Autonomous Spaces

Extracts from a call for transnational days of action for squats and autonomous spaces:

'On Friday the 4th and Saturday the 5th of April 2008, we call for two days of demonstration, direct action, public information, street-party, squatting... in defence of free spaces and for an anti-capitalist popular culture.

Through these two days, we want to help create more visibility of autonomous spaces and squats as a european/global political movement. We want to develop interconnections and solidarity between squats and autonomous spaces. We want to keep linking our spaces with new people and new struggles, and support the creation of autonomous spaces in places where there has not been a history of this kind of action. We want to build, step by step, our ability to overcome the wave of repression falling on us....

For centuries, people have used squats and autonomous spaces, either urban or rural, to take control of their own lives. They are a tool, a tactic, a practice, and a way for people to live out their struggles. For decades, squat movements across Europe and beyond have fought capitalist development, contributing to local struggles against destruction; providing alternatives to profit-making and consumer culture; running social centres and participatory activities outside of the mainstream economy. Demonstrating the possibilities for self-organising without hierarchy; creating international networks of exchange and solidarity. These networks have changed many lives, breaking out of social control and providing free spaces where people can live outside the norm...

All over Europe, repressive agendas are being pushed by governments. They are attacking long-standing autonomous spaces such as the Ungdomshuset in Copenhagen, Koepi and Rigaer Straße in Berlin, EKH in Vienna and Les Tanneries in Dijon, squatted social centres in London and Amsterdam, Ifanet in Thessaloniki, etc. In France, squats have become a priority target for the police after the anti-CPE movement and the wave of actions and riots that happened during the presidential elections period. In Germany, many autonomous spaces have been searched and attacked before the G8 summit. In Geneva and Barcelona, two old and big squatting "fortresses", the authorities have decided to try to put an end to the movement. Whereas it is still possible to occupy empty buildings in some countries, it has already become a crime in some others. In the countryside, access to land is becoming harder and communes face increasing problems from legislation on hygiene, security and gentrification by the bourgeoisie and tourists. All over Europe, independent cultures are being threatened.

Several months ago we saw running battles in the streets of Copenhagen and actions everywhere in Europe in an explosion of anger at the eviction of the Ungdomshuset social centre. Since then, and with a few other big resistance stories that happened over the last months, we've managed to renew the meaning of international solidarity...

We're calling for an international preparation & coordination meeting on November 24th & 25th 2007, in the autonomous space "Les Tanneries", located in Dijon, France. It is a squatted social centre in a post-industrial environment, occupied since 1998. Thanks to years of struggle against the city council owning the buildings, the project has reached a certain degree of stability. It hosts a collective house, a gig room, a hacklab, a free shop, an infoshop, a collective garden, a library... We hope that many of you will be able to join.

Full call here, contact april2008 at squat dot net for further information.

1950s Raves Continued

In an earlier post, we referred to the revivalist jazz raves organised by Mick Mulligan and George Melly in London in the early 1950s, the earliest use we have found so far of the term 'rave' and 'ravers' in a musical context (as opposed to 'raving mad').

Another key figure in this first London rave scene was the clarinettist Cy Laurie (1926-2002), pictured here. Cy Laurie’s Jazz Club was held downstairs at Mac's Rehearsal Rooms at 41 Great Windmill Street, Soho. The space had earlier been the base for Ronnie Scott's Club 11, one of London's first modern jazz clubs which opened there in 1948, before moving to Carnaby Street. But it was Laurie's club that became famous for all-night raves.

One 50s raver recalled 'The Windmill Street club was the Saturday Night magnet in my late teens; it was the music and the atmosphere, but also the place to find out the address of that week's rave; there were five of us, and between us we could muster three cars - unusual in those days - which ensured that we always gathered passengers who knew the ropes. On one then celebrated occasion, four of us went to Manchester, at the drop of a hat in an Austin A35, by the time we got there it was all over, so we returned to London with an extra passenger, who had been given a trumpet which he taught himself to play on the journey' (so years before the late 1980s London orbital parties, the convoy of rave pilgrims was established).

Another remembers 'all nighters at Cy's were a buzz. I was one of the - all dressed in black and often barefoot - dancers who was first AND last on the floor.... Cy's place was a culture thing, and included the early morning rush to Waterloo station to get the Milk Train to Hastings, for "FUN" in the Hastings caves'. Others would stumble into the Harmony Inn cafe in Archer Street. By the end of the 1950s, Laurie had moved on to India to study with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, beating the Beatles to it, while revivalist jazz had been superseded by the trad jazz boom and a new crowd of ravers.

In Bomb Culture (1968), his overview of 1950s and 1960s underground culture, Jeff Nuttal observes that the revivalist jazz scene was very much a Paris as well as London bohemian sub culture:

"Paris, after the war, has been the traditional home of bohemianism... the post­war pop-bohemianism launched itself with a cult of the primitive, of ceramic beads and dirndl skirts, of ankle-thong sandals and curtain-hoop ear-rings, of shaggy corduroys and ten-day beards, of seamen's sweaters and home-dyed battle-dress.... the clubs which set themselves up in London and Paris and promoted New Orleans jazz like a religion were totally outside of commerce, running at the start of things on a non-profit-making basis, employing amateur bands, collec­tions of students, particularly art students, who imitated the great recordings by King Oliver, Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton with varying skill and complete self-decep­tion... The following was a minority following, self-conscious and partisan, opin­ionated and crusading. The world was evil, governed by Mam­mon and Moloch. New Orleans jazz was a music straight from the heart and the swamp, unclouded by the corrupting touch of civilization. It would refertilize the world".

Zarabanda

‘Some claim this dance received its name from a devil in woman's shape who appeared in Seville in the twelfth century, and who labeled it the zarabanda. In the sixteenth century, certainly, the dance and the song that accompanied it were considered by a Jesuit historian to be indecent in its words and disgusting in its movements. Even Cervantes described it as having "a diabolical sound." So seriously did the Spanish authorities take the threat of the zarabanda (which the rest of Europe, less concerned by its devilish origins, altered to saraband) that in 1583 anyone caught singing or reciting its words was to be punished with two hundred lashes, in addition to being exiled (if female) or sentenced to six years in the galleys.

For better or worse we know almost nothing of the actual dance in its original form. Apparently it was once a sexual pantomime, for in Barcelona couples twisted their bodies to the rhythm of castanets, and by the time it came to Italy the breasts of the dancers were allowed to collide and the lips to kiss. But from being erotic it became a gliding, processional dance, and it ended up as part of an instrumental suite. It was introduced to the French court around 1588, and was a favorite of Louis XIII, not to mention his minister Cardinal Richelieu. It remained popular well into the seventeenth century, since Charles II of England often called for it to be played. Perhaps it is an example of what happened to the dances of the people once they got to the court: their rude energy was canalized into something fit for the most delicate disposition—even if they became somewhat anemic on the way’.

Source; Peter Buckman, Let’s Dance: Social, Ballroon and Folk Dancing, p.88 (Paddington Press, London, 1978). The picture is of a Spanish actor dancing the zarabanda at the Paris Opera, published in 1636.

Zazous: dancing under the Nazis in France

'Dancing, particularly upon Sundays, had been the rage among young people before the war, but after the Occupa­tion was banned both by Vichy and the Germans. The Germans were wary because such gatherings of young people might cause unrest. Vichy had other reasons: dancing was held to be indecorous when so many Frenchmen had been killed or were languishing in prisoner-of-war camps; it would encourage fraternization with German soldiers; it might promote promiscuity…Nevertheless, in early 1942 the prohibition began to be flouted. Cardinal Gerlier noted with regret that even some Christian families were infringing the ban, which he deplored because 'among all the different forms of recreation, dancing is the one that expresses joy most fully'. There was too much misery abroad and, he added in a reference to the Germans, it was wrong 'to dance under the gaze of those who observe us'.

Those ever-present 'observers' had lifted the ban in the occupied zone for their own troops by mid-1941 but had left the decision regarding French civilians to the Vichy authorities for 'if [they], in spite of the disgraceful defeat of their country, wish to dance, it is in the German interest not to prevent their so doing'. Since Vichy continued the prohibition, many private dancing schools, which were allowed, sprang up to circumvent the ban. Learning ballet and ballroom dancing was suddenly found to be a very popular activity. Measures were therefore taken to control the schools by imposing stringent conditions: not more than fifteen couples per session were allowed to take part; enrol­ments had to be for at least five sessions; apart from the dancers, only parents could be present; the sole musical accompaniment must be a piano or a gramophone; no drinks whatsoever could be served; advertising of classes was for­bidden.

The high fees demanded by the schools limited their clientele and frequently they were patronized by middle-class 'zazous', the contemporary equivalent of the 'teddy-boys' and their partners. Descriptions of this gilded youth vary. Simone de Beauvoir terms them rebels against the Revolution Nationale, wearing long hair 'a la mode d'Oxford', sporting umbrellas… and generally comporting themselves in an anarchic, Anglophile fashion… They affected an outlandish garb: the young men wore dirty drape suits with 'drainpipe' trousers under their sheep­skin-lined jackets and brilliantined liberally their long hair, the girls favoured roll-collar sweaters with short skirts and wooden platform shoes, sported dark glasses with big lenses, put on heavy make-up, and went bareheaded to show off their dyed hair, set off by a lock of a different hue. The 'zazous' used English expressions, read American literature, and delighted in crooning, in the style of Johnny Hess, 'Je suis swing, dadoudadou/ Dadou la. . .oua. . .oua.'

But the 'ploutocrato-zazous', the exponents of jazz, were not held in esteem by the extreme collaborationists. Vauquelin, of the Jeunesses Populaires Franchises, held them to be 'the victory of democratic besottedness and Jewish degeneracy . . . the product of twenty years of Anglo-Saxon snobbery on the part of decadents . . . the proof ... of the physical and moral degradation of a section of our young people'. Vauquelin's squads of bully-boys were ordered to 'get them'. Thus on June 14, 1942 the squads carried out raids at Neuilly, in the Quartier Latin, and on the Champs-Elysees, cropping the hair of any 'zazous' they could find.The police joined in the hunt as well.

Youth will none the less be served. Thus, as the war dragged on, the ban on dancing was increasingly disregarded and the 'bals clandestins' flourished. In the countryside the jeunesse Agricole Chretienne reported in 1943 that dancing was going on in almost every canton of the Rhone, not only in isolated barns and remote houses, but even in the small towns. In Paris students danced in bars off the Boul' Mich' and 'la jeunesse doree' in more sleazy establishments near the Etoile. Dancing, jazz, outlandish dress became marks of a veritable counter-culture of youth, one which differed from that of the Resistance because it was effete, but never­theless anti-killjoy, anti-prudish, and, in the final analysis, pro-Allied'.

Source: The Youth of Vichy France – W.D. Halls (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1981)