Folk song as solidarity with the dead: Shovel Dance Collective, Broadside Hacks, Ewan MacColl and Walter Benjamin

Not sure how many folk music revivals we have had now, of course it's never really gone away but I am enjoying the latest queer friendly iteration with the likes of Shovel Dance Collective and Goblin Band. Have seen the former's Jacken Elswyth and Mataio Austin Dean performing solo at the Goose is Out folk night in Nunhead, likewise Sonny Brazil of the latter. And Broadside Hacks used to do a session at pub in my road in SE14.

The Broadside Hack (Live from Real World) 2022 is the soundtrack to a short film that includes some interesting reflections on the politics of folk song. In a 'collective authoring of history' interview, members of Shovel Dance describe how 'Folk music's kind of  like an act of solidarity across time I think… a real kind of genuine act of sharing across hundreds of years and millions of people...  A different kind of history than what you get from mainstream history, from capitalist history if you will, it's a kind of intergenerational, intertemporal collective authoring of history'. Simlarly Thryis discuss how 'We place ourselves within this greater chain of history by playing these songs, we're figuring ourselves within  this collective narrative...There's this sort of collaboration across space and time, you are engaging with other musicians from other times that you’ve never met and yet you feel like perhaps you have something of an intimate relationship with them, I like that sort of distanced intimacy'. Naima Bock says 'it’s a kind of history of people that have no voice so it’s a beautiful and poetic way of hearing people from the past who you wouldn’t otherwise have heard'.

Echoes here of Ewan MacColl who used to tell the Critics Group of folk singers meeting at he and Peggy Seeger's Beckenham home in the 1960s: 'I find it necessary to close my eyes and shut the audience out, and to identify, either with some character in the song, or with the kind of person I think may have originally sung the song, or even may have created the song. This means that you have to equip yourself with a fair amount of the data about the period in which the song was created ... say this song was perhaps written in 1736, written by a ploughman in Dorset. What was it like? I wonder what it felt for a bloke like that to create a song like this, and all the other people who contributed to the song later. All the other men and women who polished it over generations.. suddenly you find yourself filled with an extraordinary sense of compassion and respect for all those people who went before. And suddenly you find yourself in the tradition - you're with them. And at that moment you also disappear in a strange way, and the song really takes over ... the audience comes with you' (quoted in Ben Harker, Class Act: The Cultural and Political Life of Ewan MacColl, 2007).

Folk singing here is a historical method, a form of 'history from below' of the kind pioneered by E.P. Thompson as famously stated in the preface to 'The Making of the English Working Class' (1963): 'I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the ‘obsolete’ hand-loom weaver, the ‘utopian’ artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity.” Thompson's approach was characterised by his fellow radical historian Raphael Samuel as a form of 'resurrectionism', an attempt 'to give a voice to the voiceless and speak to the fallen dead' (Theatres of Memory, 1994).

For Walter Benjamin, remembrance was not an act of passive contemplation but a motor of radical change. For him the 'enslaved class' has to be 'the avenger that completes the task of liberation in the name of generations of the downtrodden' (On the concept of history, 1940), giving a redemptive voice to those who came before. As Michael Löwy summarises it in his 'Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin’s ‘On the Concept of History' (2005), ' It is clear the remembrance of victims is not, for him, either a melancholic jeremiad or a mystical meditation. It has meaning only if it becomes a source of moral and spiritual energy for those in struggle today... During a conversation with Brecht on the crimes of the Nazis in 1938, Benjamin notes: ‘While he was speaking like this I felt a power being exercised over me which was equal in strength to the power of fascism, a power that sprang from depths of history no less deep than the power of the fascists.’ Or again from Löwy: 'the last enslaved class, the proletariat, should perceive itself as heir to several centuries or millennia of struggle, to the lost battles of the slaves, serfs, peasants and artisans. The accumulated force of these endeavours becomes the explosive material with which the present emancipatory class will be able to interrupt the continuity of oppression'.

The radical theologian Jürgen Moltmann (1926-2024) was influenced by Benjamin and the Frankfurt School.  He wrote of 'The community with the dead... We suffer almost dumbly under the unreconciled hurts of the past. But we hardly perceive any more the sufferings of the dead which cannot be made good. A wall of silence, hard to break through, has been built up between us and the dead. Who feels the silent protest of the dead against the indifference of the living? Who is still conscious that the dead cannot rest as long as they have not received justice?... Are the murderers to triumph irrevocably over their victims?  Can their death be their end? 'Theology', said Max Horkheimer at  that time, 'is the hope ... that injustice will not be the last word. [It is] the expression of a longing, a longing that the murderer may not triumph over the innocent victim. ' It is profoundly inhumane to push away the question about the life of the dead. The person who forgets the rights of the dead will be  indifferent towards the life of his or her children too' (The Coming of God, 1996). 

It is not necessary to believe in a literal afterlife to recognise that the dead have a presence, not least in our language and our music (though of course in many spiritual traditions engagement with the ancestors is central). Isn't the singer of old songs of the downtrodden and apparently defeated resisting this indifference of the living to the dead and drawing on the power of the ancestors? I like to think so.

Dave Lawson's Indieprints

Dave Lawson (1972-2021) was a  London and North Wales based artist whose Indieprints series features numerous music themed designs, often inspired by 1980s indie bands and songs. I came across  a display of his works recently at Caffi Caban in Brynrefail,  lots of very striking vintage style images.

Pogues 'Fairytale of New York' as book jacket

'If I could settle down, then I would settle down'
(lyric from Pavement, 'Range Life')

'I will love you til I die, and I will love you all the time'
(lines from Spiritualized 'Ladies and Gentlemen we are Floating in Space' translated into Welsh in this version)

His prints are still available from Indieprints, which has been kept going by family members.

By the way if you find yourself in the Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon area) I strongly recommend checking out Caffi Caban, great coffee and food (including vegan options) and five minutes walk down the road you could be swimming in Llyn Padarn.

Caffi Caban

Llyn Padarn

Big Sexy Festy Finsbury Park (and Big Chill) 1996

A couple of free festivals I went to in north London's Finsbury Park back in 1996. Not sure of the date of the first one - 'Festival of Environmental and Global Rights'/Big Sexy Festy Party - but flyer says 'bank holiday weekend' so assume it was either in August or perhaps May. The party included Dub Tent, Free Party Stage, House Zone and Chill Out Zone. The map also shows Beer Tent and Shambala, the latter a party crew who used to put on nights I went to in Brixton at Taco Joe's in Atlantic Road railway arches. 'The Prisoner' magazine was running the acoustic stage - a free music listings zine which also covered anti-Criminal Justice Act and environmental protests. The same crew put on a similar event on Hackney Marshes in the following year.

Programme notes say: 'The first Free Festival for a long time.. Collective participation in an outdoor event of this nature can only strenghten community relations and fight the spread of racism and oppression of all minority groups. The inner city areas of London have been neglected over the past 17 years of Tory rule. We must stop the environmental degradation of our local areas for the generations to come... Everyone has the right to a life, everyone has the right to Party!'

In the same place in June 1996 a more traditional Finsbury Park Festival with a twist. Alongside various community dance and music acts there was the Big Chill electric picnic with Calcutta Cyber Cafe/Talvin Singh, Big Chill founder Pete Lawrence, Nelson Dilation (sometime Whirl-y-Gig DJ), and Global Communications (Tom Middleton & Mark Pritchard). All this and a string quartet playing 'Little Fluffy Clouds'.

John Scarlett-Davis on Derek Jarman

A fascinating Derek Jarman talk and film at London's Farsight Gallery last month, featuring a 1984 LWT (London Weekend TV) documentary from the series 'South of Watford' about Jarman's life in London. It includes lots of great footage including Jarman on a boat going down the Thames pointing out the site of the warehouses he lived and worked in during the 1970s, including on the South Bank at Upper Ground,  at13 Bankside (St Magnus warehouse and at Butlers Wharf by Tower Bridge where he moved in 1973. There is a scene too of him going through the gates of the latter on a building where there is now a plaque to remember him. As mentioned in the film, Ken Russell visited him on the South Bank and invited him to design sets for his film 'The Devils' - the start of Jarman's involvement in the film industry.

The film was directed by Jarman's assistant John Scarlett-Davis, who introduced it and told some very entertaining stories, including about filming a scene of Sebastiene at Andrew Logan's warehouse space with Lindsay Kemp also at Butlers Wharf.  He recalled that at Jarman's Butlers Wharf studio the toilet was set up on a stage. Some people who were happy to take part in orgiastic parties apparently drew the line at going to the loo in front of everybody and a curtain was eventually put around it! Jarman and others had to move out of Butlers Wharf after a fire, one of a number in the area that some have observed were conveniently timed for property developers.  Scarlett-Davis remembers being dressed up in the Blitz nightclub when news of the fire came through.

Scarlett-Davis helped Jarman with his film and pop video work, including Marianne Faithfull's Broken English, and made many videos in his own right including for some of my favourite songs from that period such as This Mortal Coil's Song to the Siren, Cocteau Twins 'Pearly dewdrops drops' and Scritti Politti's 'The Word Girl' and 'Wood Beez' (featuring dancer Michael Clark).

Scarlett-Davis talked a bit about the connection between Jarman, William Burroughs and Throbbing Gristle/Psychic TV, with the latter's Genesis P. Orridge featuring briefly int he LWT film. I was interested to hear that Scarlett-Davis and others had lived in another warehouse in Clink Street that later became a famous early acid house venue and later still a prison museum. John remembers Peter Christopherson (Throbbing Gristle/Coil)  attending parties in the warehouse there. Coil later (1998) recorded their album Astral Disaster at an underground studio in Clink Street. 

Derek Jarman, William Burroughs, Marc Almond, Psychic TV and others took part in 'The Final Academy' event in Heaven, 1983.

The event was linked to the exhibition 'Derek Jarman: from Soho to the Fifth Continent' by Jane Palm-Gold at the Farsight Gallery which is at 4 Flitcroft St next to St Giles Church. The exhibition featured photos of Derek at Dungeness by Derek Ridgers as well as Jane's paintings featuring episodes from his life, particularly in the St Giles/Soho area where Jarman lived in a flat in Phoenix House from 1979.

Jane did a great job not just in bringing together the exhibition but in bringing together some of the people who were part of Jarman's life and creative work in London. The audience at the film show including Simon Fisher Turner (who composed music for several Jarman films), Jenny Runacre (who played the Queen in Jubilee) and several people who like Scarlett-Davis himself were naked Roman extras in Sebastiene. The event was hosted by Sean McLusky from Farsight Gallery, once promoter of legendary London clubs like Club UK and the Leisure Lounge as well as sometime drummer with JoBoxers.

John Scarlett-Davis should definitely write a book. He also has some very funny stories about working in the film/TV industry including sitting in the canteen in Elstree between Jack Nicholson and Molly Sugden when he was working on both 'The Shining' and TV sitcom 'Are you being served?'.

Jane Palm-Gold's painting of the 1993 OutRage Queer Carnival in Soho 1993, which was opened by Jarman and also featured the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence

London nightlife not dead shock

Dan Hancox has written a great piece on 'Debunking the weird myths about London's 24-hour party people' in which he rightly takes to task some dubious claims made in the Times and elsewhere that London nightlife is in terminal decline.  He rightly critiques some very dubious data, such as relying on Google Maps to show venues with late night licenses. 

Specifically he skewers a map included in the Times article 'UK’s worst night out? Costly, crime-ridden London' (27 September 2024) which purports to show venues open after 2 am on Saturday nights. Using his local knowledge of Peckham’s Rye Lane he shows that in addition to three venues shown on map (Tola, the Prince of Peckham, and the Bussey Building) there are many other places: 'My raver alarm immediately went off. Just from going out dancing in Peckham, I know that this is rubbish. That list is missing the Carpet Shop (open till 4am), Peckham Audio (4am), Peckham Levels (4am, albeit occasionally) and Four Quarters (3am). There are also at least five pubs I can think of around Rye Lane which open until 1am on a Saturday night, new audiophile bar Jumbi is open until 2am' etc. etc.

As Dan points out this 'London Declinism mingles with the fog of racist myths' that London is a hotbed of random violence overseen by a muslim mayor implementing sharia law!  Sometimes these kind of articles are really just snotty refusals to recognise that London actually exists beyond the centre of town - see for instance Bloomsbury resident Will Lloyd's 'Sadiq Khan’s silent city' (New Statesman, 24 March 2024) which begrudgingly admits that he 'could walk north to the Lexington (open until around 3am, but it smells), or south into London’s warm, unwashed armpit'.

There is also a well meaning but in my view wrong-headed left wing version of the argument highlighting that many venues are being squeezed out by property development and other pressures (true) and suggesting that there is no longer any grass roots/'underground' clubbing because its all been taken over by corporate giants (false).

Of course there are peaks and troughs, periods when everybody seems to be out clubbing and times when it is a bit more based around niche subcultures. But we also have to beware observer bias. We all have our peak periods for partying, the worse thing is to imagine that because you are personally not going out as much as you used to do that is not happening any more, or that its not as good or real or whatever as it used to be. People have been out dancing in London for hundreds, probably thousands of years and it is not stopping any time soon (see for instance this great account of London dancing from 1902).

Things do change but not necessarily for the worst. The demise of some of the old school high street nightclubs that hungover from the pre-rave period, some of them with long histories of racist and sexist door policies, is not necessarily a bad thing.  Dance music no longer always requires specialist DJs or sound rigs, great as it is to have them.  There is a more diffuse nightlife in which a pub can quickly become a dancefloor, or people can summon one up anywhere playing music from their phones through speakers. These nights might never show up on Resident Advisor or be documented anywhere but they are happening all around us in London and anywhere else with a pulse.  My South London local for instance - a pub that used to be pretty much empty much of the week - is full most nights, sometimes people are watching sport, sometimes listening to a folk session, and sometimes it erupts into dancing.  And of course as Dan points out there are countless actual club nights, gigs and other events of all sizes happening all the time.

Historically in London it is pub and restaurant backrooms, railway arches and other places off the mainstream nightlife map that have spawned new music scenes. Think about the emergence of the new jazz scene in the last ten years where places like Buster Mantis (a Jamaican bar/restaurant) and Matchstick Piehouse (a community arts/music space) hosted the Steam Down nights in Deptford, many of whose alumni are now internationally known.  I suspect that such places are not even on the radar of many of those decrying the death of London nightlife.