Jerkin'

It started in Los Angeles last summer and is now being touted as the new breakdancing.

From Hip Hop's new steps, New York Times, 20 November 2009:

“Jerking started off in L.A. as just a little inner-city dance,” said one of the New Boyz, Earl Benjamin, 18, known as Ben J. “We used to search for it on YouTube and we noticed it had potential to be bigger than it was. It was like when you first saw break dancing: it has so many different parts, and when you get the dance down pat, you wanted to do it all the time. It reminded you of how fun hip-hop used to be.”

... Seen in formal terms, said Sally Sommer, a dance historian who teaches at Florida State University, jerking may merely be a cousin to the “lambada or the twist.” It is certainly, Ms. Sommer said, less physically demanding than krumping or vogueing or the other highly skilled and innovative urban forms of dance. But the lambada was a fad. The twist was a fad. And jerking, its adherents say, has a cultural resonance that goes beyond the Reject and the Tippy Toe. “Jerking is a movement, almost like in the ’80s when rap started,” said Tammy Maxwell, the manager of the Ranger$ and the mother of Julian Goins. “There’s a style to it, and a music and a lifestyle and all the kids have really jumped on it.”

The Ranger$ Jerkin in JerkVille (dancing doesn't get started until about 1:20):



New Boyz, "You're A Jerk":

Dancing Questionnaire (17): Georgina, Drumz of the South

Next up with a Dancing Questionnaire it's Georgina/infinite, artist, photographer and the South London bassnik responsible for Drumz of the South and much else besides. Another respondent who I haven't yet met but whose path has crossed mine - in this case as recently as last Saturday night when somebody said to me 'Georgina's here somewhere...'

1. Can you remember your first experience of dancing?
Not specifically, but I have vague memories of dancing at family parties and weddings and of winning a primary school competition with friends doing "The Locomotion."

2. What's the most interesting/significant thing that has happened to you while out dancing?
Nothing specific, but generally,all the amazing and interesting people that I've met and photographed on dancefloors in London and around the world. Dance has definitely changed my life.

3. You. Dancing. The best of times…
Very stoned and deep in a trance at Forward>> or DMZ; I used to particularly love dancing to Youngsta. Dancing on a bar in Paris on a college trip. Dancing to I Feel Love at home when I should've been doing the housework. In a House tent at Secret Garden Party Festival in 2007 with my friend Breezy. It was pretty wild. I can't say much more about it!!

4. You. Dancing. The worst of times…
Having my camera stolen at a gig cos I was drunk, dancing and careless. :(
Generally getting toes trodden on by stiletto's or bum pinched by stupid men!

5. Can you give a quick tour of the different dancing scenes/times/places you've frequented?
1996-99 (aged 15-18) I'm not afraid to admit it....The Blue Orchid and Metropol in Croydon- under 18's, over 18's dancing to garage in high heels! I would take them off at the end of the night and walk to Crazy Chicken for a burger and chips with sore feet and blackened soles.

1999-2001 (aged 18-20) Beautiful People at Metro in Oxford Street and various Rock/Metal concerts where I really learnt to dance.

2001-2005 (aged 20-23) Drum n Bass nights at The Black Sheep Bar, followed by every other DnB & Jungle night in London around that time.

2004-09 (aged 23-28) FWD>> & DMZ. Dubwar, Subdub, Platform 1, D.O.T.S. Dubstep / Bass for the soul.

Also plenty of festivals and carnival over the years!

6. When and where did you last dance?
The Dodo's gig at The Scala last Monday evening.

7. You're on your death bed. What piece of music would make your leap up for one final dance?
I can't choose between Donna Summer's 'I Feel Love' or 'Red' by Artwork.


Photo: Georgina pictured taking pictures at DMZ.

All questionnaires welcome - just answer the same questions in as much or as little detail as you like and send to transpontine@btinternet.com (see previous questionnaires).

Hyperdub at Corsica Studios

The Hyperdub night at Corsica Studios (Elephant & Castle) was excellent on Saturday, with two awesome live appearances. Kode9 and Spaceape were intense, but due to moving around, saying hello to folks and then being squeezed to the back, I only caught the latter half of the set. I was luckier for King Midas Sound - squeezed at the front instead - and they were outstanding on their first London gig. The project is a collaboration between Kevin Martin (of The Bug fame), Roger Robinson and Hitomi.

Must admit I did think of early Massive Attack when they were playing, something which Jonny Mugwump has already criticised (see link below). It's not so much that they particularly sound like Massive Attack, but in some ways there's a similarity of approach. On the first Massive Attack album they magnificently filtered the then current state of dance music (including hip hop) through a UK reggae sound system sensibility. King Midas Sound do something similar, except in the interim there's a whole lot of other stuff that's been added to the mix, from techno to dubstep. The KMS album is out next week, and not having heard it I don't want to overdo the hype, but on the evidence of the live show there is potential for it to have a similar impact to that first Massive Attack album as a sonic landmark that crosses over to a wider audience.

There's a couple of good new KMS interviews out there - John Eden at FACT and Jonny Mugwump at The Quietus).

(photo - Roger Robinson under the spotlight on Saturday)

Corsica Studios and La Provincia

Corsica Studios is located in a railway arch directly underneath Elephant and Castle station so joins the list of great railway arch clubs which I will eventually get round to writing about. Two good-sized rooms with nice sound system plus a bar overlooked by a picture of Dickie Davies (yes really). At the back there's a covered outside area shared by the other railway arches, including La Provincia, a Latin America club frequented mainly by Colombians. Thanks to a Spanish speaking member of our party we ended up in there for a while too.

As someone who is always as fascinated by the crowd and dance styles as the music when I go out, it was interesting to compare the two. Dress codes weren't that dissimilar - jeans and t-shirts predominating, though a bit smarter in La Provincia. Gender balance was similar too - fairly evenly matched, but with more men than women. Hyperdub though was very crowded, whereas in La Provincia people were sitting round tables.

And the dancing was very different - in La Provincia it was exclusively salsa dancing couples, whereas in Corsica there wasn't room for much more than nodding heads, shuffling on the spot, and hands in the air for the more enthusiastic. At Hyperdub a lot of the dancing was in rows facing the front, which means people are mostly looking at the back of the person in front of them. Understandable for a live performance, but something I have never really understood when it's just a DJ. I don't think I ever saw this before the 'superstar DJ' boom in the late 1990s, in fact I distinctly remember noticing it for the first time at the famous 1999 Armand Van Helden vs. Fatboy Slim clash where they DJed in a boxing ring in the middle of Brixton Academy. Not proposing that people should start trying out strict tempo Latin moves to dubstep - though that might be fun - but there is something to be said for shifting the balance back from the DJ to the dancefloor as the centre of attention.

Anyway just some thoughts rather than criticisms, it was a good night enlivened even more by this sense of these different dance worlds coexisting in time and space in a corner of South East London. Some more reviews of the night: Uncarved, Yeti Blancmange, Vice Magazine (from where this Moses Whitley photo comes).

(cross posted at Transpontine)

Dancing Questionnaire (16): Kevin, The London Nobody Sings

The Dancing Questionnaire series has been slightly dormant of late, so I've invited a few people to have a go - though anybody is welcome to participate. Next up is Kevin from Your Heart Out and The London Nobody Sings, the latter an excellent blog featuring a daily song about London. One of the things I like about people's answers to these questionnaires is the connections that emerge - how people at different points in their life journeys cross paths in particular places (not necessarily at the same time), or enjoy similar tunes at opposite ends of the earth.

I haven't met Kevin, as far as I know, but like many of the respondents, I am sure we have shared a dancefloor sometime. In Kevin's case I am wondering whether we might have bumped into each other, literally, at The Camden Falcon in the indie pop heyday (remember seeing Jasmine Minks there) or perhaps more recently on one of my occasional visits to How Does it Feel? in Brixton. Anyway here's Kevin's Dancing Questionnaire:

1. Can you remember your first experience of dancing?
Yes, there was a scout hall near my home in Bexleyheath which held a weekly disco for several years. This was for primary school kids, and as it was '73-'75ish there was lots of Gary Glitter, Suzi Quatro, Hues Corporation, George McCrae etc. Wonderful. Still remember winning a copy of Ken Boothe's Everything I Own for being best dressed one week.

Suzie Quatro - she so invented punk

2. What's the most interesting/significant thing that has happened to you while out dancing?
I remember particularly a few years ago going to a Labour Party event in a stately home/hotel in North Wales in a work capacity, and while everyone was networking a few of us went to dance in another hall where a DJ was playing some old soul tracks more or less to himself, and after a while the guest of honour sneaked out (a Welsh Assembly minister) and joined us, literally dancing round her handbag. Beautiful summer evening, and it just suggested music as a common bond, overcoming boundaries, making friends, no words needed ...

3. You. Dancing. The best of times…
Probably 1980s going to see underground pop groups like the June Brides, Jasmine Minks playing to horribly small crowds but having a whale of a time dancing with abandon.

4. You. Dancing. The worst of times…
I really feel uncomfortable in large crowds with flashing lights (unsociable so-and-so). I have particular unpleasant memories of a Ramones gig at The Lyceum where the punks all seemed to be 7 foot tall and were slam dancing madly. It just seemed horribly macho and boring.

5. Can you give a quick tour of the different dancing scenes/times/places you've frequented?
Well, Alan McGee's Living Room, Dan Treacy's Room At The Top, Bay 63 were regular haunts in mid-'80s. Later put on own events with live groups/old soul discos etc in West End pub function rooms, then into the '90s becoming obsessed with drum 'n' bass/Mo' Wax trip hoppy stuff though only occasionally getting to places like the Heavenly Social due to shift work patterns. More recently outings seem to be confined to '60s soul type events.

6. When and where did you last dance?
Around my living room, waltzing to a Ewan MacColl song.

7. You're on your death bed. What piece of music would make your leap up for one final dance?
Candy Skin by the Fire Engines.

All questionnaires welcome - just answer the same questions in as much or as little detail as you like and send to transpontine@btinternet.com (see previous questionnaires)

Autumn Free Parties in England

'No arrests made as police shut down rave at rural site'
(Northampton Chronicle & Echo 13 October 2009)

'An illegal rave was shut down by police in Northamptonshire, who surrounded the encampment and trapped partygoers inside. A call was made to the force during the early hours of Sunday, following complaints about the rave near Horton. A spokeswoman for Northamptonshire Police said that when officers arrived they found "a large number" of revellers hosting the illegal party at a rural site in Yardley Chase. She added: "There were approximately 40 vehicles found on arrival. Officers sealed off all the entrants to the site and did not allow anyone to leave. Those who had already left and were attempting to return were denied entry. No arrests were made at the scene." The police helicopter was also called to the scene, shortly before 1.30am on Sunday'.

'Illegal rave in North Petherton'
(This is Somerset, 15 October 2009)

'An illegal rave in North Petherton was shut down by police within hours of starting on Saturday night. Swift action by the Avon and Somerset Constabulary ensured illegal ravers were stopped when reports were received of around 200 people blasting loud music in Kings Cliff Woods off Cliff Road at 11.30pm. Officers raced to the scene and found around 50 cars parked up. The North Gate entrance to the woods was open and the lock had been broken. The operation to close down the music and empty the site of the would-be revellers was completed by 2.30am without any problems. Safer Stronger Neighbourhoods beat manager PC Richard Tully said: "Our prompt action in tackling this illegal rave hopefully sends out a strong and powerful message to would-be organisers that we will not tolerate this kind of illegal activity and we will respond swiftly to concerns of local people.

'Up to 3,000 people took part in an illegal rave'
(Telegraph, 1 November 2009)

'Up to 3,000 people took part in an illegal rave in an old factory, according to Nadine Dorries, the Tory MP. The Mid Bedfordshire MP said the youths were playing loud music and taking ecstasy all night, while they had no access to water at the Wavendon Heath site in Bedfordshire.
"We have 3,000 kids taking ecstasy with no water and a kid could die any moment. They're still arriving in droves and there's no safety here at all, there are no toilets, there are no facilities for them", she said. "There's no safety here at all, there are no toilets, there are no facilities for them." She criticised the police for failing to act decisively.

The rave is believed to have started at about 3am on Sunday and was eventually stopped by police in the afternoon. Police later estimated that the number of ravers was between 200 and 450. A spokesman said: "We had some intelligence to suggest that a rave was planned in the vicinity of Milton Keynes/Woburn but information was too vague for us to act initially. At the point where we became aware of the location of the rave, at about 0200 GMT, it was under way with above 200 people present. Given the danger of trying to move people, some in an intoxicated state, near to a quarry in the dark and wet, it was decided it was safer not to attempt to move them but to monitor the situation." She added that there had only been three noise complaints up until 6 am'.

'Stark warning to rave organisers'
(Beccles and Bungay Journal, 30 October 2009)

'Norfolk and Suffolk police have issued a stark warning to anyone planning to organise an illegal rave in the county this weekend.There is a zero tolerance approach to such events, which are unsafe and disruptive to our local communities. They will be working closely with colleagues in Suffolk and will share information and provide additional police units to specifically target rave-goers or anyone suspected of involvement in the organisation of a rave across the two counties.

Chief superintendent Tony Cherington said: “I want to make it quite clear that we will use all necessary resources to prevent, disrupt and close down illegal raves in this county. We have issued this warning as we approach the Halloween weekend. “We will continue to take a hard line against them and seek to prosecute and seize and destroy the equipment of anyone found to be involved in their organisation. We will be putting on a significant police presence this weekend to achieve our aims.” Following the successful disruption of previous unlicensed music events, Norfolk Constabulary has again made arrangements with surrounding forces to share resources to disrupt or stop any such events.Last weekend, following a rave in the Feltwell area, over 150 vehicles were stopped and a number of arrests were made for vehicle offences and drink driving. A large quantity of sound equipment, amplifiers and music was also seized.Members of the public are also being urged to play their part and support police action by remaining vigilant over the coming days and by reporting any suspicious activity which may lead them to believe a rave is being organised...'

London Sound Survey

London Sound Survey is an ambitious and 'growing collection of Creative Commons-licensed sound recordings of places, events and wildlife in the capital'. You can, and probably should, spend a lot of time there listening to some very evocative, and well-recorded London soundscapes. Current favourites of mine are recordings of buskers including a child playing the accordion for money on the London underground, and a Saxophonist playing the Girl from Ipanema against a background of sirens in Old Compton Street. There's also the sound of a riot in progress on May Day 2001.

Unfortunately we don't have sound recordings from the past, a gap which London Sound Survey seeks to fill by including some written descriptions of historical London sounds, such as this account of a London market from Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor (1861):

'A bootmaker, to 'ensure custom', has illuminated his shop-front with a line of gas, and in its full glare stands a blind beggar, his eyes turned up so as to show only 'the whites', and mumbling some begging rhymes, that are drowned in the shrill notes of the bamboo-flute-player next to to him. The boy's sharp cry, the woman's cracked voice, the gruff, hoarse shout of the man, are all mingled together. Sometimes an Irishman is heard with his 'fine ating apples', or else the jingling music of an unseen organ breaks out, as the trio of street singers rest between the verses'.

Here's a couple of other descriptions of London noises I have come across which London Sound Survey might want to add. The first is from Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway, set immediately after the First World War:

'For having lived in Westminster—how many years now? over twenty,— one feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense (but that might be her heart, affected, they said, by influenza) before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. Such fools we are, she thought, crossing Victoria Street. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can’t be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life. In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June'.

The second is a description of Deptford Market from Geoffrey Fletcher's The London Nobody Knows (1962):

'Saturday morning is the time to see the human element at its richest in Deptford, and in the crowded High Street are all sorts of buskers and street entertainers whose presence gives additional character to the street: an organ grinder, perhaps, whose instru­ment is more properly termed 'a street piano' (there is still one firm left hiring out the' pianos' in London, near Saffron Hill: look for the pictures of Edwardian beauties on the panels of the organ), one-man bands, sellers of Old Moore's Almanack and so on. Today, a couple of stocky, red-faced men take their stand under the railway bridge - one plays an accordion and the other sings 'The Mountains of Mourne'. Appropriately, too, for Irish ideas are not lacking in Deptford - witness the large pub charmingly named The Harp of Erin and here today at the Catholic Church a gaudy Irish wedding takes place. As the bride and groom assemble on the steps, they are joined by their families and friends, the women in pale blue and the men in navy-blue suits. All wear large pink carnations, and the men's faces, each creased in a wide grin, are all red from the application of yellow soap. Small boys, also in blue suits and with even shinier faces, cross their legs uneasily, and the accordion plays 'The Meeting of the Waters'... '

Rock Around the Cock (1978)

A feminist critique of rock written in the immediate post-punk period. It was published in London-based radical magazine The Leveller in October 1978.


'LINDSAY COOPER, ex Henry Cow, now in the Feminist Improvisation Group, looks at rock and sexuality:

The Sex Pistols didn't like Glen Matlock, their first bass player, because he put minor chords in his songs. Minor chords are pouffy they said. It's a crude way of putting it but then rock has never been subtle in its presentation of masculine and feminine, homosexual and heterosexual. But no-one ever asked why the subtle, melodic changes of the minor chords should be reserved for gay men and, by implication, women

Rock has been always about sex. Jazz and blues were both originally various forms of sexual slangs. It wasn't till the sexually explicit words and beat of the blues got mixed up with puritanical country music that white music fans discovered there was more than just kissing and cuddling. It was rock 'n' roll.

Elvis's thrusting pelvis left little doubt about what he was expressing. This new explicitness brought with it a music of genuine teenage rebellion with a threat of sexual liberation which proved as potent and threatening as communism to 'straight' America. It shook up traditional sexual values, even if it didn't change them much. The sexuality of the music was very much part of the dancing that went with it.


Later, this cathartic and liberating element in dance would be lost, as sixties rock culture focused more on the superstar performer. Music and dance changed from being a substitute for sex; hip easy listening like the Eagles and Jackson Browne ­became a background accompaniment to sex.
But this concern with sexuality is not about sexual liberation. Rock remains a machismo cult, a rebellion of young men against old. Its sexual content reproduces and caricatures existing values.

Lyrics of every kind of rock music, from cock rock to teenybop, insult women and glorify dominant male sexuality:

Under my thumb, the girl who once had me down
Under my thumb, the girl who once pushed me around
It's down to me, the difference in the clothes she wears
It's down to me, the change has come, she's under my thumb
Ain't it the truth babe (Rolling Stones)

The notorious, male sexual posturing of cock rock with its pumping beat and arrogant style underpin an aggressive sexuality which often spills over into violence at concerts. You can't wipe out the memory of the brutal killing at Altamont or the uncheckable violence of Sham '69 fans
I'm not saying that women don't enjoy this type of music. For the screaming girl fans, the Rolling Stones were a lot more exciting than their fumbling boyfriends. Also the 'romance' of the hit singles may well have seemed more real than their own.

You don't have to say you love me, Just be close at hand
You don't have to stay forever I will understand
(Dusty Springfield)

It's no answer to say 'there have always been women performers'. For rock culture has always turned them into sexual objects (like Debbie Harry) or makes them , into Armatrading-type cults.

What they can do is limited. They can be singers but rarely instrumentalists; they're so good at conveying emotion but are limited musically. Their voices are invariably controlled by production techniques, geared to a market that is used to a manufactured femininity.

In a recent TV show Helen Reddy was told that she would have to have elastoplast over her nipples and shave her armpits. She refused. Panic ensued. The situation was saved by a compromise. She would wear elastoplast over her nipples but not shave her armpits.

Women performers like Dory Previn can sing about how they're pissed about by men, but never about understanding this oppression or changing it.

As elsewhere, rock shows women as idealised, unreal male-fantasy people; the all-understanding women, the dependable women, the women who won't come up with the sexual goods and so on. The range of images for women performers, accepted by the public and the music biz, is very small.

Men are allowed to be sexually ambiguous like Bowie and Jagger or downright unmasculine like Tom Robinson and Elvis Costello. But female sexual ambiguity is short on popular appeal. Only Patti Smith (and she's a poet) can get away with it. An image which challenges female stereotypes is even harder to pull off. Would we have had Poly Styrene and Siouxsie (of the Banshees) without the ­general challenge of punk?

But you can't just talk about rock's sexism in performances and record lyrics. It comes from a profit-making industry "selling people what they want", which is not in business to challenge its own existence. It can be forced to make concessions like Tom Robinson's Glad To Be Gay and Right On Sister but this is a drop in the ocean alongside the unending volumes of heterosexist records streaming off the presses.

Chris Brazier of the Melody Maker can criticise The Stranglers for their sexist attitudes but he fights hopelessly against the endless 'tit 'n' bum' ads for records and sexist articles by other writers.

So if rock is virtually about male sexuality how can it be changed? No real breakdown of rock machismo is going to happen until more women are playing music and women who work in rock aren't automatically slotted into being just 'sexy chicks'.

One optimistic sign is that over the last two years music has started to have a far greater political impact and context than it's ever had. Although experience has taught women that a rise in leftist consciousness can still exclude any awareness of sexism.

At a Rock Against Racism gig, the Fabulous Poodles started to play a song about schoolgirls. Several women objected. The band became abusive. An exchange of sharp letters ensued in RAR's mag, Temporary Hoarding. The women accusing RAR of not taking sexism as seriously as racism, when in effect there was no difference between the two. The organisers replied that the band would never have learnt how women felt if they hadn't mounted the gig and how difficult it was to ensure politically 'sound' bands.

In Europe the reaction against anglo-american cultural imperialism has produced a lot of political rock music, most of it being made independently of the music industry. The number of women musicians involved can be counted on the strings of one guitar, and the audiences are predominantly male, but the collective, unmacho approach of most of the European political groups is making more than cosmetic changes in the music and its performance.

In Sweden there is a well established political music movement which is utterly male dominated, but also an autonomous women's culture including several rock bands.

What is it, I'll rape it
(the Who)

In Italy, where mass political consciousness is high and where the left-wing parties are actively involved in putting on rock concerts, the whole context of rock performance is obviously very different. The Stormy Six, probably the most interesting of the Italian political/independent groups do at least sing about sexual politics: "This is not a political song"' they say with endearing irony, "because it's about sexual politics" and launch into a bitter rock parody using preposterous macho gestures and lyrics about monogamous romantic love.

In France the growth of an indigenous rock culture has been less consciously political and Magma, the group who virtually singlehandedly started it, presented a quasi-mystical concept of masculinity with their superman philosophy (more serious by far than the Bowie of Oh You Pretty Things) and authoritarian stage presence. Their influence is waning, but can still be felt in the Belgian Univers Zero, who see being an all-male group as a problem, but whose stern, tormented-male image is unlikely to attract many women musicians.

You'd better watch out baby
Here comes your master
(Jimi Hendrix)

But it is in women's bands that the problem of sexism and constructions of sexuality in performance are being specifically tackled. For women musicians, the choice to work in all female bands comes as much from the positive effect of working with other women as from the problems of working in mixed bands, either inside or outside of commercial music (even if you can get work you're likely to be just a token woman/sex object or -­only marginally better - token feminist).

Every woman should be
What her man wants her to be
(Marvin Gaye)

Women's bands are not negatively separatist (that's much truer of men's bands) or a refuge for the incompetent (women's music is developing fast considering that most of the performers have for obvious reasons had relatively little experience), but a way of getting away from performance being equated with sexual performance as defined by men, and of exploring different relationships between performers and between performers and audience.

The importance of a women's musical culture developing independently from the music business, however, shouldn't undermine what women are doing in commercial music and in mixed political/independent groups -the main thing is that we are now actively redefining sexuality in rock instead of hoping that the few enlightened stars would do it for us'.

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1909-2009)

'But that music is a language by whose means messages are elaborated, that such messages can be understood by the many but sent out only by few, and that it alone of all the languages unites the contradictory attributes of being at once intelligible and untranslatable - these facts make the creator of music a being like the gods and make music itself the supreme mystery of human knowledge' (Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked, 1969)

Obituary

Poumista recalls his escape from Vichy France

We Must Refuse Boredom

Georges Bataille, The Sacred Conspiracy, 1936

'It is time to abandon the world of the civilized and its light. It is too late to want to be reasonable and learned, which has led to a life without attractions. Secretly or not, it is necessary to become other, or else cease to be.

The world to which we have belonged proposes nothing to love outside of each individual insufficiency: its existence is limited to its convenience. A world that can’t be loved to death – in the same way a man loves a woman – represents nothing but personal interest and the obligation to work. If it is compared with worlds that have disappeared it is hideous and seems the most failed of all of them.

In those disappeared worlds it was possible to lose oneself in ecstasy, which is impossible in the world of educated vulgarity. Civilization’s advantages are compensated for by the way men profit by it: men of today profit by it to become the most degraded of all beings who have ever existed.

Life always occurs in a tumult with no apparent cohesion, but it only finds its grandeur and reality in ecstasy and ecstatic love. He who wants to ignore or neglect ecstasy is a being whose thought has been reduced to analysis. Existence is not only an agitated void: it is a dance that forces us to dance fanatically. The idea that doesn’t have as object a dead fragment exists internally in the same way as does a flame.

One must become firm and unshakeable enough that the existence of the world of civilization finally appears uncertain. It is useless to respond to those who are able to believe in this world and find their authorization in it. If they speak it is possible to look at them without hearing them, and even if we look at them, to only “see” that which exists far behind them. We must refuse boredom and live only on that which fascinates'.

She refused to be bored - Zelda Fitzgerald

'the Flapper awoke from her lethargy of sub-deb-ism, bobbed her hair, put on her choicest pair of earrings and a great deal of audacity and rouge and went into the battle. She flirted because it was fun to flirt and wore a one-piece bathing suit because she had a good figure, she covered her face with powder and paint because she didn't need it and she refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn't boring. She was conscious that the things she did were the things she had always wanted to do. Mothers disapproved of their sons taking the Flapper to dances, to teas, to swim and most of all to heart. She had mostly masculine friends, but youth does not need friends - it needs only crowds...'

Zelda Fitzgerald (pictured), Eulogy on the Flapper, 1922.

The above quote was the partial inspiration for my favourite song - Being Boring by The Pet Shop Boys. The lines of the opening verse are: 'I came across a cache of old photos, and invitations to teenage parties.“Dress in white,” one said with quotations, from someone’s wife, a famous writer in the nineteen-twenties'. Apparently singer Neil Tennant actually did recall an invitation to a party from his own teenage years featuring the above quote, with Zelda Fitzgerald both 'someone's wife' (though she was more than that) and one source of the 'we were never being boring' chorus.

Marx and the Mazurka?: Dancing with the First International

The International Working Men's Association (later know as the First International) was established in 1864, with its famous statement 'That the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves, that the struggle for the emancipation of the working classes means not a struggle for class privileges and monopolies, but for equal rights and duties, and the abolition of all class rule'.

The following year, the International Working Men's Association held a conference in London
as part of which, on the the 28th September 1865, they held a soiree at St Martin's Hall in Long Acre. According to the programme, the aim was 'To celebrate the foundation of the Association; to welcome the Continental delegates; and to congratulate the people of America on the abolition of slavery, and the triumph of the Republic. It promised 'Tea on the table at half past seven. During the tea the band of the Italian Working Men’s Association will perform', speeches in English, French and German, and songs from The German Chorus.

Then it was time for dancing, with a challenging international programme of dance styles. The programme continues:

'At half past 10 dancing will commence:

1st. — Palermo Polka — Canti
2nd. — Quadrille
3rd. — Schottische
4th. — Valse — Godfrey
5th. — Lancers — Albert
6th. — Mazurka
7th. — Caledonians — Cootes
8th. — Varsovienne — Tonatta
9th. — Polka Italia — Martini

An interval of 20 minutes for refreshment and, promenade

PART II

1st. — Parisian Quadrille
2nd. — Schottische
3rd. — Lancers — Albert
4th. — Valse — Godfrey
5th. — Polka la bella — Gigogine Giorgi
6th. — Caledonians — Cootes
7th. — Mazurka
8th. — Quadrille
9th. — Varsovienne and Gallop

Cards of membership can be obtained in the Committee room, under the platform. Enter by the left hand door. FEMALES are eligible as members. Annual Subscription, 1s. 1d. Address and Rules, 1d. Wines, spirits, ales, stout, tea, coffee, &c., at tavern prices'.

The event was reported in the Workman's Advocate No. 135, October 7, 1865:

'The hall was most appropriately decorated with flags of the different nationalities, the place of honour being assigned to the Stars and Stripes of America. The soirée served a threefold purpose — first, to celebrate the anniversary of the Association; secondly, to welcome the Continental delegates; and, thirdly, to adopt an address to the people of America congratulating them on the success of the Federal arms and the extinction of slavery. Over 300 sat down to tea, the social qualities of which seemed equally to be appreciated by the Continental delegates and their English friends.

The speaking was interspersed with music and singing by the Garibaldian Band and the German Working Men’s Choir, which gave the Marseillaise and other pieces with much effect.
The hall was then cleared for dancing, which amusement was followed up with much spirit for some hours. At two o’clock the Committee and delegates assembled in the Committee room, where Citizen Cremer was most warmly received, and the thanks of the delegates accorded to him for the able manner in which the soirée had been got up and the splendid success they had that night witnessed'.

Karl Marx was certainly present at the conference, whether he was up for the four hour dancing session I do not know.

Victorian Mandolins

In the late nineteenth century a mandolin craze swept America and Europe, leading to the formation of numerous mandolin orchestras with mainly classical repertoires - I'm not quite sure how this fits in with my emerging theory of the counter-cultural underground of portable stringed instruments, but the craze wasn't confined to middle class drawing rooms.

In the novel Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters (London, Virago, 1998), Nan King, oyster girl turned music hall star turned rent boy, catches her first sight of her future lesbian lover in a house opposite her lodgings, listening to a friend playing the mandolin: “Someone had begun to strum some kind of sweet, twangy instrument - not a banjo, not a guitar - and a lilting gypsy melody was playing upon the bare evening breezes... The player of the instrument - it was, I now saw, a mandolin - was a handsome young woman in a well-tailored jacket, a white blouse,a neck-tie and spectacles”. In this novel the mandolin takes its place amongst upper class saphhists, music hall mashers (women dressed as men), prostitute guardsmen and socialist rallies as a component of 1890s London life.

This is obviously a fictional account, but there is a nice story in the South London Observer of a servant getting ideas above her station by learning to play the instrument: ‘The Servant’s Mandolin’ (South London Observer, 6.5.1899) tells of a court case in 1899 where the father of Agnes Reid, aged 18 and ‘in service at Camberwell’ was sued by Miss Rosina Love, a Peckham music teacher. The cause was Agnes’ failing to pay for her mandolin lessons, but the fact of her learning to play the instrument was seemingly cause for comment. The Judge asked her father 'what induced your daughter to learn the mandoline' to which he replied ‘One of the other servants put her up to it. I know no other reason’. Judge Emden of Lambeth County Court concluded: 'I do not say that a servant should not play the mandoline if she does not annoy the people in her mistress’s house by so doing. But she must pay her music teacher'.

Peace Dance, War and the Noble Savage

War dances are well-known, but what of peace dances? The above photo, taken in 1905, show a peace dance in the Andaman islands. An account of the dance states that 'fighting was male business, making peace the women's task':

'the dancing ground is prepared, and across it is erected what is called a koro-tsop. Posts are put up in a line, to the tops of these is attached a length of strong cane, and from the cane are suspended bundles of shredded palm-leaf (koro). The women of the camp keep a look-out for the approach of the visitors. When they are known to be near the camp, the women sit down on one side of the dancing ground, and the men take up positions in front of the decorated cane. Each man stands with his back against the koro-tsop, with his arms stretched out sideways along the top of it. None of them has any weapons.

The visitors, who are, if we may so put it, the forgiving party, while the home party are those who have committed the last act of hostility, advance into the camp dancing, the step being that of the ordinary dance. The women of the home party mark the time of the dance by clapping their hands on their thighs. I was told that the visitors carry their weapons with them, but when the dance was performed at my request the dancers were without weapons. The visitors dance forward in front of the men standing at the koro-tsop, and then, still dancing all the time, pass backwards and forwards between the standing men, bending their heads as they pass beneath the suspended cane. The dancers make threatening gestures at the men standing at the koro-tsop, and every now and then break into a shrill shout. The men at the koro stand silent and motionless, and are expected to show no sign of fear.

After they have been dancing thus for a little time, the leader of the dancers approaches the man at one end of the koro and, taking him by the shoulders from the front, leaps vigorously up and down to the time of the dance, thus giving the man he holds a good shaking. The leader then passes on to the next man in the row while another of the dancers goes through the same performance with the first man. This is continued until each of the dancers has "shaken" each of the standing men. The dancers then pass under the koro and shake their enemies in the same manner from the back. After a little more dancing the dancers retire, and the women of the visiting group come forward and dance in much the same way that the men have done, each woman giving each of the men of the other group a good shaking. When the women have been through their dance the two parties of men and women sit down and weep together. The two groups remain camped together for a few days, spending the time in hunting and dancing together, presents are exchanged, as at the ordinary meetings of different groups. The men of the two groups exchange bows with one another'.

I came across the photograph, and mention of the Andamanese peoples, in 'War and the Noble Savage: A critical inquiry into recent accounts of violence amongst uncivilized peoples', a copy of which I picked up from the author (Gyrus of Dreamflesh) at last weekend's anarchist bookfair in London. The book provides an overview of the debate about the extent of violence amongst so-called primitive people, the two poles of which are often taken to be the notion of the noble savage living peaceably in the state of nature (attributed to Rousseau) and the notion of the state of nature as a war of all against all from which the development of the state saved humanity (attributed to Thomas Hobbes). One of the first tasks Gyrus undertakes is to question whether Rousseau and Hobbes really did hold these views, concluding that both were undertaking political-philosophical thought experiments rather than describing actual societies. Nevertheless the question continues to be very much a live one for anthropologists and others.

The conclusion is that it is impossible to be conclusive about many different societies spread over the world and many thousands of years. Nobody who has seriously looked at the matter suggests that hunter-gatherer societies have been violence-free - the anthropologist Donald E. Brown includes conflict and 'male coalitional violence' on his list of Human Universals observed in all known human societies. However Brown also includes co-operation and mediation of conflict on this list (as well as music and dance incidentally). The balance between war and peace seems to often been as much a function of environmental factors, such as resource shortages, as of the form of social organisation. Gyrus is sceptical of an over-romantic description of 'primitive' life, but sympathetic to the view that active warfare is comparatively rare in small hunter-gatherer groups characterised by egalitarianism and face to face decision-making.

So if life in the Paleolithic wasn't so bad, why did most of humanity settle down into sedentary lifestyles? Gyrus quotes from Steven Mithen's discussion of the Natufian people of the Middle East, believed to have been one of the first groups to give up hunter-gathering some 12,000 year ago:

'It is possible that the Natufian... people were prepared to suffer the downside of village life... to enjoy the benefits. Francois Valla... believes that the Natufian villages simply emerged from the seasonal gathering of the Kebaran people. He recalls the work of social anthropologist Marcel Mauss who lived with hunter-gatherers in the Arctic at the turn of the century. Mauss recognised that periodic gatherings were characterised by intense communal life, by feasts and religious ceremonies, by intellectual discussion, and by lots of sex. In comparison, the rest of the year, when people lived in small far-flung groups, was rather dull',

So perhaps it was our taste for partying, for large scale sociability and conviviality ('intense communal life'), that led most of the human species into the decidedly double-edged adventure of civilization, agriculture, states and urbanisation. In any event, there's no going back to hunter gathering for most of us - but as Gyrus concludes the existence of such societies can still 'inspire new stories of human potential'.

The book is available here for £4; Gyrus is launching the book with a talk tomorrow night (Tuesday 27 October) at the October Gallery in London.

Nancy Spero (1926-2009)

Nancy Spero, Artist of Feminism, Is Dead at 83 (NY Times, 19 October 2009)

'Ms. Spero was active in the Art Workers Coalition, and in 1969 she joined the splinter group Women Artists in Revolution (WAR), which organized protests against sexist and racist policies in New York City museums. In 1972, she was a founding member of A.I.R. Gallery, the all-women cooperative, originally in SoHo, now in the Dumbo section of Brooklyn. And in the mid-1970s she resolved to focus her art exclusively on images of women, as participants in history and as symbols in art, literature and myth.

On horizontal scrolls made from glued sheets of paper, she assembled a multicultural lexicon of figures from ancient Egypt, Greece and India to pre-Christian Ireland to the contemporary world and set them out in non-linear narratives. Her 14-panel, 133-foot-long “Torture of Women” (1974-1976) joins figures from ancient art and words from Amnesty International reports on torture to illustrate institutional violence against women as a universal condition. Ms. Spero considered this her first explicitly feminist work. Many others followed, though over time she came to depict women less as victims and more often as heroic free agents dancing sensuously...'


Images: top - 'The Dance' by Nancy Spero; bottom - 'Artemis, Acrobats, Divas and Dancers' by Nancy Spero, mosaic on 66th Street/Lincoln Center Subway Station, New York City (1999, installed 2004).

Lenore Kandel (1932-2009)

San Francisco Chronicle reports the death of Lenore Kandel, belly dancer, beat poet, Digger and radical:

'Lenore Kandel hung out with Beat poets and was immortalized by Jack Kerouac, wrote a book of love poetry banned as obscene and seized by police, and believed in communal living, anarchic street theater, belly dancing, and all things beautiful...

"I met Lenore in 1965 at a citywide meeting of artists opposed to the war in Vietnam," said actor Peter Coyote. "Lenore was physically beautiful and physically commanding. She had this voluptuous plumpness about her and an absolute serenity." Coyote, Ms. Kandel and her then-boyfriend Bill Fritsch - a poet and Hell's Angel - became fast friends. "She was working as a belly dancer and would sew these beaded curtains to make money on the side," said Coyote, a founder of the Diggers, an anarchistic group supplying free food, housing and medical aid to the needy in San Francisco. "We would sit around and smoke dope and talk about philosophy and art. She was an enlightened person, a great being...

Her book of poetry "The Love Book," published in 1966, was deemed pornographic and the famed Psychedelic Shop on Haight Street where it was sold was raided by the police. Copies were confiscated on the grounds that their display and sale "excited lewd thoughts" and the store's owners were arrested'. (Read more)

One of her 1960s Digger episodes is recalled here (Marx Meadow is in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park):

'So one time, Lenore Kandel thought it would be the greatest idea in the world to hang 500 sets of glass, Chinese chimes in every bush around Marx Meadow -- that if we did that, people would discover them, take them home with them, play them and be entertained and felt elegant for the event. So, we went in and asked Tosh for 500 sets of Chinese chimes. He said, "Sure. Just take them."... And Lenore spent hours stringing them up in the trees'.

Stonewall 2009: Police raid gay bars in Texas and Atlanta

40 years ago this summer police raided the Stonewall Inn in New York, prompting a gay riot and a new phase in the gay liberation movement. On the 40th anniversary itself, June 28th 2009, police and agents from the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission staged their own re-enactment of the Stonewall raid, when they raided the Rainbow Lounge, a gay dance club in Fort Worth.

According to the New York Times (5 July 2009):

'Several witnesses said six police officers and two liquor control agents used excessive force as they arrested people during the raid. Chad Gibson, a 26-year-old computer technician from Euless, about 15 miles northeast of Fort Worth, suffered a concussion, a hairline fracture to his skull and internal bleeding after officers slammed his head into a wall and then into the floor, witnesses and family members said... Another patron suffered broken ribs, and a third had a broken thumb, said Todd Camp, the founder and artistic director of Q. Cinema, a gay film festival in Fort Worth. Mr. Camp, a former journalist, said he was celebrating his 43rd birthday in the bar when the police arrived at 1:05 a.m.

The officers entered the bar without announcing themselves, witnesses said. Earlier in the night, they had visited two other bars looking for violations of alcohol compliance laws. Those bars do not cater to gay patrons, and the officers had made nine arrests at those establishments on public intoxication charges, officials said. “They were hyped up,” Mr. Camp said of the officers in the Rainbow Lounge raid. “They came in charged and ready for a fight. They were just telling people they were drunk or asking them if they were drunk, and, if they mouthed off, arresting them.” More than 20 people were taken out of the bar for questioning, handcuffed with plastic ties and, in some cases, were forced to lie face down in the parking lot, witnesses said. Five were eventually booked on charges of public drunkenness, the police said... The raid prompted swift action. Hours later, more than 100 people were protesting on the steps of the Tarrant County Courthouse'.

In a similar incident last month, police in Atlanta, Georgia, raided a gay bar called The Eagle. Mike Alvear has a detailed account of the raid, which took place on September 10 2009. Here's a few extracts:

'“Shut the fuck up!” a cop yelled at one of the bar patrons who asked why they were being forced to lay face down on the grubby floors. An acquaintance saw the police shove an 80 year-old man to the ground because he was moving too slowly... “I hate queers,” a cop said. Other officers–some plain-clothed, some uniformed– walked around the bar demanding to know who was in the military, threatening to report them to their commanding officers. “This is a lot more fun than raiding niggers with crack!” Du-Wayne Ray heard one white officer say this to another; other cops were high-fiving each other. For almost two hours, Mark Danack, Nick Koperski, and sixty other gay men were forced to lay face down on the bar’s filthy floors. The drivers license screening revealed nothing. Sixty two men and the cops didn’t find a suspended license, a criminal prior, nothing. Not even a parking ticket. The search and seizure uncovered nothing. No drugs. Not even a joint. Finally, the men were ordered to leave but without their cell phones, wallets and other personal belongings'. The only arrests were eight staff members, who were detained for the crime of 'Dancing in their underwear without a permit'.

Unlike Stonewall there were no riots this time, but as in Fort Worth there have been a number of protests in Atlanta.

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

(P.B. Shelley, 1818)

The abandoned ruins of Mr Blobby theme park after ravers trash site (Daily Mail, 14 October 2009)

'He attracted nearly 17 million television viewers at the height of his fame, and even had a number one hit, but today Mr Blobby's empire is a mere shadow of what it once was. New images of what was the Mr Blobby theme park in Somerset show a depressing ruin covered in weeds and trashed after all-night raves. The park closed its doors in 1999, after the popular Saturday night television show Noel's House Party on which Mr Blobby featured was axed by the BBC. Now in a state of total disrepair, buildings are covered in moss, while windows and furniture lie broken after all-night raves that take place on the site. The entrance to Mr Blobby's home, named 'Dunblobbin', is surrounded by dead trees and a carpet of decaying leaves'

Same story in The Sun:

'The home of kids' telly favourite Mr Blobby lies in ruins - reduced to a waterlogged wasteland. Excited youngsters once flocked to the Blobbyland theme park to see the make-believe cottage of Noel Edmonds' famous character. Now it is more like Soggyland - overgrown and strewn with fallen leaves and mud. The house, named Dunblobbin, and its gardens opened in 1994 in Cricket St Thomas, near Chard, Somerset. But it closed after two years as fans lost interest. Since then, ravers have used it for all-night parties. Doors have been ripped off, windows and furniture smashed, mattresses burned and the interior wrecked (The Sun, 14 October 2009)

For readers lucky enough not to have been exposed to Mr Blobby, 'he' was an ubiquitous 1990s British TV phenomenon, a pink thing launched on an unsuspecting public by Radio DJ and TV presenter Noel Edmonds (the two of them standing with those poor kids in the top photo). The Daily Mail's attempt to put a 'broken Britain omg ravers are out of control' angle on this is absurd - the place has been abandoned for ten years so of course it's in decay - but I like the idea of people partying in the ruins of '90s TV culture. Both papers seemed to have sourced the story from a blog - a blogger called Captain Stealth is quoted - but I can't find any trace of the original blog post via Google. Anybody know where it is?


(Thanks to John Eden for spotting this)

Dorothy Coonan Wellman (1913-2009)

'Dorothy Coonan was one of Busby Berkeley's principal chorus dancers who had performed in such films as Whoopee! (1930) and 42nd Street (1933) when she met the director William Wellman, who cast her as the female lead in his film Wild Boys of the Road (1933). She then became Wellman's fifth wife, and remained happily married to him for over 40 years until his death in 1975... Wellman cast Coonan as the female lead in his next film, Wild Boys of the Road (1933, titled Dangerous Days in the UK), a brilliantly effective drama of teenagers whose fathers have lost their jobs in the economic depression, hopping freight trains in their efforts to seek a better life. Coonan gave a superb performance as a tomboyish young girl who dons boys' clothing and a cap to ride the rails with a bunch of youths. Her appearance is uncannily similar to that of Louise Brooks in her earlier incarnation of a freight-hopper in Wellman's Beggars of Life (1928). Coonan also performs a lively tap routine near the film's end' (Full obituary in today's Independent)

The 1933 trailer for Wild Boys of the Night is great: 'the living truth about 500,000 wild boys... innocent girls... driven to vagrancy... crime... fates worse than death... Jolting facts about humanity's shame... the abandoned generation... as tender and human as it is startling and real... shocking enough to make the very earth tremble in terror' (Coonan is the character in the trailer who has her cap pulled off revealing she's a girl, also pictured left in the photo above)

There's a nice video put together by family members which includes some footage of her dancing:

Dorothy Coonan Wellman Memorial-The Last Busby Berkeley Dancer from Robert D. Lawe on Vimeo.

Jiddish Partizan Marsh: Song of the Partisans

Yesterday's post on mandolins and anti-fascist resistance in Warsaw has prompted this response from Ruin Gebirk in Berlin:

"I read your story about the mandoline, it was interesting, I too have a strong interest in the jewish resistance history and I am specially fascinated by the "little" stories. When I was young we were singing the jiddish songs of Hirsh Glik and others... since I know about your electronical music background I wanted to share my new track with you: I called it jiddish partizan marsh, it's based on the melody of Sog nit kejnmal als du gejst den letztn".

Nice one, check out the track here: http://soundcloud.com/gebirk/jiddish-partizan-marsh

There's more detail on the song from which this track's melody comes in this article on Music of the Holocaust: 'News of the Warsaw ghetto uprising of April 1943 inspired the Vilna poet and underground fighter Hirsh Glik (ca. 1921–ca. 1944) to write Never Say That You Have Reached the Final Road (the Yiddish title is often shortened to Zog nit keynmol). With a melody taken from a march tune composed for the Soviet cinema, the song spread quickly beyond the ghetto walls and was soon adopted as the official anthem of the Jewish partisans. Glik was later deported to an Estonian labor camp and is presumed to have lost his life during an escape attempt. His song remains a favorite at Holocaust commemoration ceremonies worldwide'. This site also includes a recording of the track - which is also known as the Song of the Partisans - by Betty Segal.

This Mandolin Kills Fascists

Posted last week on Marek Edelman and the 1943 resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto. Surviving this, he later took part in the following year's wider anti-nazi uprising in the city. From the latter episode I have come across this interesting tale in 'The Recollections of Witold Górski – 1944 Warsaw uprising' (for some reason there is a mistake on the webpage and it says 1994 - but clearly it's about 1944):

'I was involved in transporting guns, in a mandolin.., a stringed instrument vaguely similar to a guitar. The notes it produced when played under such circumstances were atrociously off key. The conductor of the streetcar I was riding with my illicit cargo was in on the secret. When he sensed that the streetcar was about to be stopped and searched by the Germans, my dreadful playing gave him an excuse to grab me by the scruff of the neck and throw me off the vehicle. That way, while the Germans were searching the streetcar passengers for weapons and contraband, I was able to walk calmly by. Further on, there would be a street musician playing a similar mandolin. It was to him that I was to deliver the gun by somehow swapping mandolins'.

I love this as it combines my interests in both militant anti-fascism and mandolins, and adds further credence to my slightly romantic but not unfounded 'notion of the portable, guerrilla instrument... a hidden history of itinerant strollers, refugees, prisoners, wobblies and other malcontents making music on small stringed instruments like ukuleles, fiddles, mandolins and the Greek baglamas' (see earlier post on the ukulele underground).