The Age of Insurreckshan - LKJ in NME, 1984

From the NME, 17 March 1984, Neil Spencer interviews Linton Kwesi Johnson. Don’t call him a dub poet…

‘I’m not a dub poet and I don’t want to be classified as one… I’ve always seen myself as a poet full stop. I write mostly in the reggae tradition so my work can be described  as reggae poetry in the same way as jazz poetry, blues poetry.. but dub poetry no. I’m responsible for coining the phrase, as early as 1975 in a pamphlet I wrote called Race and Music but then I was talking about the reggae DJs and describing what they do as poetry, as dub lyricism’

[click images to enlarge]

Extract from interview:

Do you think it's important for black Britons to have a separate identity?

I think they have to forge their own identity from their own reality. The cultural gap between my generation, when we came to this country, and my children and their contemporary white friends, it's negligible.

What are you saying there? There's been no real change between conditions for blacks in Britain between then and now?

Oh, there's been changes, but we've had to fight for them. We've made a lot of progress, tremendous progress I believe, over the last 25 years, and as the events of '81 show clearly, we've moved from the era of the '50s and '60s and early '70s, which was an era of resistance, to an era of insurrection. And that is progress from my point of view.

Progress in what respect?

We're now accepted as being part of the country, even the repatriation lobby has to recognise and live with that. The state and the political parties, those who have power in this country, recognise that we have something to offer, we can swing an election particularly in marginal constituencies.

When Thatcher was running for election in 1978 she made those racist speeches about Britain being swamped by an alien culture; well, as you can see, by the last election they'd changed their tune and were trying to win the black vote.

The riots of '81 seemed almost like fulfilments of prophecies you'd made on the

first two LPs.

Well, not so much prophecies, anyone with any common sense could see it, I wasn't unique in saying those things. There had been a lot of mini-riots throughout the '70s, Basically I think the seeds were sown by the police in the '70s and things came to a head with a new generation of youth.

They were anti-police riots primarily?

Definitely. Anti-police and anti-establishment. All the foreign press reported them as race riots, and some press here too, but you and I and Joe Public know different, because though the young blacks were primarily in the leadership of those insurrections - in Brixton, Toxteth, Manchester whites were a big part of those riots.

I think a lot of the frustrations of the unemployed came out there, and were no means confined to them because a lot of those arrested and charged with looting were workers, people in jobs.

On the LP, on the title track and the tone you adopt is, not exactly rejoicing but…

Celebration! An event to be celebrated! It's an important event in the history of blacks in Britain. It's part of our making history in Britain.

Do you think it changed anything?

Of course it did.

What exactly?

I think it's given the establishment and the police a measure of what blacks can do if pushed too far. It did away with saturation policing. They've eased up a bit, been more careful how they move. Things have generally cooled down. And the project hatchers have got a bit more monev out of it.

A lot of the anger about the New Cross massacre spilled over into the riots. a lot of people can't see that, it was only a month after the day of action that the Brixton riots started.

Ad for LKJ's Making History LP from same issue of paper

See also

LKJ Interview in Socialist Challenge 1982

 

Linton Kwesi Johnson interview, 1982

This interview with Linton Kwesi Johnson was published in the newspaper Socialist Challenge (29 April 1982) under the headline 'We're di forces of vict'ry', alongside a couple of his poems.

'I am an artist who creates for people's entertainment and edification and enlightenment. If my poetry does that I'm happy. If it doesn't I'll have to try harder. If I do write about matters which are of political significance and importance that is only by accident. It's only because I happen to be a political animal who is involved in organisatonal politics.

I have been involved in the black movement since I was a youth. Maybe I would still be writing poetry if I hadn't been involved in the movement with about something completely different. But I don't ever get the two mixed up. You end up with a very cheap progagandist art and I'm totally against that.

I don't believe you can legislate for art. You can't say that the artist must be conscious and the artist must write to free people. An artist creates out of his own experience and at certain times in history there are certain individuals who happen to have these concerns and their art reflects it. For example, Martin Carter, the Guyanese poet; Nicolas Guillen from Cuba; and even in England William Blake who did the painting. These are coincidences. You can have an artist produce good art and be politically reactionary and vice versa.

I think as far as the black movement is concerned that what I do in Race Today is more important than writing ten poems or making ten albums.

Poetry has a role to play. I wouldn't go so far as to say it leads to political action. It has a role to play in the ideological struggle, the struggle for ideas. All it does is to reinforce existing sentiments. I think my poetry has a way of recording our experiences and of expressing the sentiments that we have. These are popular sentiments. I don't invent them. I'm not saying that art has no role to play in the revolutionary movement. Obviously it does. But it is very dangerous to overestimate that role. It is a stimulus.

What most artists hope for if they have a revolutionary perspective is that their art, whether their songs, their novels, their poetry will make people think about their situation or educate them.

It's about entertainment - not in the show business sense but you listen to a piece of music for instance and it'ssad. And because you're a human being and you have that human capacity for sadness you're moved. That's entertainment. And if that isn't what you do then it becomes cheap propaganda. And bad art as well'.

The paper also includes an advert for a '3 the hard way - an evening of poetry with Dub Poets' at Lambeth Town Hall in Brixton with LKJ, Oku Onouua and Michael Smith. The latter was to be killed in the following year in Jamaica after heckling a government minister of the then ruling right wing Jamaican Labour Party.

(Socialist Challenge was the newspaper of the International Marxist Group)

See also:

LKJ Interview in NME, 1984

 

Life Between Islands

Images of musicking and dancing feature heavily in the exhibition 'Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art' at Tate Britain.

Paul Dash - 'Dance at Reading Town Hall' (1965). Dash played piano in a band, the Carib Six - this is a view from the stage.

'As unofficial 'color bars' restricted access to public social spaces, homes became places of sanctuary. The front room, full of reminders of the Caribbean, became a site for intergenerational connection and somewhere to socialise with family and friends. Sound systems provided the soundtrack to the period. DJs, engineers and MCs set up in homes, on the streets and in community centres. They offered a way to connect with culture coming out of the Caribbean, especially Jamaica. For young Black Britons, music created opportunities for collectivity and celebration but also a means to address hostility and discrimination with a spirit of defiance. Dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson named them the 'Rebel Generation' (exhibition notice)

Tam Joseph - 'The Spirit of Carnival' (1982)

Denzil Forrester - 'Jah Shaka' (1983)

from Liz Johnson Artur, 'Lord of the Decks' featuring photos from the early UK grime scene.

'The various musical styles created in widely defined Black Atlantic history have proved so influential that we are obliged to consider the consistency with which they have summoned the possibility of better worlds, directing precious images of an alternative order against the existing miseries, raciological terrors and routine wrongs of capitalist exploitation, racial immiseration and colonial injustice. Those gestures of dissent and opposition were voiced in distinctive keys and modes. They carried the cruel imprint of slavery and were influenced by the burden of its negation.

However, that is not the most important observation we can make about them. The transcoding and transcendence of suffering made productive, becoming useful, but never, in spite of what Bob Marley had said, seeking redemption, directs our attention towards more elusive possibilities. Energised by political and social movements, those musical formations were anticipatory. They helped to construct and enact a 'not-yet' and enchanted it so that it could be both pleasing and seductive. It could be intoxicating and it could be enhanced the ingestion of intoxicants. 

Here we encounter the possibility that, under optimal conditions, singers, dancers and audiences, DJs and selectors might be able to collaborate so that they could glimpse the edge of their world, grasp the fragility of the order they inhabited and apprehend the fleeting but fundamental possibility of Babylon's overthrow'

(from Paul Gilroy, 'Colour Bars and Bass Cultures, Dub Aesthetics and Cockney Translations: Music in the Creole History of Black Life in Britain' in 'Life Between Islands' (Tate 2021)

The exhibition closes on 3 April 2022

Re-appreciating Bob Marley after Marlon James

Reading Marlon James' brilliant 'A Brief History of Seven Killings' has led me into a re-appreciation of Bob Marley. Of course everybody loves Marley, but the very ubiquity of his image, from cans of drinks to posters on student stoners' bedroom walls, is part of the problem. Like The Beatles or The Clash it's hard to simply listen to the songs buried under decades of nostalgia and music industry marketing.

While reading the novel I went back and listened properly to Marley's output for the first time in years, starting with his early material. And yes a lot of it still sounds great! Reading about the political and social conditions of 1970s Jamaica in the novel, you can certainly understand the incendiary impact of songs like 'Them Belly Full (But We Hungry)' or 'Talkin' Blues' ('who's gonna stay at home when the freedom fighters are fighting?').

Bob Marley mural by Dale Grimshaw near to  Brockley station, South London. This was painted this year to replace a previous Marley mural that was demolished. Its painting was contentious locally. Marley had no particular connection to this place, but as with all Marley-related matters it's what he symbolises that many find significant - in this case a visual link to the area's African Caribbean recent history in a period when it is arguably become more white/middle class.

In some ways the novel is only tangentially about Marley, referred to as The Singer throughout. He rarely appears himself as a character, but he is a central focus for many of the other characters whose lives are shaped by their involvement, in various ways, in the shooting of Marley in December 1976. For James this incident is just a moment, albeit a key one, in a bigger geopolitical story that includes the Cold War and its impact on the political situation in Jamaica, polarised between two main parties and their related armed gangs, and subsequently the transformation of local gangsters into major players in the international drugs trade. All this and a lot more than seven killings.

But at one point James does reflect briefly on the wider significance of Marley as a global talisman for 'sufferahs' everywhere:

'Three girls from Kashmir sling on bass, guitar and drums, fresh faces brimming out of burkas, propped up and held together by a backdrop of the Singer streaked in red, green and gold stripes, thick like a pillars. They call themselves First Ray of Light, soul sisters to the Singer smiling with his rising sun. Out of a wrapped face comes a melody so fragile it almost vanishes in the air. But it lands on a drum that kicks the groove back up to where the song lingers, swells and soothes. Now the Singer is a balm to spread over broken countries. Soon, the men who kills girls issue a holy order and boys all over the valley vow to clean their guns, and stiffen their cocks, to hold down and take away. The Singer is support, but he cannot shield, and the band breaks away.

But in another city, another valley, another ghetto, another slum, another favela, another township, another intifada, another war, another birth, somebody is singing Redemption Song, as if the Singer wrote it for no other reason but for this sufferah to sing, shout, whisper, weep, bawl, and scream right here, right now'.

The 'Three girls from Kashmir' referred to here are the band Pragaash (whose name translates as first ray of light), who appeared briefly in December 2012 but gave up a few months later after the Grand Mufti in Kashmir issued a fatwa terming singing as un-Islamic and the band received online threats.

Pragaash perform in front of Marley backdrop

Mass arrest of anti-fascists opposing the EDL in Tower Hamlets

The English Defence League demonstration in London yesterday didn't amount to very much, with around 500 taking part. Fears that they would pick up momentum in the aftermath of the Woolwich killing of soldier Lee Rigby have not been borne out.

The EDL had intended to march on East London Mosque in Whitechapel claiming that Tower Hamlets is under sharia law - presumably just because it has a large Muslim population. The police kept them well away from there however.  After meeting in Southwark by the south end of Tower Bridge, they were escorted over the bridge to the edge of Tower Hamlets at Aldgate and back again. Later a few of them wandered through Bermondsey shouting slogans then dispersed.

Large police presence on corner of Tower Bridge Road and Queen Elizabeth St SE1
 - EDL gathering point

A larger counter demonstration of several thousand people gathered in Altab Ali Park in Whitechapel where the EDL had originally planned to get to - a provocative gesture as the park is named after a local man killed in a racist attack in 1978. Speakers included Max Levitas, who fought against fascists in this part of London in the 1930s.

'Sisters Against the EDL'

 In an attempt to get nearer to the EDL, a large part of the crowd headed by an Anti-Fascist Network bloc set off round nearby streets. Some of them ended up being kettled by police, who later staged a mass arrest of anti-fascists under Section 12 and Section 14 of the Public Order Act 1986 - the laws which allow the police to impose conditions on public demonstrations and assemblies. In other words, they were arrested for diverging from the route imposed by the police - for little more than standing in the wrong road.

South London Anti-Fascists Banner

Final numbers have not yet been confirmed but it seems that in the region of 200 anti-fascists were arrested. Bail conditions have been imposed preventing those arrested from taking part in protests 'within the boundaries of the M25 where the English Defence League, English Volunteer Force or British National party are present'. This seems to be a deliberate police strategy to combat the resurgence of militant anti-fascism - South London Anti-Fascists and similar groups have shown that they can mobilise growing numbers of people at a time when the wheels seem to be coming off the SWP-led Unite Against Fascism.

A bail notice issued last night at Colindale police station to one of those arrested (Source)

On a musical note, I noticed that the Association of Musical Marxists had a banner out yesterday.

And in the park there was a great performance by UK Apache. After a rendition of his famous 'Original Nuttah' ('Bad boys inna london, Rude boys inna england') he sang Tenor Saw's 'Lots of Sign' - fantastic.

NME Charts December 1983: the best of times and the worst of times?

What were the UK pop kids, dancers and punks listening to 30 years ago? Here's some clues in the charts  from the New Musical Express 24 December 1983.

The Dance Floor charts weren't really a reflection of record sales or even necessarily of what people were dancing to in many UK high street clubs. This one was compiled by the DJ at Birmingham club 'The Garage' so it's probably more a snapshot of what people were listening to there and in similar places where the DJs played an eclectic mix of of  funk, soul and more post-punk funk from the likes of A Certain Ratio and Jah Wobble. Certainly I remember going to lots of student parties in this period where James Brown was obligatory - he was still releasing great records in this period, with 'Bring it On' coming out in 1983 and his last hit 'Living in America' in 1985.

The term 'World Music' hadn't yet caught on, the category 'Third World' was used in the NME charts to cover music from Africa, the Middle East, Mongolia and seemingly anywhere outside of Europe and North America. The chart was compiled by Triple Earth Records, which went on to become a significant 'world music' label in the 1980s.

The Reggae Disco singles charts and Reggae LPs chart were compiled by 'Observer Station' with a whole lot of Johnny Osbourne - three singles and an album riding high. Michael Palmer's Ghetto Dance was number one single ('Ghetto dance, ghetto dance, Babylon give me a chance...').

The Independent charts were based on record sales and had become a big deal in a period of many iconic indie acts (Smiths, Cocteau Twins, New Order, Birthday Party), the anarcho-punk scene (Conflict, Subhumans), psychobilly (The Meteors and Cramps) and emerging goths (Death Cult, Sisters of Mercy, Alien Sex Fiend). Label wise the big ones were 4AD, Mute, Rough Trade and Factory, but Stoke-based punk label Clay Records was also important (Discharge, GBH, Abrasive Wheels etc).

The main UK charts featured some classic pop as well as lots of crap which no amount of nostalgia/retro irony can rescue from the charity shop unwanted piles where it now lingers. The dominant album was Michael Jackson's Thriller - number one in the charts a year after it was first released. Culture Club has become a global sensation that year, and Luton's Paul Young was riding high. I worked in a Luton factory that summer packing electrical instruments while listening to Radio One with his then girlfriend's mum!

History is Made at Night Sampler 1.0 - a zine for the bookfair

The London Anarchist Bookfair was a couple of weeks ago (October 27th to be precise) and to turn up without some printed matter to disseminate is a bit like going to a party and not taking any drink with you. So I put together a short paper zine collecting together some articles from this site, including material on Malcolm X, radio in the Portuguese revolution 1974, London's Club UK in the 1990s, and a round up of free parties and police from this year.

You can download History is Made at Night Sampler 1.0 here (12 pages A5)

At the Bookfair I helped on the Datacide stall, shifting copies of the essential new issue (detailed here previously). Also on the stall we had a few copies of John Eden's Tweetah reggae zine.  You may recall the great reggae/dubstep/grime zine Woofah. A lot of material was written for a final issue that never actually came out for various reasons, so John Eden has put out some of it in the one-off (?) Tweetah. There's a great interview with DJ David Rodigan among other things (you can order a copy at Uncarved)

The Datacide stall was banished to a room of the bookfair off the main hall seemingly reserved for not-really-anarchists, an honorable category that also included Aufheben, Endnotes and, the Platypus Affiliated Society - all good and interesting folk, the latter a newish Marxist-Humanist current trying to explore 'possibilities for emancipatory struggle in the present' amidst what they see as the virtual extinction of the traditional left. Much of their activity seems to be the platypus debating with various dinosaurs of the American maoist and trotskyist left in an attempt to get them to evolve, a fruitless task. But there is some interesting critique and a clear influence of German radical thought from the Frankfurt School to 'Anti-National' currents.

Continuing the small furry animal German radical left influenced theme I also picked up a copy of Kittens the 'Journal of the Wine and Cheese Appreciation Society of Greater London', a London based group linked to the mainly German network 'Junge Linke: gegen Kapital und Nation'. Again, an attempt to think through what a radical analysis of the present would look like without simply regurgitating leftist orthodoxy. An attempt, no less,  'to criticise those conditions which ensure that wine and cheese are not available to everyone and to criticise everyone who justifies this'.

So my inner Marxist went away happy, but in the last couple of years there just hasn't been enough weird, counter-cultural  or plain unexpected stuff at the bookfair to satisfy my other side. It's been a while since I came across anything like Dreamflesh or Strange Attractor, or even that really cool Walter Benjamin book I picked up at a bargain price from the author at the bookfair ('Metaphysics of the Profane: The Political Theology of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem' by Eric Jacobson). Come on all you zinesters and pamphleteers, you've got 12 months to get your act together for next year.

NME Guide to Rock & Roll London (1978): Reggae

The New Musical Express Guide to Rock & Roll London was a cut out and keep booklet given away with the NME in ealry 1978 - my copy is not dated, but it advertises a forthcoming event coming up at Easter 1978.

I'm going to scan it and put some of it up over the next few weeks, starting with this guide to reggae venues and shops in the capital at that time. The listed venues include Dougie's Hideaway Club in Archway N18, Club Noreik in Seven Sisters Road N15 and the Bouncing Ball Club (43 Peckham High Street SE15), the latter offering 'Good Bar, plus hot Jamaica patties. Spacious club with congenial atmosphere, featuring top-line JA and UK reggae acts, plus some soul. Admiral Ken Sounds'.

Reggae record shops included Hawkeye in Harlesden, Daddy Kool (Tottenham Court Road), M&D (36a Dalston Lane E8), Greensleeves (Shepherds Bush), Dub Vendor (Clapham Junction market - which survived in the area until last year), Third World Records (113 Stoke Newington Road N16) and Tops Record Shop (120 Acre Lane, SW2) - 'Front Line rock at Tops, the leading South London dub stop stockists of all current reggae releases, plus R&B and doo-wop albums, soul imports, and a fortnightly shipment of JA pre, specialising in Techniques (JA) and Clintones (US) productions'.

See also:

NME Guide to Rock & Roll London 1978: Gay Clubs
NME Guide to Rock & Roll London 1978: Disco

We are Luton

The racist idiots of the English Defence League held a demonstration in Luton yesterday, on the day they announced that they were joining up with the British Freedom Party - another extreme right wing outfit led by ex-British National Party activists. 

Around 1,000 people joined the anti-EDL 'We are Luton' demonstration from the town's Wardown Park (I didn't see the EDL, but Luton on Sunday reports that they had a around 500).

The police mounted a huge operation to keep the two demonstrations apart, with metal barriers to prevent the 'We are Luton' march getting into the town centre. There was a brief flurry of action here, where the police deployed their horses to stop an attempted break out of the police cordon:

Good to see Leviticus sound system at the start of 'We are Luton', playing some Bob Marley as usual! Leviticus is a successor to the Exodus Collective who famously put on massive free parties and festivals in Luton and surrounding area in the 1990s and early 2000s:  'The Leviticus (formerly Exodus) Collective are a Luton based Sound System and Social Movement who see ‘Leaving Babylon’ as re-building our community on the principles of oneness, sharing and co-operation, instead of those of greed, competition and hoarding which underpin the ‘Babylon System’. So we re-claim disused lands and properties in our town to create our own tribal dances, free festivals, workplaces and homes...building an alternative ‘way of life’ right here in Luton'. 

Luton is generally portrayed in the media as a town dominated by the racist EDL on the one hand, and hardcore islamists on the other, but obviously most people have no time for either of these tiny factions. Leviticus offer a different vision of  'Revo-luton'. I went to one of their dances last year at the Carnival Arts Centre in Luton, with reggae in one room and drum'n'bass in the other - and a crowd with White UK, African-Caribbean and Asian people partying together. Over the years Exodus/Leviticus have mobilised many more people in Luton than the EDL have ever managed.

See Malatesta and Inayat's Corner for report of EDL antics in Luton yesterday.

How it all began (for me): a School Kid against the Nazis in Luton 1979/80

Blinded by the Light - memories of racism and job cuts in 1980s Luton (including the Luton Youth Movement)

The Luton Riots of 1981 - 'Brixton comes to Bedfordshire'

The Hunger Strike, the Irish War and an English Town

Karma Sutra, Luton anarcho-punk and hunt sabbing

Clubbing in Luton 1984

Dole Days in Luton: unemployed protests, 1985

We are Luton - opposing the English Defence League in 2012

'Angry White People' book review (at Datacide magazine)

Winston Riley (RIP) and Stalag 17

Reggae producer Winston Riley died this week. Plainly not everybody liked him:

'Winston Riley, an innovative reggae musician and producer, has died of complications from a gunshot wound to the head. He was 65. Riley died Thursday at University Hospital of the West Indies, where he had been a patient since November, when he was shot at his house in an upscale neighborhood in the capital of Kingston, his son Kurt Riley said Friday. Riley also had been shot in August and was stabbed in September last year. His record store in Kingston’s downtown business district also was burned down several years ago. Police have said they know of no motives and have not arrested anyone'.

But you've got to love the man who produced this...



...and this:




...not to mention this...


Stalag 17

Riley's Stalag 17 Riddim has been used as the basis for these and countless other reggae, dancehall and indeed hip-hop tracks (see for instance list at Jamaican Riddim Directory). I believe the original Stalag 17 track, recorded by by Ansell Collins and produced by Riley, dates from 1973. Riley himself put out a compilation album of versions called Stalag 17, 18 and 19, and later there was a tribute album Stalag 20, 21 and 22.

An intriguing question is why the orginal instrumental track was called Stalag 17 in the first place. Clearly it took its name from the 1953 movie about US prisoners of war in a German camp during World War Two; the film in turn taking its name from a real POW camp at Krems in Austria.

I suspect that the name simply reflected the continuing importance of World War Two in popular culture in that period. In England, children in the 1960s and early 70s grew up on a never ending diet of war movies and no doubt it was similar in Jamaica, from where thousands of people had left to fight in the war. Other Jamaicans had travelled to work in US factories and farms during the war - incidentally some of them being detained in camps and punished for 'breaking contracts', a policy that led to a 1945 riot by 1,000 Jamaican and Bahamian workers in Camp Murphy in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Of course The Skatalites had previously covered the theme tune to another war movie, The Guns of Navarone, getting a UK hit in 1967. Later, in 1978, The Clash reworked the theme tune from Stalag 17 - Johnny Comes Marching Home - as English Civil War.

Anyway, there's a sweet irony in the name given by the Nazis to a prison camp being appropriated by people they would doubtless have regarded as 'racially inferior' for not just one track but a whole sub-genre of African Caribbean music.

Billboard obituary here

Dancehall and church hall

Robert Beckford's 'Jesus Dub: theology, music and social change' (London: Routledge, 2006) offers a 'dialogue between the cultural production of dancehall and theology of the church hall', drawing on his own experiences in African Caribbean Christianity and of sound system culture.

In respect of the latter, Beckford recalls his first encounter with dub courtesy of Coventry's Conquering Lion sound system in the 1970s:

'What immediately struck me when I entered the converted class-room masquerading as an urban dance floor was the sheer intensity of the event. It was corked full of young people and the events were conducted in pitch dark. It was also boiling hot due in part to the reggae dance floor chic of wearing winter coats with matching headwear. However, overpowering all of my senses was what Julian Henriques terms sonic dominance of the sound system. There was a throbbing, pulsing bass line ricocheting through the bricks, mortar, flesh and bones. The sonic power was tamed in part by the DJ's improvised poetic narration or 'toasting' over the dub track. Playing on the turntable was a dub version of MPLA by a reggae artist called 'Tappa Zukie' (David Sinclair). As the DJ 'toasted', the silhouetted bodies moved in unison to the bass line: the heat, darkness and body sweat adding to the sheer pleasure of this Black teen spirit... These rituals of orality, physicality and communality were also acts of pleasure and healing'.

Beckford is also good on the sound systems as means of cultural production: 'Sound systems consist of far more than just turntables and speakers. Such is their size and complexity that they require a crew of people to run them' (operators, selectors, DJs, drivers etc), and 'this is an important point of departure from the current trend in mainstream popular DJ culture where DJs travel with records and play on sets already pre-prepared and with which they have no relationship... As well as being a community, the sound sysyem's division of labour provides an opportunity for artistic development'.

If the theological aspects of the book sound like a turn-off I recommend sticking with it. Beckford attempts the ambitious task of 'dubbing' pentecostalist Christianity with a bit of help from 'Black liberation theologies of the Black Atlantic' (James H Cone, Gutierrez etc.) as well as Paul Gilroy, Deleuze and Guattari.

If you think it's stretching it a bit to describe Jesus as 'a dubbist involved in taking apart and reconstructing. human life and transforming unjust social structures and practices', you should at least be open to having some of your prejudices challenged. It certainly gave me pause for thought and made me a bit more sceptical of the assumption that proliferating black churches are simply a sign of political quietism if not reaction, even more so of the assumption that the leisure choices of white middle class urbanites (arthouse cinemas, restaurants) should always be given precedence*.

(*Obviously I'm referring here to the typical local liberal campaign that goes 'omg that long derelict building is being turned into an African church we must start a campaign to turn it into something we like instead'. I don't dispute that some churches are money making rackets with dubious practices in relation to child 'possession' etc. but that's hardly the whole story!)

Shashamene 1982

The news today from Ethiopia is grim, as it has been at many times in the past, with drought, food shortages, torture and political repression. Yet this place has also been the focus of utopian hopes, not least from the Rastafarian movement. The Face magazine (November 1982) featured a fascinating article by Derek Bishton about Shashamene, a township in southern Ethiopia where Rastafarians from Jamaica and elsewhere had settled in search of a better life.

As the article explains, the origin of the setlement was the 1945 Land Grant, whereby Ethiopian head of state Haile Selassie donated 500 acres of land to enable black people from elsewhere to return to Africa. This had followed discussions with the Ethiopian World Federation, a Garveyite organisation set up to support Ethiopia after it was invaded by Mussolini's Italy in 1935.

By the mid 1970s there were only about 15 Rastafarians living in Shashamene, but they were then joined by a second wave associated with the Twelve Tribes of Israel, the group that Bob Marley was associated with. The article documents their lives and hopes, as well as their struggles in the face of poverty, political tensions, and internecine quarrels. Not sure how life is now in Shashamene, but the Rastafarian settlement is still in existence.

For more on Shashamene today and its musical connections with Ethiopian reggae, see this great post at Soundclash

(click on pages to enlarge and read article)

Lebanese reggae arrest

Lebanese musician Zeid Hamdan, from the band Zeid and the Wings, was arrested last week for allegedly defaming Lebanese President Michel Suleiman in his single 'General Suleiman'. The songs is actually over a year old, but seems to have recently come to the attention of the authorities. And so he was called to the police station at the Palace of Justice in Beirut and then detained. After a Facebook campaign he was released later the same day, but may still face prosecution.

The lyrics go: 'General Suleiman, Peace be upon you, General Suleimen... Put your weapons down, put your weapons down, now it's time to leave your warlords behind'. (Suleiman was a general before becoming President). All with some reggae lite backing. With music playing its role in the overthrow of governments in Tunisia and elsewhere, states in the Middle East are clearly anxiously checking out what people are listening to.

"

Short Hot Summer 1981: Brixton

Another in the series of posts on the 1981 summer riots . 30 years ago today, on Friday 10 July, Brixton exploded for the second time in three months following the arrest of sound system operator Lloyd Coxsone.

'Violence returned to the streets of Brixton this weekend, a few hours after Lord Scarman finished part one of his enquiry into the April riots. Large crowds clashed with police, cars were overturned and set alight, shops were attacked and looted only a short distance from Lambeth Town Hall where GLC leader Ken Livingstone was addressing an Anti Nazi League meeting. His audience had a grandstand view as officers fought looters... 31 officers were hurt hurt and there were 157 arrests, mainly for looting and assaulting police.

Trouble started at about 4 pm when police arrested a Rastafarian called Maliki in Atlantic Road. A popular disc jockey and community leader Lloyd Coxsone (32) tried to intervene but was arrested for obstruction. Within minutes youths had set up barricades across Atlantic Road... Police reinforcements were quickly on the scene but at 4:30 a Panda care in Atlantic Road was overturned and set on fire. An unmarked car which came to its aid was also overturned and fired but officers escaped unhurt.

Outside the Atlantic pub [late renamed the Dogstar in the 1990s] black leaders used a loud hailer to appeal for calm. Mr Maliki told the crowd that Mr Coxsone had been released and urged them to disperse. But some youths had already taken advantage of the confrontation to start looting shops in Atlantic Road. Rattner's the jewellers were attacked at 4.30 and a mob then ran down Electric Lane to raid Curry's the electrical goods shop...

Police formed themselves up in squads of about a dozen men with a sergeant in command. They lined up along the main road, walking under cover of riot shields towards the crowds. They were apparently trying to disperse the mob along Effra Road and Brixton Hill... By 8.30 police had cleared the centre of Brixton'.

(Source: South London Press, 14 July 1981)

Interview with Lloyd Coxsone

'As Brixton licked its wounds this week, an influential black community leader appealed to local youths to leave the shops alone. Disc jockey Lloyd Coxsone, owner of an internationally-famous sound system, said: 'I condemn the looting and shop breaking of last weekend. I know that trust between the youths and the police in this area has broken down. Bu this is not the way to solve the problems. The fighting in April was for a cause and I do feel that a lot of young policemen overstep the mark and are morally wrong. But I would never support any youth who went shopbreaking. It destroys what we are aiming for - a peaceful solution'.

Mr Coxsone (32) of Goulden House, Bullen Street, Battersea, was remanded on unconditional bail until August 24 at Camberwell on Wednesday after pleading not guilty to obstructing PC Kenneth MacKenzie in Vining Street and Atlantic Road on July 10. He admitted that he felt bitter at the way he and a colleague were arrested in Vining Street, last Friday night. The arrests led to a major confrontation in Atlantic Road which was only defused when Mr Coxsone and other black leaders addressed the crowds...

Mr Coxsone, a devout Rastafarian and father of six children also owns a record shop in Coldharbour Lane which he opened last December [Lloyd Coxsone Outernational Record Store, 395 Coldharbour Lane SW9]. A personal friend of the late Bob Marley, he came to England in 1962 to help promote Jamaican music through his sound system. He taken his music and his faith to most cities in England and Wales, and last December was engaged to play in Holland. The sound system is run by a team of about 18 young men, who share in the decision-making, and has an enormous following.

Coxsone himself is famous for his 'toasting' - a form of spoken commentary which underlines the words and music of reggae. Tall and slim, with dreadlocks down to his shoulders and a penetrating gaze, he is an impressive figure by any standards. After the April riots, Mr Coxsone and other influential members of the black community formed themselves into a 'peace committee'. The idea was to act as a channel of communication between local youths and the police. But Mr Coxsone feels it has not achieved full recognition...'

(Source: South London Press, 17 July 1981)

Poor Man Story by Levi Roots was produced by Coxsone and released on his label in 1981:

Promised Land

Last week in Iowa, Michele Bachmann launched her bid to become the Republican candidate in the nex US presidential election. On the Tea Party far right of American politics, she has a long, lamentable history of anti-gay and anti-abortion activism not to mention whitewashing the history of slavery.

As she made her way to the podium in Waterloo at the weekend 'Elvis Presley's Promised Land belted out'. Well the notion of manifest destiny and Americans as the new chosen people is a hardy right wing trope, and at one level there is a connection between the idea of the Promised Land and the American frontier.

But we cannot leave the Promised Land in the hands of US Conservatives. The name itself derives of course from the Book of Genesis where God promises Moses the land of milk and honey, not a metaphysical utopia but the actual land of Israel. Over the millennia that tribal foundation myth of a people in the prehistoric Middle East has taken on a universal appeal, holding out the hope of a better world somewhere, some place, some time

It's hardly suprisizing that Bachmann chose Elvis Presley's version of the song, rather than the original by its black songwriter. When Chuck Berry sings it there is no doubt that the songs works on at least two levels. On the surface it is simply a description of a journey from Norfolk, Virginia to California, part of the 1950s/early 1960s mythologisation of travelling across the USA (Route 66, Highway 61, On the Road).



But at another level, the journey retraces a moment in the mass migration of black people from the segregated Southern states. Surely it can't be a coincidence that he 'bypassed Rock Hill' where in 1961 Freedom Riders had been beaten for fighting against racism on Greyhound buses. And at the time Berry was writing the song in prison in 1962/63 Birmingham, Alabama was the front line of the civil rights movement - no wonder the narrator can't get away quick enough once 'stranded in downtown Birmingham'.

A few years later, Martin Luther King brought the Promised Land into the heart of the struggles of the period. In his final speech in 1968 during the Memphis sanitation workers strike, King famously declared: 'I don't know what will happen now; we've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop... And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the Promised Land'. The next day he was murdered.



It is this semi-utopian Promised Land that Joe Smooth (and Anthony Thomas) sings of in the early Chicago house classic: 'Brothers, Sisters, One Day we will be free. From Fighting, Violence, People Crying in the Streets... as we walk, hand and hand, sisters, brothers, we'll make it to the promised land'



In Bruce Springsteen's take on this, from the 1978 album Darkness on the Edge of Town, the Promised Land features only as a hazy image of a better life. The singer professes 'I believe in the Promised Land' but he is unclear about what or where this is. It is simply the negation of a life spent 'Working all day in my daddy's garage', a place that can seemingly only be reached on the other side of the destruction of all that stands:

'I've done my best to live the right way
I get up every morning and go to work each day
But your eyes go blind and your blood runs cold
Sometimes I feel so weak I just want to explode
Explode and tear this whole town apart
Take a knife and cut this pain from my heart...
Gonna be a twister to blow everything down'.



(see also Springsteen's Thunder Road with its line 'Oh-oh come take my hand, Riding out tonight to case the promised land').

In its Rastafarian and Garveyite inflection, the Promised Land is firmly located in Africa. Dennis Brown's 1979 song, produced by Aswad, pictures Africa as a land of abundance and freedom: 'There's plenty of land for you and I, By and By, Lots of food to share for everyone, no time for segregation in the Promised Land'.



Dennis Brown's song is the starting point for last year's 'Land of Promise' by Nas and Damian Marley. This is a track that bring the Promised Land song cycle full circle, dropping the names of American states just like Chuck Berry but comparing them to African places: 'imagine Ghana like California... Lagos like Las Vegas'.



Speaking from Africa, Nigerian reggae singer Majek Fashek wonders whether the Promised Land is to be found anywhere in the world as it stands: 'Promised Land is not America, is not Asia, Promised Land is a state of mind, Promised Land is a state of mind, Promised Land is not Europia, is not Africa, Promised Land is a state of mind, Promised Land is a state of mind':



So Michele, leave the Promised Land well alone. You wouldn't recognise it if you found it.

(OK just one more... I love Johnny Allan's 1971 cajun verson of Berry's song, which I always associate with the late great Charlie Gillet thanks to whom I first heard it)