The night Steve Biko died I cried and I cried

Stephen Biko, anti-Apartheid activist and founder of the Black Consciousness Movement, died at the hands of the South African police on this day (12th September) 1977. His life and death has been commemorated in many songs - here's a short playlist (for a fuller list, see the Biko wikipedia entry).

Robert Wyatt - Biko,

his take on the best known song, written by Peter Gabriel and recorded by many:





Port Elizabeth weather fine
It was business as usual
In police room 619
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Yihla Moja, Yihla Moja
-The man is dead

When I try to sleep at night
I can only dream in red
The outside world is black and white
With only one colour dead
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Yihla Moja, Yihla Moja
-The man is dead

You can blow out a candle
But you can't blow out a fire
Once the flames begin to catch
The wind will blow it higher
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Yihla Moja, Yihla Moja
-The man is dead

And the eyes of the world are
watching now
watching now.


Tapper Zukie - Tribute to Steve Biko:





Beenie Man - Steve Biko:




Steel Pulse - Biko's Kindred Lament ('The night Steve Biko died I cried and I cried'):





Sweet Honey in the Rock - Biko:





Tribe Called Quest - Biko (Stir it Up) - 1993. Not all about Biko, but obviously name checked in title, chorus and the line 'I'm radical with this like the man this song is after':






Dead Prez - I'm an African (mentions Biko):






As mentioned at previous post, today is also the anniversary of the arrest in 1973 of singer Victor Jara in Chile (followed by his murder in custody a few days later). The two deaths are commemorated together in the song 'Chile Your Waters run red through Soweto' recorded by Sweet Honey in the Rock, Billy Bragg and others: 'The hand that cut short the song of Victor Jara, Put young Stephen Biko in a dusty hill grave'

Unfaltering commerce with the stars

I am still digesting the rich fare served up by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Fred Moten at last week's Black Skin, White Marx? event at Goldsmiths in New Cross, with ingredients including Gramsci, Adorno, Kant, Marx, CLR James, Huey Newton, Orlando Patterson and Frank B. Wilderson. One thing that stuck in my mind was a quote from Du Bois which Spivak mentioned, and which I have subsequently tracked down in full:

'the immediate problem of the Negro was the question of securing existence, of labor and income, of food and home, of spiritual independence and democratic control of the industrial process. It would not do to concenter all effort on economic well-being and forget freedom and manhood and equality. Rather Negroes must live and eat and strive, and still hold unfaltering commerce with the stars' (Dusk of dawn: an essay toward an autobiography of a race concept by William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, 1940).

I have no reason to think that Du Bois was really thinking about space travel here, but the linking of a project of emancipation to a sense of the cosmic prefigures the Afro-futurist myths of Sun Ra and George Clinton that I have discussed here previously in the context of the Disconaut Association of Autonomous Astronauts.

A contemporary example of this is the work of Flying Lotus, bringing a post-hip hop sensibility to the cosmology elaborated by his aunt Alice Coltrane among others. From his latest album Cosmogramma, here's Galaxy In Janaki:



The title clearly references Alice Coltrane's track Galaxy in Turiya, from the 1973 album Reflections on Creation and Space (Turiya is a Hindu term for the experience of pure consciousness; Janaki is a name for the Hindu Goddess Sita).

Of the latter's work Kodwo Eshun wrote: 'Jazz becomes an amplified zodiac, an energy generator that lines you up in a stellar trichotomy of human, sound and starsign. Alice Coltrane and [Pharoah] Sanders are playing in the rhythm of the universe according to star constellations transposed into rhythms and intervals... Astro jazz becomes a sunship upon which the composer-starsailor travels' (More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction, 1998) .

Lena Horne and the civil rights movement

Most of the obituaries to Lena Horne (1917-2010), who died last weekend, mention her involvement in the civil rights movement. But what is striking about her life is that she was consistently an activist during, and indeed before, a musical career that encompassed dancing at the Cotton Club, singing and acting in Hollywood musicals, and recording albums.

As Lena Horne herself recalled in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples magazine The Crisis in 1983: 'My grandmother, an early pioneer of the NAACP, taught me never to forget. The seeds of a continuing passion for black freedom and liberation were sown in those earliest childhood years when my grandmother, Cora Calhoun, took me to NAACP meetings'. Paul Robeson and WEB Du Bois were family friends.

She also recalled: 'As I travelled as a singer throughout a segregated America, countless racist acts were redressed by local chapters of the NAACP'. In the 1940s at an Army base in Arkansas, she objected to black GIs having to sit behind white Italian POWs: 'I left the hall, found the black GI who was my driver and asked him to take me to the local NAACP. The NAACP in the local town turned out to be Daisy Bates, heroine of Little Rock'.

In 1946, she became a sponsor of the Los Angeles chapter of the Civil Rights Congress (as as was Frank Sinatra). She played benefits for various left wing causes, and was active in supporting Ben Davis, the black Communist elected to the city council of New York City, representing Harlem, in 1943 ( he was later jailed under the notorious Smith Act). For these activities she was blacklisted as a communist sympathiser to the detriment of her career.

She was, for instance, denounced in Red Channels a 1950 'report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television' published by Counterattack, set up by ex-FBI agents. Lena Horne was in good company in this report, along with the likes of Leonard Bernstein, Dashiell Hammett, Dorothy Parker and Pete Seeger.

She was in the front ranks of the 1963 March onWashington for Jobs and Freedom and spoke alongside Medgar Evers shortly before he was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in the same year.

Here she is singing Stormy Weather from the 1943 film of the same name:

... or even vote for Gloria Estefan? And why are some anarchists and socialists cheering for border controls?

Continuing our series on pop stars with a sounder grasp of migration politics than has been seen so far in the British elections, good to see that Gloria Estefan joined Saturday's May Day migrant workers demonstration in Los Angeles (see also Amerie and Shakira). The demonstration was protesting against the new Arizona laws and for regularisation of undocumented migrants. She said: 'We came as refugees to this country that gave us many opportunities... We join with you today so that they will know that we immigrants are honest, workers, to show the beautiful face that we bring to this country, always respecting the laws. If everyone looks back, everyone is an immigrant in this country... We don’t want to link the word ‘immigrant’ with ‘criminal''.

And that is good enough reason to feature Dr Beat, that great 1980s dance track by Miami Sound Machine (feat. Gloria):

There's lots of reports and photos of the Los Angeles demonstration at LA Indymedia. I've selected these two, taken by Robert Stuart Lowden, as they illustrate what is lacking not only from mainstream British political discussion about migration but from the arguments of those socialists and anarchists who now seek to justify immigration controls on some spurious 'working class' grounds that immigration undercuts wages - see for instance Paul Stott and the Independent Working Class Association. Namely the human cost of immigration controls.


Immigration controls are not a matter of turning on and off a tap, capping numbers in some cosy neutral way - 'sorry old chap, we're full today'. They are ultimately a policing function: workers dragged out of their workplaces, locked up and put on to planes, their children likewise dragged out of school. Families separated by force. Children locked up in prison. Deaths as people take risks to get round these controls - at least 87 on the US/Mexico border in the last 6 months; almost 4000 amongst people trying to enter Europe since 2002.

It may be true that in some sectors having a larger pool of labour is allowing employers to reduce wages, but the answer to that is workers solidarity not vicious border controls (what other kind are there). It is also true that many of these workers have struggled to get here at great risk, hardly flown in by capitalists. While the wages of some workers may on occasions have been undermined, other workers are earning much more here than they were at home and are also supporting families in their home countries. Also migration controls in Europe and in the US can depress wages elsewhere - since employers know it is difficult for workers to leave and therefore don't have to pay higher wages to keep workers in their jobs.

In any event it is precisely these immigration controls now seemingly supported by some former anti-fascist militants in the UK - the IWCA is the remains of Red Action - that place migrant labour in a precarious position and undermine wages (e.g. the fight by cleaners for better wages is being undermined by companies having the power to turn over strikers to the Borders Agency). The way to stop this is to fight for migrant workers to have the same rights and conditions as everybody else - this would benefit non-migrant workers too as employers wouldn't be able to play one off against the other.

...or maybe vote for Shakira? (more on Arizona, racism and immigration)

Last night I floated the idea of voting for Amerie in the UK elections (even though she's not standing!), on the basis that her critique of the new racist anti-migrant powers in Arizona showed that she was far ahead of the bulk of the British polity when it comes to racism and immigration. Good to see that Shakira too has joined the fight, visiting Phoenix yesterday especially to denounce the new Arizona Senate Bill 1070 law:

'I heard about it on the news and I thought, 'Wow', It is unjust and it's inhuman, and it violates the civil and human rights of the Latino community ... It goes against all human dignity, against the principles of most Americans I know... We're talking about human beings here'. Shakira also made a stop at the state Capitol in downtown Phoenix, telling a group of a few hundred community members that if the law were in effect, she could be arrested since she didn't bring her driver's license to Arizona. "I'm here pretty much undocumented," she told the crowd... "No person should be detained because of the color of their skin" (Washington Post, 28 April 2010).

The law, which is due to come in to effect in July, makes it a crime to be an 'alien' in the US without specific registration documents and requires police to check people's immigration status if they have a 'reasonable suspicion' . It will also make it a crime to give shelter to undocumented migrants, or transport them. Appalling, but not so different from the UK situation where employers are required to check papers and are increasing turning people over to the Borders Agency.

Still at least in the US, the She Wolf is on the case! Interview follows - 'People are people with or without documents':

Ricky Martin also said last night “You are not alone. We are with you... Put a stop to discrimination. Put a stop to hate. Put a stop to racism.”

Can I vote for Amerie? Racist immigration controls in Arizona and UK

So why put up a video for Amerie's 1 Thing at this late stage in the day? Well it's a great track and why can't I a put up a good song at the end of the week just because I like it.

But also because I can't bear to hear any more nonsense about immigration in the UK election campaign. The only decent thing said on the subject by Gordon Brown was when he called somebody 'a bigoted woman' for her comments about immigrants 'flocking' to the country. Of course he didn't mean to be overheard, and having been crucified by the press for it, it was back to business as usual in tonight's TV debate trying to out tough the Tories about 'illegal immigrants'.

Compare and contrast Amerie's very sensible analyis via Twitter: 'Consequences of this new Arizona immigration law are fightening to say the least...imagine the precedence if this law holds firm. Think about it: you're driving to the store, movies, walking down the street with a couple friends...u get stopped... oops, u don't have any id on u. So now you're off to jail or detained till someone can come prove ur a us citizen afterall, & the fact that most people who will be detained due to "reasonable suspicion" will happen to be brown complected goes without saying'.

Well she's absolutely right: as Robert Creamer argues, 'The Arizona of 2010 Is the Alabama of 1963... the new Arizona law requires that all police officers with a reasonable suspicion that an individual might not be in our country legally, must demand to see that person's papers. It also requires that each person who has immigrated carry those papers at all times or be in violation of the law themselves... In a free society people should never have to worry that the plainclothes police officer around the next corner has the right - even the obligation - to demand to see their papers simply because they have brown skin or are chatting with their friends in Spanish, or Polish, or Italian'.

Yet seemingly few people bat an eyelid when this kind of thing happens in the UK. I frequently see joint Borders Agency/transport police operations in London, where, similar to Amerie's scenario, people with dark skins and/or foreign accents who don't have the right ticket for the bus or train get pulled over and questioned about their immigration status - resulting for some in arrest, detention and deportation. Where is the outrage?! Can I vote for Amerie please?

(first heard about Amerie's comments via Dan Hancox)

Blair Peach, Southall and the Rasta folk devil

I posted last year on the 30th anniversary of the death of Blair Peach, killed during the anti-fascist demonstration in Southall, West London, on 23 April 1979. Papers finally released today by the Metropolitan Police show that they were well aware at the time that he must have been killed by the police Special Patrol Group, but nobody was ever charged.

There's a huge amount of material on the Met's site which I haven't had time to read through yet. One things I was struck by was an internal report to the Home Office written the day after by a Deputy Assistant Commissioner at New Scotland Yard. It gives the police account of the demonstration, which was called to oppose a National Front meeting in this largely Asian area (note that the NF chose St George's Day for its provocation, just as its successor the BNP chose the same day to launch its 2010 election manifesto last week).

The report is clearly an early exercise in putting together a police narrative that justified the violence used in what was to be described as a 'police riot'. For instance, it describes the notorious police assault on the People Unite centre, in which Misty in Roots manager Clarence Baker was put in a coma, as a defensive operation:

'A group of mainly rastafarians, squatting in a house in Park View Road, threw stones and smoke canisters at police. There were a number of police injuries and it was necessary for police to enter the building . There was considerable violence from those in occupation. Truncheons were used and there were injuries to the occupants and police -including two police officers who were stabbed. A variety of missiles were used, including paint which was thrown over police. Curry powder was thrown in policemen's faces'.

Interesting to see that the report invokes that 1970s 'black folk devil' (Gilroy) , the criminal Rastafarian - armed in this case with that most Unenglish of weapons - curry powder! Writing in that period, Paul Gilroy quoted some choice examples of anti-Rasta coverage in the British media. How about:

'Scotland Yard has alerted police forces in England and Wales about the infiltration threat by a West Indian mafia organisation called Rastafarians. It is an international crime ring specialising in drugs, prostitution, extortion, protection, subversion and blackmail... They favour red, high-powered cars, wear their hair in long rats tails under multi-coloured woollen caps and walk about with 'prayer sticks' -trimmed pick axe handles. They are known to police and intelligence organisations on both sides of the Atlantic as being active in organising industrial unrest' (Reading Evening Post, 1976, cited in Gilroy).

The notion of gangsters juggling global drug dealing with organising strikes seems hilarious now, but the consequences of these attitudes in legitimising repression against black youths were serious enough: 'Ideas of black criminality... intersect with racist common sense and, in that process, provide a wealth of justifications for illegitimate, discriminatory and of course illegal police practices at the grassroots level' (Paul Gilroy, Police and Thieves, included in Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in 70s Britain, 1982).

Back to that same police report I quoted earlier we can find another example of the barely concealed racism of the period with a statement that 'the violence was mainly from Asian youths, who appeared quite often to lose complete control of their emotions'. Tied up in this is a whole discourse of over emotional foreigners, of Asian males as not quite real men (the main Cass report on Blair's death likewise refers to 'a little Indian man, bleeding').

The police might have got a bit more careful about their language, but pumped up cops from the TSG (successor to the SPG) are still a threat to life and limb as shown by the death last year of Ian Tomlinson.

More on this:


- The-sauce puts police names to some of the blacked out gaps in the documents released today.
- Chris Searle at the IRR remembers Blair Peach, recalling his earlier arrest in 1974 for opposing a racist colour bar at the Railway Tavern in Bow.
- Blue Murder - songs about police killings including Blair Peach, to which I'd like to add another. London Hooligan Soul by the Ballistic Brothers includes the line: 'Blair Peach a crying shame. The NF and unmarked police vans. Who is to blame?'.
- John Eden, an old post on Reggae and the National Front with more about Misty in Roots and Southall.

Flyer for a 1979 benefit gig at Trinity Hall, Bristol for the Southall Defence Fund and People Unite, featuring Revelation Rockers, Stingrays, and The Spics.

Stars Campaign for Inter-Racial Friendship: rock against racism in the 1950s?

Jazz musician John Dankworth died last month. As this BBC film from 1959 shows, one of his early achievements was to chair the Stars Campaign for Inter-Racial Friendship, founded in 1959 to combat the activities of the White Defence League. As well as Dankworth, members of the campaign included Cleo Laine, Tommy Steele, Lonnie Donegan (looking very like a young Billy Bragg), Humphrey Lyttelton, and folk singer Karl Dallas.



As described at Love Music Hate Racism, Colin Jordan's White Defence League later merged as part of the first British National Party in 1960, with Jordan's former comrade John Tyndall later going on to form the National Front and then the current BNP. Jordan, who was once jailed for trying to burn down synagogues, was later the fuhrer of the British Movement leading a motley crew of neo-nazi skinheads to nowhere in the 1980s.

Musicians Deported by UK Border Agency

The campaign is continuing against the points-based immigration system restricting artists visting the UK (discussed here before) is continuing. The Manifesto Club Visiting Artists Campaign handed in a petition at 10 Downing Street this week against the system, signed by 10,000 people amongst whose names I recognised Sukhdev Sandhu, Michael Moorcock, Tacita Dean, Jeremy Deller, Charlie Gillett, and, fantastically, Arthur Brown, God of Hellfire.

They have also produced a dossier, Deported: Artists and academics barred from the UK which highlights many cases, including the following:

'Gabriel Teodros, USA, hip-hop artist: Statement from Gabriel Teodros: “I was invited to the UK by a university to perform and participate in an academic conference, and was detained for eight hours at London-Heathrow before being sent back to the States, for reasons that were unclear. This has personally cost me thousands, ruined months of plans, and your own border agents could not even answer questions regarding your laws. I may tour the entire world but will never fly back into London. These laws are a wall so many artists & educators can not find a way around, the arts and culture in your country will suffer.”

' The Pipe Band, Pakistan, pipe musicians. Members of the Pakistani pipe band – due to perform at the World Pipe Band Championships in Glasgow – were unable to attend when their visa applications were rejected. The World Pipe Band Championships at Glasgow Green is said to be worth an estimated £7 million to the city economy. SNP MSP for Glasgow Anne McLaughlin called on the UK government and Border Agency to reverse their decision. “The Pipe Band are international ambassadors and Glasgow’s Pipe Band Championships is an international celebration. This kind of decision gives Scotland a bad name and shows up the shambles within the UK Border Agency.”'

'Taisha Paggett, USA, dancer and choreographer: A member of collective Ultra-red, visiting the UK to participate in a workshop (legally a ‘business visitor’), was advised by another member who had become aware of confusing new legislation, not to say she was an artist. She followed her fellow member’s advice, but Immigration became suspicious. Searching her luggage, they found a copy of the email with the fellow member’s advice printed out, and deported her from the UK for deception with no right to return for ten years'.

Linda Rondstadt Sonic Warfare in Arizona

The use of music for sonic warfare, torture and crowd control has been a recurring theme at this site. An interesting example occurred last month in Phoenix, Arizona where the music of Linda Rondstadt was used by the authorities in attempt to drown out a crowd of demonstrators that included - Linda Rondstadt!

The occasion was a demonstration against the notorious anti-immigration policies of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, which have included immigration "sweeps" in Hispanic neighborhoods, making prisoners wear pink handcuffs and old-fashioned striped jail uniforms, and detaining arrested migrants in outdoor tent-based jails. At least 10,000 people took part in the demonstration, including singer Linda Rondstadt and Zack de La Rocha (of Rage Against the Machine). The protest was organized by the Puente movement, along with a coalition of immigrant rights groups, including the National Day Labor Organizing Network

According to a Press Association report (16 January 2010): 'the marchers walked from a west Phoenix park to the Durango Jail Complex, a collection of five jails, where officials played music, including a record by singer Linda Ronstadt, to drown out noise made by protesters'. Police also used pepper spray and horses against demonstrators.

Anyway, the protestors had their own sonic weapons of chanting, music and dancing - including these traditional dancers:

Photo by javiersoto3tvp at twitpic



More reports: People's World; Fires Never Extinguished

Babylon

Franco Rosso's 1980 film Babylon returned to its South London roots with a showing at the Deptford Albany this week:

'In Babylon, the racist brutality of the streets is contrasted with the (intimately shot) spaces of respite where black people come together - sound system nights, engagement parties, churches and Rastafarian gatherings. In all of these sanctuaries music is central. It may not offer magical protection - the tensions of survival still explode along the competitive edge of the soundclash - but it inspires and acts as a rallying point. The film ends with the sound systems hastily packing up as the police raid, leaving Blue standing firm and chanting over the closing credits; 'Babylon brutality, We can't take no more of that.'

Babylon is an important social document, but it would be a mistake to view it as a straightforward representation of reality. It is after all a story, and just as the sharp eyed will spot some of the editing tricks (people skipping between locations shot in Brixton and Deptford in the course of a single scene) those who were there at the time will no doubt have their own take on the accuracy of the film's characters and dialogue.

But at the very least it directly connects, via the real people and places it includes, with the lived histories of the period. A time when the National Front was confronted as it marched through New Cross (1977), and when both the Moonshot (1977) and the Albany (1978) were set ablaze in suspected fascist arson attacks' (more here on its SE London locations)

Peekskill Riots 1949

Must admit I'd never heard of the 1949 Peekskill Riots in New York State. Now thanks to a tip from Bob from Brockley I am much wiser. The focus was an August concert featuring Paul Robeson, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and other left-leaning singers, which was besieged by a cross-burning racist, anti-semitic, anti-communist mob. When the concert was rearranged on September 4th, the Ku Klux Klan and local cops seems to have co-operated to ensure that concert goers were ambushed in the woods on their way home. 150 people needed hospital treatment.

For the full story see this article by Jeffrey Salkin in the Jewish Daily Forward.

Racist Violence in The Jazz Age: Tulsa 1921

An acccount from the excellent Keep Cool - The Black Activists Who Built the Jazz Age by Ted Vincent (Pluto Press, 1995):

'The musical achievements of the 1920s must be seen in the light of the hard living conditions that Black people endured. Lynching claimed over 100 victims a year between 1910 and 1919, and these official annual figures document only the reported terrorist murders. But by 1920 reported atrocities were down to sixty-five and had been further reduced to eighteen by 1927.
Before the Jazz Age it was dangerous in most Southern towns for a Black to be seen walking fast, or talking loudly, let alone trying to make a reasonable contract for a musical performance. These dangers were a prime reason that musicians of this period poured into those oases of opportunity, New Orleans and Memphis. The decline in lynchings, beatings, cross-burnings and the like helped facilitate the Jazz Age by improving working conditions for musicians, especially in the South.

Harrowing accounts of the life of a Black musician travelling the South in the decades before the Jazz Age are plentifully provided in W. C. Handy's autobiography. On one occasion in Alabama, Handy and his touring band were ordered to accompany a menacing fellow to a murder trial. Handy's uniformed band was marched into the courtroom. They were told that they should play 'Dixie' as soon as the judge announced the acquittal of the threatening fellow's brother. The trial proceeded. The judge indeed ruled for the defence. And Handy and the band immediately obliged by filling the courtroom with the sounds of 'Dixie'.

In another incident, Handy and his band were kidnapped in Mississippi, put in a waggon, and taken to what they were told would be a murder. Their captors' plan was for them to commence playing as soon as the deed had been committed. The intended victim was a White store owner who had 'insulted' some of Handy's captors' Black workers. Handy and his musicians were stationed outside the store while the prospective murderer and his friends confronted the store owner, calling him names and trying to provoke a fight. But the store owner refused to fight or to take the gun that was thrust in his hand so that he could be shot 'in self-defence'. Handy and his group were finally let go after being forced to play at a dance for the would-be murderer and his crowd. The women, it turned out, were not in a very festive mood and the dancefloor was largely empty. The men remained in the angry mood they had attained in getting pumped up to kill somebody. The next night three local Blacks were lynched.

This uncertainty for African-American music continued into the early Jazz Age. For instance, a Chicago Defender item of 4 February 1922 reported that six members of a Black orchestra 'beaten by a mob of fifteen men, at Miami, Florida, are back home' in Columbus, Ohio. The Defender went on to describe the incident in Miami as a case of 'professional jealousy'. Thomas Howard, manager of the group, explained to the Defender, 'Down there the white union musicians do not recognize the colored union.' Howard emphasised that all the members of the Columbus, Ohio group and all other groups that he managed were union men.

A race riot where Whites invaded a Black neighbourhood was one type of trauma Black musicians experienced in both the North and the South. In June of 1921, the Broadway star Cleo Mitchell and her touring Jazz Repertory Company had the bad luck to hit Tulsa, Oklahoma, for a week's engagement at Mrs Williams's Dreamland Theatre just in time to get caught up in one of the more gruesome of these White invasions.

Tensions had been mounting in fast-growing Tulsa. The mile-square Black neighbourhood was located on prime real estate near downtown. Pressure was being brought upon Black residents and businesses to sell. Among the outstanding buildings was Mrs Williams's 'beautiful theatre'. On the one hand, this well-to-do Black businesswoman had the only theatre in Tulsa for l3lack patrons (one of the mere nine theatre/movie houses in the whole state of Oklahoma that then catered to a Black clientele - according to a survey by Billboard's Black reporter James A. Jackson). While Williams's Dreamland was an important asset to the black community, it was also serving to bridge the gap between the races by drawing White customers, who came to see the high-quality acts WilIiams booked for her stage.

Then came the bloody and fiery Tulsa riot, the last of the nearly three dozen White mob invasions of Black communities which occurred between 1917 and 1921. These riots typically began on such pretexts as a White person being jostled in a streetcar, Or a black appearing in the 'wrong part' of a public beach. In this regard the Tulsa riot began routinely enough: a Black was arrested for allegedly bothering a White woman in an elevator. A White mob headed for the jail in the hope of lynching the alleged culprit.

But this last of the White mob invasions had a new twist. The community had prepared in advance. A group of armed Blacks surrounded the gaol before the White mob arrived. The Tulsa branch of the revolutionary African Blood Brotherhood (ABB) had announced earlier in the week that any attempt at lynching in Tulsa would be stopped, by whatever means necessary. At the gaol, one White man tried to take a Black man's gun from him. In the ensuing scuffle the White man was shot, and the riot was on.

Cleo Mitchell and the performers of her jazz Repertory Company sought refuge in the large Dreamland Theatre, hoping to wait out the riot. For better than two days the White raiders were kept out of the Black community. ABB militants and other armed Blacks had effectively barricaded the streets leading into the Black community, and Marcus Garvey's Black Cross nurses mobilised and volunteered aid. Over the next two days many Whites died trying to get past the defensive positions. 'Casualty list favorable despite handicap,' headlined a Washington DC Black newspaper in its report from Tulsa.

Frustrated by the barricades, the enraged Whites hired aeroplanes and loaded the planes with dynamite and petrol bombs, which were dropped into the Black community from the air. Fires raged. The Black defenders fell back to try and save their homes from fire. The White mobs breached the barricades and headed for a Black church, which they torched. When Blacks inside ran out they were gunned down. The Dreamland Theatre went up in flames. Mitchell's jazz Repertory Company fled for their lives, leaving behind their costumes and wardrobe and all their personal possessions except what they were wearing on their backs. The theatre was then burned to the ground. According to the Chicago Whip, Williams's Dreamland was located 'close to a white theatre ... [and] it was said to be picked as one of the first targets because it materially reduced the white theatre's patronage'.

A truce was arranged whereby the Oklahoma National Guard entered the Black neighbourhood and disarmed most of the Blacks. Mitchell and her troupe were ordered at gunpoint to accompany the National Guard to the stockade. White mobs were then allowed back into what was left of Black Tulsa, which was then burned to the ground. In the end, the cost in lives had been estimated at 150 Blacks and fifty Whites. Garvey's Negro World noted that the loss of the Dreamland was a painful blow in that 'it was the pride of the Negroes of the city'.

Mitchell and her company left Tulsa as soon as possible, heading for Texas, where 'the company was relieved by the kind efforts of Mrs. Chintz Moore, wife of a Dallas theatre owner, who took them into her home and relieved their immediate needs', noted reporter jackson in Billboard, adding that two Black vaudeville troupes then playing Dallas gave benefit performances for their distraught comrades from Tulsa. A Black journalist in lndianapolis, Indiana, offered to co-ordinate benefits from around the country to help 'in placing the unfortunate on their feet again'.
Living up to 'the show must go on' tradition, by 20 june, a matter of days after the riot, Mitchell and her jazz Repertory Company were suf­ficiently recovered to open an engagement at the Lyric Theatre in New Orleans.

The riot at Tulsa had important, and double-edged, repercussions for the growth of the jazz Age. It took place at a time when many Black communities were under stress. Around the nation moves were afoot to strip Blacks of power in the theatre business. The summer 1921 riot that saw a lynch-minded mob burn the Dreamland Theatre in Tulsa occurred around the same time that mobsters of the Chicago gangland variety brought pressure to bear in Chicago's South Side to end Black control of the jazz cabarets, including a memorable cabaret that also carried the name Dreamland.

The barbaric riot that removed Tulsa's Dreamland did, however, have one salutary effect. Invading White mobs had lost many lives, and coming on the heels of costly White mob invasions of other Black cities, the Tulsa experience proved to be the convincing example that ended raids into Black urban centres by old-fashioned types of mobs in white sheets (the Chicago-style 'mob' was another story). The White invaders in Tulsa expected to have an urban version of the old rural 'lynching bee'. But the brave and organised defence of Tulsa raised the ante beyond what potential future mobs were willing to match.

Within a few years, following the crude version of 'urban renewal' which was the riot that had cleared the former Black community, Tulsa had a new Dreamland Theatre in the neighbourhood that became the new Tulsa Black ghetto. Part of the rebuilding of Tulsa involved re-estab­lishing trust between the races. Inter-racial commissions were formed. Choirs from Black churches visited White churches, and vice-versa, with visiting jazz troupes.'

Folk Against Fascism

The majority of folk musicians I have met have tended to be some kind of lefty/liberal/anarcho/counter-cultural type, and indeed the same goes for many of the people involved in Morris dancing and other folklore-related events. But the British National Party is trying to shift this, advising its activists to get involved in these kind of scenes to stoke up some spurious nationalist culture. Lancaster Unity quotes from the BNP's Activists and Organisers' Handbook which states:

"Ideally our units will lead their communities in organising, or at least supporting, cultural events such as St George's Day celebrations (April 23rd). Most regions of the country have cultural events which are unique to that area, or county. For example, Padstow Hobby Horse (sic) in Cornwall, Arbor Tree Day in Shropshire, Garland King Day and the Well Dressing in Derbyshire, the Marshfield Mummers in Wiltshire, the Haxey Hood in Humberside, and countless others.Some such celebrations, now very popular, have only been revived in recent years - the Hastings Jack in the Green and Whittlesea Straw Bear festivals show just how big such things can get. Why not do some research to see if there's a lost local tradition you can inspire a team of enthusiasts to revive?"

Meanwhile, folk musicians are getting increasingly pissed off about the BNP playing their music and selling their CDs to raise fund- both of which are pretty much out of their control. At the recent Sidmouth Folk Festival, Folk Against Fascism was launched to counter this. They say:

'The UK folk scene is a welcoming and inclusive one; folk music and dance have always been about collaboration, participation, communication and respect. Folk Against Fascism has been created to take a stand against the BNP’s targeting of folk music, a stand against the appropriation of our culture. Folk Against Fascism isn’t a political party or a bureaucratic, top-heavy organisation. It is any and all of us who want to make ourselves aware of the BNP’s bigoted view of our history and culture, and who want to do something about it. The BNP want to take our music, want to twist it into something it isn’t; something exclusive, not inclusive. We must not let them. Folk Against Fascism is a way to demonstrate our anger at the way the BNP wants to remodel folk music in its own narrow-minded image'.

There's a Facebook group and much more to come.

Rise (No) Festival Picnic

One of the first acts of Conservative London Mayor Boris Johnson after his election was to scrap the explicit anti-racist message of the Rise Festival, held on and off in London parks between 1996 and 2008, and subsequently to scrap it altogether. This was one of London's largest free music events, attracting around 100,000 people in the last few years in Finsbury Park. Bands/artists who have performed have included Chumbawumba, Run DMC, De La Soul, Public Enemy, Gregory Isaacs, Roy Ayers, Kelis, Jamelia, Saint Etienne, CSS and Jimmy Cliff.

UpRise is a campaign to get the festival reinstated - since it won't be happening this weekend, they are organising a Rise Festival Picnic in the Park instead: “Sunday, July 12th marks one year on since Europe's largest anti-racism event, Rise Festival, last took place...So, on Sunday, July 12th, we want to show Boris how much we loved Rise Festival and all that it stands for. We can't organise any music due to the council's licensing restrictions and the short notice, but what we do ask is for you to join us in Finsbury Park to chill out, chat to like-minded people and generally have a great day basking in the spirit of Rise Festival! Look out for the UpRise: Save Rise Festival banner ...”

It runs from 2 pm to 7 pm -there's no licence so don't expect a stage with bands, it's more of a 'bring what you expect to find' affair, I am sure some DIY music won't go amiss...

(more details of the picnic on facebook)

Deportees

Students and supporters at the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS) in London are occupying management offices there in protest against the detention and deportation of cleaners at the college last week. According to this account at No Sweat:

'Nine cleaners from the university were taken into detention after a dawn raid by immigration police on Friday. Five have already been deported, and the others could face deportation within days. One has had a suspected heart attack and was denied access to medical assistance and even water. One was over 6 months pregnant. Many have families who have no idea of their whereabouts.

The cleaners won the London Living Wage and trade union representation after a successful “Justice for Cleaners” campaign that united workers of all backgrounds and student activists. Activists believe the raid is managers’ “revenge” for the campaign. Immigration officers were called in by cleaning contractor ISS, even though it has employed many of the cleaners for years. Cleaning staff were told to attend an ‘emergency staff meeting’ at 6.30am on Friday (June 12). This was used as a false pretext to lure the cleaners into a closed space from which the immigration officers were hiding to arrest them.

More than 40 officers were dressed in full riot gear and aggressively undertook interrogations and then escorted them to the detention centre. Neither legal representation nor union support were present due to the secrecy surrounding the action. Many were unable to communicate let alone fully understand what was taking place due to the denial of interpreters. SOAS management were complicit in the immigration raid by enabling the officers to hide in the meeting room beforehand and giving no warning to them. The cleaners were interviewed one by one. They were allowed no legal or trade union representation, or even a translator (many are native Spanish speakers). The cleaners are members of the Unison union at SOAS. They recently went out on strike (Thursday 28 May) to protest the sacking of cleaner and union activist Jose Stalin Bermudez.

Woody Guthrie's Deportees

The experience of the deported SOAS cleaners puts me in mind of the great Woody Guthrie song, The Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (often referred to as Deportee or sometimes Deportees). According to Raymond Crooke: 'On January 29, 1948, a plane crashed near Los Gatos Canyon in California. The fatalities consisted of four Americans and 28 illegal immigrant farm workers who were being deported back to Mexico. Woody Guthrie noticed that radio and newspaper coverage of the incident only gave the names of the American casualties, referring to the Mexican victims merely as "deportees." His response was to write a poem in which he assigned names to the dead: Juan, Rosalita, Jesús and María' .

Woody Guthrie actually wrote these lyrics as a poem and it was not set to music - by Martin Hoffman - for another ten years. It was popuarlised by Pete Seeger and then became something of a folk and country standard, recorded by many artists including The Kingston Trio (1964), Julie Felix, The Byrds (on the 1969 album Ballad of Easy Rider), Joan Baez and Dolly Parton (on the soundrack album to 9 to 5). Bruce Springsteen has covered it too.

One of my favourite versions is by Woody Guthrie's son Arlo Guthrie with Emmylou Harrris:



There's also a rousing Bob Dylan & Joan Baez rendition performed on the Rolling Thunder Revue, at Fort Collins, Colorado, 23 May 1976:



The song has become an Irish standard too, covered by The Emeralds in the 1960s and later by acts including The Dubliners and The Wolfe Tones. The most celebrated Irish version is by Christy Moore - the song is included in the Christy Moore Songbook (Dublin: Brandon, 1984), from where I learnt this song and many others. Here's Christy performing it in 1979:



The deported SOAS cleaners forced on to planes have not come to the same tragic end as the 1948 farm workers, but the song's description of the conditions of their precarious labour is not so very far removed from the present situation: 'Some of us are illegal and some are not wanted, Our work contract's out and we have to move on, 600 miles to that Mexican border, They chase us like outlaws, like thieves on the run'.

The SOAS cleaners also experience the complicity between their employers and the immigration authorities. Companies like ISS profit from employing migrant labour and also benefit from the insecurity of the workforce - using the implicit threat of calling in the Borders & Immigration Agency to keep people in line. Cleaners at SOAS go on strike and a few weeks later the company calls in the Border cops.... you do the math.

Mexican workers in the '40s had a similar experience of such complicity. Under an agreement between Mexico and the U.S. (1947) "undocumented Mexicans who were sent back across the border could return to the U.S. as temporary contract laborers; during the life of their contracts, they could not be again deported. In practice, employers often called Border Patrol stations to report their own undocumented employees, who were returned, momentarily, to border cities in Mexico, where they signed labor contracts with the same employers who had denounced them. This process became known as 'drying out wetbacks' or 'storm and drag immigration.' 'Drying out' provided a deportation-proof source of cheap seasonal labor." [Dick J. Reavis, Without Documents, New York, 1978, p. 39.]

Most of all the song reminds us of the humanity of those labelled as 'deportees' or 'illegals' - real people with real names and real lives. People like the following picked up at SOAS last week - Heidi Campos who left her husband to go to a work meeting on Friday and never came home, being deported to Colombia instead; Luzia Venancio from Brazil, 6 months pregnant and put on a plane; Laura (Alba) Posada from Colombia; Marina Silva and Manuel Zeballos Saldana from Bolivia, Rosa Aguilera (de Perez) from Nicaragua who came to England to visit her hospitalised husband...

More about the occupation at http://freesoascleaners.blogspot.com, send messages of support to freesoascleaners@googlemail.com.

Spain: Moroccan Migrants targeted in Disco Raid

'The SOC –SAT union in Almería has accused the National Police of racism in raids which took place in El Ejido on Saturday, which ended with 70 immigrants faced with deportation orders from the country. The union describes the operation as repressive and completely disproportionate, and allege violence and aggression on the part of the police in the raids which took place, mainly, they say, against citizens from Morocco. Europa Press names the sites as a disco in Santa María del Águila, the Poniente hospital and two central streets – Calles Almería and Manolo Escobar.

SOC-SAT reportedly claims it to be part of a state policy to blame the immigrants for the crisis and unemployment affecting the country. There were concerns also of a minimum target which may have been set for deportation orders from Spain. The union said it will send a report to the Andaluz Ombudsman, and has announced a protest demonstration for a week this Friday, the 22nd May.

(Source: Typically Spanish, 13 May 2009)

Southall 1979

30 years ago today, on the 23 April 1979, the far right National Front were planning an election meeting in Southall, West London. The mainly Asian local population mobilized against this incursion in an area where racist attacks had included the murder of Gurdip Singh Chaggar three years previously. Workers went on strike and the local community, supported by anti-racists from elsewhere blocked the main road.

The police - in particular the Special Patrol Group (forerunner of today's TSG) - used horses, batons and vans against the crowd and clashes continued into the evening. 350 people were arrested, and many were injured. Most tragically, Blair Peach (pictured)- a socialist teacher from New Zealand - was killed by police.

Reggae band Misty in Roots, who came from the area, were involved in setting up People Unite, a community centre. On the day the building was used as the anti-fascist HQ and it was stormed by police, wrecking the building and beating up those inside. Clarence Baker, the manager of Misty, was so badly injured that he ended up in a coma. Police smashed up a sound system and other equipment.

Jack Dromey from the Transport and General Workers' Union said: 'I have never seen such unrestrained violence against demonstrators ... The Special Patrol Group were just running wild.' No police officers were ever charged for their actions.

Punk band The Ruts were also involved in the People Unite collective and released Jah War, a song about the events on the People Unite record label. The lyrics include the lines: 'Hot heads came in uniform, Thunder and lightning in a violent form... Clarence Baker, No trouble maker, Said the truncheon came down, Knocked him to the ground, Said the blood on the streets that day'.

The Ruts and Misty also played at the 'Southall Kids are Innocent' benefits organised by Rock Against Racism in July 1979 at the Rainbow in London, as did The Clash, The Pop Group, Pete Townshend, Aswad, The Members and The Enchanters.

See also:

Blair Peach, Southall and the Rasta Folk Devil

Dave Renton's account of the events

John Eden on Reggae and the National Front

Blue Murder: songs about police killings (including songs about Blair Peach)

Handsworth Songs

Tate Britain in London is currently showing films by the Black Audio Film Collective, including the excellent Handsworth Songs (1986). The film takes as its starting point the riots in Handsworth (Birmingham) in 1985, with its iconic images of burning cars and the then Home Secretary Douglas Hurd being confronted by an angry crowd.

photo credit: John Akomfrah: Handsworth Riots - Twenty Summers On

© Pogus Caesar / OOM Gallery Archive 1985

Arguing that 'there are no stories in the riots, only the ghosts of other stories', the film summons up some of these ghosts with early footage of hopeful migrants arriving in the 1950s cutting backwards and forwards to later experiences of racism - including harrassment on the streets of Handsworth and the death of Cynthia Jarrett following a police raid on her home in Tottenham (which sparked the Broadwater farm riots).


There's some interesting historical footage of Birmingham, including a 1937 Labour Day procession, Malcolm X on a visit to the city in the 1960s and the 1977 anti-National Front demonstrations in Handsworth. The soundtrack is similarly eclectic, ranging from Lord Kitchener to Mark Stewart and the Maffia's take on Jerusalem, alongside Trevor Mathison's brooding soundscape composed especially for the film. No inclusion of Steel Pulse's classic Handsworth Revolution though -maybe at the time it just seemed too obvious.


The film lasts about an hour and is being shown on continuous loop until May just off the main entrance hall at Tate.

Reggae and the National Front

Excellent post at Uncarved on UK reggae and the National Front, complete with a mix of the tracks he talks about. The racist NF, which peaked in the 197os, prompted the Rock Against Racism movement and mass protests across the country.

Last year I helped organise Lewisham '77, a series of events to commemorate the anti-fascist clashes when the NF tried to march through South East London in August 1977. Reggae featured in this story, indeed there was a disagreement about exactly what track was playing at a critical moment, when demonstrators were deciding whether to disperse or to physically confront the NF.

Red Saunders, one of the founders of Rock Against Racism, came on a walk we organised around the route of the protests. He has recalled: 'What I really remember is that there were all these Christians and Communists, telling us to go home. Most people stayed. But we were all just milling about, when this old black lady, too old to march, came out on her balcony. She put out her speakers, as loud as they could, playing Get up, stand up. That did it for me".'

However, Paul Gilory has a different recollection. In his seminal There Ain't No Black in The Union Jack, he mentions that Junior Murvin's Police and Thieves (famously covered by The Clash) 'had blared out from a speaker dangled from an upstairs window when anti-fascist demonstrators attacked the National Front march in Lewisham during August 1977'. Indeed at the Lewisham '77 conference he suggested that Saunders might have been guilty of romanticising events by suggesting that the more militant Get up, stand up was played.

As somebody too young to have been on the streets in 1977, I can't judge who was right - presumably both tracks could have been played. Anyway one way or another, reggae was the soundtrack of opposing the National Front in Lewisham 1977 - when we did our commemorative walk last year we started off in the New Cross Inn where we played Peter Tosh's Get Up Stand Up in the pub before setting off.

A short film about Lewisham '77: