and Skip McDonald, all former members of the Sugarhill Gang’s backing band. Although the album did not carry the Maffia credit, material from both Learning to Cope with Cowardice and As the Veneer of Democracy Starts to Fade was gathered on the 1985 American compilation Mark Stewart + Maffia. Later releases generally appeared under Stewart’s name alone, yet the 1987 single “This Is Stranger Than Love” retained the Maffia designation. In 2019 Mute reissued Learning to Cope with Cowardice as a two-disc set containing an additional disc of previously unreleased recordings from the same sessions, issued under the title The Lost Tapes.