Kunta Kinte is probably one of the most catchy riffs ever to come out of Reggae and Dub.  It has been redone by countless people and subsequently introduced into new genres Jungle and then Dubstep through the years. 

The song takes its name from an American novel entitled Roots; The Saga Of An American Family.  The novel follows the story of Kunta Kinte the eldest son of the a "Mandinka" Tribesman in Gambia.  One day Kunta leaves his village to go and find wood. Whilst out he is attacked by four white men who take him captive and torture him before branding him and putting him on a slave ship bound for America.  

Kunta rejects his new slave status and refuses to communicate with other slaves or his master and repeatedly attempts to escape. Until eventually his masters amputate half of his foot to prevent him from fleeing again. Over the rest of the book he resigns himself to his slave life and eventually marries another slave.  The story then follows the life of his daughter.

The unmistakeable flutes of the Kunta Kinte reggae riff was to my knowledge first recorded by "the revolutionaries"in the late 70's.

Theres numerous Dub reworks of the tune. One of the most famous being Mad professor's DUB 91 KUNTA KINTE

This is where Kunta Kinte started to get a modern edge.  In 1992 Prodigy enthused the Kunta Kinte riff with some heavy breaks and replaced the flutes with synths in their track Jericho on the alum Experience.

Congo Natty also stepped upto the mark returning the tune to its Roots with the junglist anthem "Kunta Kinte"...

While were on the DnB jungle route. Ray Keith used it ina track entitled Dubplate. Only a snippet from a mix on youtube...

And finally the most recent usage of the "Kunta Kinte" would be in Rusko's 2007 track on caspa's label dub police entitled "Jahova"

So next time you're reaching for the lasers remember Kunta Kinte pissed off at being a slave with half his foot cut off.