The State and Clothes: from the Statues of Apparel to the Burqa Ban

The day before the national celebration of the storming of the Bastille in pursuit of liberty, the French government today passed a law banning the wearing of the full veil. It states that "no one can wear a garment in public which is aimed at hiding their face"; women wearing a niqab or burqa will faces fines.

Of course there is a well-founded feminist critique of women being pressured to cover their faces, but it is undeniable that some women do choose to wear such clothes for their own religious reasons. The law does not seem to distinguish between women who freely choose to wear the full veil and those who may be made to do so by others. In the latter case, it is patently absurd to prosecute somebody for something they did not choose, in the former case a fundamental principle is at stake - why should the state be able to dictate what people wear? The notion that the police will be able to arrest women on the basis of their clothing is absurd.

French interior minister Michèle Alliot-Mariez is clear that what is being imposed is not simply a dress code, but a definition of the self and its interaction with others. The simple piece of cloth is a threat to the very notion of citizenship: "We are an old country anchored in a certain idea of how to live together. A full veil which completely hides the face is an attack on those values, which for us are so fundamental. Citizenship has to be lived with an uncovered face. There can therefore be absolutely no solution other than a ban in all public places."

The notion that clothes define the social order, and therefore that the state should regulate clothing to uphold that order, is an old one. A classic example was the Statutes of Apparel issued by Queen Elizabeth I of England in 1574, which tightly defined exactly what fabrics could be worn at different levels of the feudal hierarchy. So for instance only members of the royal family could wear purple silk; 'Velvet in gowns, coats, or other uttermost garments' could only be worn by 'barons' sons, knights and gentlemen in ordinary office attendant upon her majesty's person, and such as have been employed in embassages to foreign princes' (or those above them). For women the rules decreed, among other things, that 'None shall wear any velvet, tufted taffeta, satin, or any gold or silver in their petticoats: except wives of barons, knights of the order, or councilors' ladies, and gentlewomen of the privy chamber and bed chamber, and the maids of honor'.

Today these rules look ridiculous; no doubt future historians will take a similar view of those politicians who spent time in the midst of a global economic crisis and impending environmental problems decreeing what part of a woman's face has to be visible for all to see.

Prince - 20Ten

Since Prince fell out with with Warner Brothers in the 1990s he has pursued various unconventional strategies for distributing his prolific output of music, including giving away albums for free with newspapers. 2007's Mother Earth was distributed in the UK with The Mail on Sunday, putting me in in the shameful position of having to buy a copy of this notorious right wing rag. His new album, 20Ten, was given away last weekend with the slightly less objectionable Daily Mirror - at least I didn't have to worry about anybody seeing me.



While I am all for free distribution, I can't help thinking that being given away with dubious tabloids somehow devalues the music. And with the rate he churns songs out, quality control does sometimes seem to go out of the window. But 20Ten is actually his best album for years. Musically it's still pretty much the same template as he developed in the 1980s, a mixture of pop, electro-funk and soulful ballads (with Future Soul Song the standout of the latter). Some of these tracks would be widely acclaimed if they had been on one of his albums from that period, I guess now people do tend to take his songwriting/singing/guitar playing talents for granted - or have stopped listening.

This is an album of real songs, with Prince reining in some of his tendency to self-indulgent funk workouts and fillers. There's some space references on Beginning Endlessly, always a hit with me: 'Why should you be satisfied with just heaven and earth? When you look around there's so much more to the Universe'. Best of all, Act of God is a Sign o' the Times style summation of the state of the world, encompassing war and economic crisis:

Dirty fat banker sold a house today.
Sold at auction, wants the family out the way
Kicked them on the street cause they couldn't pay the tax
Call it an act of God...

But, I got news for you, freedom ain't free
They lock you in a cell if you try to be
But the ones who say no make history
Call it an act of God.

Tax dollars build a plane , drop a bomb
Supposedly to keep us all safe from Saddam
Bringing bad news to another woman
Call it an act of God.

Remembering Live8, July 2005

Five years ago this month world leaders at the G8 summit were promising to 'Make Povery History', something seemingly forgotten today as the demand to 'Make Poverty Compulsory' to pay for the global crisis takes precedence.

On 2 July 2005, there were big Live8 concerts in various parts of the world in support of the anti-poverty campaign. I went to the London one where, among others, Madonna, REM, Elton John, U2 and The Killers played. To say I saw any of these would be an exaggeration, more accurate to say I caught a glimpse in what was one of the most alienating musical spectacles I have ever got caught up in.

It was a free concert, but the site was completely enclosed by a massive fence. This was frustrating on the way in, when people had to queue for at least an hour to get through one entrance in a huge boundary, but was even more annoying on the way out. We left early, but were refused exit from most of the marked exits having been told that these would only open at the end. We had to go all the way back to where we came in (in the north of Hyde Park, quite a walk) to get out. It felt very claustrophobic. As I discussed in relation to a similar experience at another festival, this kind of crowd control for free events is a relatively new development. Up until at least the mid-1990s, big free festivals in parks were invariably open access and attracted huge crowds. If things got too crowded, people regulated themselves by spreading out over a larger area or going home.

Inside Hyde Park, it felt very much like the crowd were there to be extras for the TV show. The volume was low for a gig/festival, which destroyed any musical atmosphere, and the screens were out of sync with the sound. Bizarrely people only seemed to get animated when there was a camera pointing at them, perhaps because they felt so remote from the event. Every time the camera swept over the crowd people went mad and started cheering.

A gathering of 250,000 people demanding the abolition of poverty would be pretty amazing, even if the politics of the organisers were dubious. But it didn't feel like that - rather it was an assembly of atomised individuals self-consciously taking part (participating is too strong a word) in a media event. We'd only been there half an hour when we heard the couple next to us say - 'we've done it now - lets take some photos to show people we were here, and go home. We can get a t-shirt on the way out'. That summed up the event, along with having one of the richest people in the world, Bill Gates, talking about abolishing poverty from the stage. He got a cheer as a celebrity, with my lone boo seemingly unheard. Nothing surprizing, but depressing nevertheless.

Five years later, making poverty history remains as remote as ever.

UK Teknival in Wales: Drop the Charges against the 'Dale Rave Six'

This from Schnews (18 June 2010):

'Around 2,500 partygoers descended on Dale Aerodrome in Wales last May bank holiday for the 2010 UK Teknival, only to be met with a massive police response. Police broke up the party on the first day, arresting 17 people in the process. Four remain on police bail and six have been charged. Automatic number plate recognition, a police photographer, hand-held camcorders, helicopters and even a plane were used by police in a sophisticated surveillance operation which resulted in hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of equipment and vehicles being seized (not to mention a similar amount spent on the police operation no doubt)...

This year as hundreds of vehicles congregated near the small village of Dale on the coast of southwest Wales, four policemen attempted to block the road leading to the disused aerodrome site, causing a massive tailback which brought traffic to a standstill for three hours. One witness reports they were stuck at least five miles behind the front of the jam. Eventually, after someone brought out a 12 volt rig and people started dancing in the road, the policemen moved aside and actually directed everyone onto to the site, negotiating with a landowner to get a gate opened.

As a result of the blockade, soundsystems didn’t begin setting up until the early hours of Sunday morning. By about midday the next day, police, the local council and the BBC were all on the scene. Fairly positively-slanted BBC interviews with partygoers were broadcast nationally and posted online, although the second has since been removed from the BBC website. Mid-afternoon Sunday a helicopter flew overhead, broadcasting something that might have been the words of Section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 over a loudspeaker. The message was inaudible due to loud music being played on the ground; even those straining their ears to hear only caught snatches of it, and witness accounts vary. It was apparently a warning to leave within between one, four, or twenty-four hours.

Whichever it was, at this stage the majority of soundsystems started packing their rigs into their vehicles as ordered by the police. It became clear then that the three day mega-rave everyone was expecting had been thwarted. The atmosphere of unease and fear generated by the authorities caused a mass exodus of ravers who would otherwise have stayed to help to clean up the site after the party. Most people left the site in a hurry, although some efforts were made to clear rubbish. As each soundsystem drove off site their driver was stopped and arrested, their equipment was seized and their vehicles were impounded. Only the luckiest got away. Confiscated items include work tools, vinyl collections, several vehicles without sound equipment in them, a hire van, and hired and borrowed music equipment. Police deliberately kept the hire van for two weeks, making the total cost £950.

Along with one other soundsystem that left early on Monday morning, a well-known deep house music soundsystem stayed behind and continued playing music and partying until mid-afternoon on Monday, when more than twenty police, including the Chief of Dyfed-Powys Constabulary, came over and physically handed out a Section 63 notice, telling people to leave within one hour. They explained that they had drunk too much to drive and asked if they could stay until the next morning. The officers agreed that they could stay on site and drive home in the morning on condition that they packed their equipment into the van immediately.

Whilst negotiations were taking place, a disabled traveller started to play punk music on his car stereo, which police then confiscated from his live-in vehicle. “He wasn’t even playing repetitive beats,” recalls one partygoer, “he was a disabled man playing music in his own home and the police seemed to illegally enter his home and steal his stereo.”

Police then left the site, but an hour later, a low-loader recovery vehicle arrived to tow the van containing the soundsystem, followed by four riot vans and about fifteen police cars. There were less than fifty people left on site at this point. A woman whose partner was detained overnight was forced to sleep outside the police station as she awaited his release because their van had been impounded leaving her nowhere to sleep and no way of returning home. Despite this, the police refused to let her stay inside.

Four people were released on police bail pending further investigation and the ‘Rave Six’, as the mainstream media has dubbed them, have been charged under Section 136 of the Licensing Act 2003 for carrying out unlicensed licensable activity. The six have now been released on unconditional bail and are due to return to Haverfordwest Magistrates Court on 24th June. Four of the six arrested were merely friends from the last soundsystem to leave the party and had nothing to do with the overall organisation of the event. (It’s highly probable that the other two didn’t either). Offenders under Section 136 are liable for up to six months in jail and/or a fine of up to £20,000'.

More information: Drop the Charges Over UKTek (Facebook group)

The Wind from Nowhere

'The dust came first. Donald Maitland noticed it as he rode back in the taxi from London Airport, after waiting a fruitless forty-eight hours for his Pan-America flight to Montreal. For three days not a single aircraft had got off the ground... The great passenger terminus building and the clutter of steel huts behind it were clogged with thousands of prospective passengers, slumped on their baggage in long straggling queues, trying to make sense of the continuous crossfire of announcements and counter-announcements' .

The opening passage of JG Ballard' s The Wind from Nowhere put me in my mind of the recent grounding of aircraft as a result of the dust cloud from a volcano in Iceland. In this novel, the problem is a terrible, accelerating wind that sweeps across the whole world, ultimately levelling most of the built environment while the survivors cower underground.

This was Ballard's first novel, published in 1962 (I have been reading the Penguin edition, pictured, first published in 1967). He later disowned it as 'hack work', but there are some familiar Ballardian themes - chiefly his evident pleasure in describing the collapse of civilisation. For instance, in the chapter 'Vortex over London': 'Nelson's Column was down. Two weeks earlier, when the wind had reached ninety-five mph, a crack which had passed unnoticed for seventy-five years suddenly revealed itself a third of the way up the shaft. The next day the upper section had toppled, the shattered cylindrical segments still lying where they had fallen among the four bronze lions... As they turned into Charing Cross Road Marshall noted that the Garrick Theatre had collapsed' etc.etc.

New York gets it too: 'Apparently New York is a total write-off. Manhattan's under hundred-foot waves, most of the big skyscrapers and office blocks are down. Empire State Building toppled like a falling chimney stack. Same story everywhere else. Casualty lists in the millions. Paris, Berlin, Rome - nothing but rubble, people hanging on in cellars'.

Of Cattle and Music

How much do the origins of music owe to cattle? I was prompted to think about this when reading 'The Storr: unfolding landscape' (edited by Angus Farquhar) a book documenting an ambitious 2005 public art project staged on the Storr mountain on the Isle of Skye by nva (a group with their origins in Test Department).

The event seems to have involved a nightwalk around the mountain with various light and sound happenings - seemingly including the sounds of ancient horns. Hence the book includes an essay by ancient musical instrument expert John Purser, Paths of our Ancestors, which discusses their significance:

'there were much older instruments belonging to the peoples who herded cattle in Ireland and Scotland - the beautiful curved bronze horns from the Bronze Age itself, of which many still survive. The orginals - some still playable - are derived in form from the horns of cattle and can reproduce the sounds of cattle among other things. They date from three millennia ago and, with their accompanying rattles shaped like a bull's scrotum, they carry with them a fertile memory of a great herding culture...

Besides being able to imitate the sounds of cattle, bronze horns can also convey a sense of fear or of magic - sounds which relate to the mythology of the cattle, in to which much that is magical is woven. That deeper sound world which is shared by all living things, in which the sounds of warning, or enticement and allure, have some strange commonality beyond analysis, will carry to you the sounds of our ancestors, human and animal, from deep in their throats. Listen in silence and you too may, in imagination, follow those paths where human and animal, reality and myth, meet without embarrassment in natural companionship'.

The notions of the horn section remains at the heart of soul and jazz, even if the instruments no longer resemble their animal ancestors. But the name itself is a reminder that some of the earliest musical instruments were made from cattle (from actual horns, and in the case of drums from the skin of cattle), partly in imitation of the sounds of these creatures. Later bagpipes too were made from animal skin, as well as the belly of some stringed instruments.

I was reminded of some of the primeval power of music last week, and indeed of Test Department, when I came across this lot in Glasgow's Buchanan Street. Clanadonia are self-styled 'Tribal Pipes and Drums band', and they do make a fearsome sound.

Cars: Adorno, Numan, Kundera

'Technology is making gestures precise and brutal, and with them men. It expels from movements all hesitation, deliberation, civility. It subjects them to the implacable, as it were ahistorical demands of objects. Thus the ability is lost, for example, to close a door quietly and discreetly, yet firmly. Those of cars and refrigerators have to be slammed, others have the tendency to snap shut by themselves, imposing on those entering the bad manners of not looking behind them. The new human type cannot be properly understood without awareness of what he is continuously exposed to from the world of things about him, even in his most secret innervations... which driver is not tempted, merely by the power of his engine, to wipe out the vermin of the street, pedestrians, children and cyclists? The movements machines demand of their users already have the violent, hard-hitting, unresting jerkiness of Fascist maltreatment' (Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: reflections on a damaged life, 1951).

Here in my car 

I feel safest of all 

I can lock all my doors 

It's the only way to live In cars

Here in my car 

I can only receive 

I can listen to you 

It keeps me stable for days 

In cars 

(Gary Numan, Cars, 1979) 

 'I was in my car and a couple of men in a van swerved round me, pulled up in front, got out and were clearly going to give me a bit of a hammering, trying to get me out, kicking the car and screaming and shouting. I was pretty scared, locked all my doors and ended up driving on to the pavement 'cos I couldn't go anywhere, people obviously leaping out of the way because I was in a bit of a panic. Cars is just a about feeling safe in amongst people in a car, cos no one can get to you in your own little bubble' (Gary Numan, quoted in BBC documentary Synth Britannia (2009). The narrator described the song as 'part eulogy to JG Ballard and part tesimtony to living in 70 s London'). 

 'The cars that fill the streets have narrowed the pavements, which are crowded with pedestrians. If they want to look at each other, they see cars in the background, if they want to look at the building across the street they see cars in the foreground; there isn't a single angle of view from which cars will not be visible, from the back, in front, on both sides. Their omnipresent noise corrodes every moment of contemplation like acid. Cars have made the former beauty of cities invisible' 

(Milan Kundera, Immortality, 1991)

Torture without Trace: Tibetan singer jailed

Tibetan singer Tashi Dhondup is reportedly serving 15 months hard labour after being arrested by the Chinese authorities for his 'subversive' songs. According to Free Tibet: 'The 30-year-old had been hiding in Xining, Qinghai province, after the authorities had banned his music. Tashi Dhondup had also been arrested in 2008 after the release of his previous CD, and was released in February 2009.... The 30-year-old was reportedly arrested at gunpoint by four police officers in a restaurant in Xining as his wife held onto a police officer's leg in an attempt to prevent the arrest. Like many Tibetans in detention, there are fears for his welfare. Tashi Dhondup was born into a nomadic family in Sarlang, a town in Yungan county, Malho prefecture in Qinghai province. He had also been detained between September 2008, accused of releasing songs containing 'counter-revolutionary content'. His song 'The Year of 1959' was singled out as an example of this. He was beaten by police over a seven day period'.

Here's his track Torture without Trace:

"Torture Without Trace" by Tashi Dhondup from HPeaks on Vimeo.

Dancing Questionnaire 21: John Eden

Happy summer solstice, June 21st and here's the 21st completed Dancing Questionnaire from John Eden of Uncarved, Woofah and many other adventures.

1. Can you remember your first experience of dancing?

I can't really, unless you count doing the hokey cokey at parties or 'music and movement' at school as a child. I have rubbish co-ordination, so never had much confidence for physical things like football or dancing.

We did have some school discos when I was about 10, but I seem to remember running about with mates rather than dancing. It was a nerd's life from then until my mid teens.

I found it a lot easier to hang out at parties talking bollocks in the kitchen or arguing over whose tape got played on the stereo (which I think is how many people ended up being DJs 'in the olden days' - a love of music and a fear of making an arse of yourself dancing).

I eventually overcame most of my reservations about getting on down with a combination of teenage drinking and going to places where nobody seemed to mind if you were gyrating like a short-circuiting C3PO. I'm never going to win any medals for my dance skills, but it's been an incredibly important part of my life.

2. What's the most interesting/significant thing that has happened to you while out dancing?

Er, I dunno. None of the significant things in my life have happened whilst I've been dancing. This is probably because I try to get completely lost in it all and remove myself from the outside world.

I guess I'm often 'working through' stuff in the back of my head without realising it, and then having a chuckle at myself for being so serious and then realising that whatever it was just didn't matter all that much anyway. I'm also a fan of those little conspiratorial smiles with complete strangers.

More concretely, the plan to do the fanzine which became WOOFAH hatched out of several nights on the Plastic People dancefloor at the sadly missed BASH - an incredible reggae/grime/dubstep night run by Kevin Martin (The Bug) and Loefah (DMZ).

On a less positive note, someone was once sick into the hood of my hooded top whilst I was dancing, which seemed quite significant at the time.

Oh and the first Gulf War broke out while I was dancing to Psychic TV at the Zap Club in Brighton, which killed the mood somewhat.

3. You. Dancing. The best of times

Reclaiming the Streets on the Westway [film below from 1996 - one of my favourite days too, Neil]. Fatboy Slim playing all night in the small room at The End. Watching the sun come out from behind the clouds at the Big Chill. Any of The Bug's sets at BASH.

There's a lot I can't remember, the hundreds of amazing nights out with friends that are little chapters in the larger story of a social relationship... it's never just about the dancing, it's the mad conversations, getting ready, random things happening on the way home, the whole night.

4. You. Dancing. The worst of times...

I got really drunk at drum 'n' bass night PM Scientists (Farringdon, circa 1997) and fell over the MC whilst he was in full flow. That didn't go down very well.

Seeing bouncers pound some poor guy's head against a wall in Cyprus. Moody junglists telling people off for dancing 'in my space'. Euro-crusties killing the vibe with a two hour acid techno set in someone's kitchen.

Homophobic MCs on my favourite soundsystem (which to be fair to them they sorted out sharpish),

Casualties. Realising that, tonight John, YOU are the casualty.

I'd like to take this opportunity to apologise to every single person whose feet I have trodden on, or whose drink I have spilled in the course of my adventures over the years.

5. Can you give a quick tour of the different dancing scenes/times/places you've frequented?

Mid 80s - Flailing around ripped to the gills on cider at various punky gigs.

1988 - first acid house moment, first time in a nightclub.

Late 80s/early 90s - lots of gigs/clubs by aciiiieeeed converts like Psychic TV, the Shamen, Megadog, the odd squat party here and there. Oh and The Torture Garden fetish nights, which were a bit of an eye-opener. Also some goth/indie nights (I blame my housemates). This covers the first few years of me moving to London so I was going out a lot.

Mid 90s - the Tribal Gathering festivals. A brief flirtation with the early stages of Goa trance with Return to the Source at the Brixton Fridge. Then drum 'n' bass, plus things like Dead by Dawn at the 121 Centre.

Late 90s: falling headlong into Big Beat and an increasingly all-consuming obsession with all things dub, culminating in some truly inspirational moments under the influence of soundsystems like Jah Shaka, Iration Steppas, Abashanti and Jah Tubbys.

Early to mid 2000s: I went to a few nights organised by folk on the UK-Dance.org discussion list. Since then the only game in town has been BASH, really. I've occasionally enjoyed grime/dubstep nights like Dirty Canvas, FWD and the squatted 'House Party' events. For a while my main source of dancing was at kids' discos... cha cha slide..
.
Late 2000s: A few years ago I got tired of regularly being the oldest bloke in the room at dubstep/grime nights. Since then I've gravitated more towards smaller reggae/rocksteady/ska clubs like Tighten Up and Musical Fever . These attract an impressively diverse age range and are always great - everyone is serious about the music, but generally not at the expense of having a good time.

6. When and where did you last dance?

I had a drunken stagger recently at a mate's birthday party in Camden (this mate, in fact). Jah Shaka at the Dome in Tufnell Park was the last time I had a proper session. That was back in May and did me a power of good.

7. You're on your death bed. What piece of music would make your leap up for one final dance?

I would probably attempt to nod my head to Hopeton Lewis' 'Take It Easy', but throwing off the respirator and waving my zimmer frame in the air like I just don't care is probably reserved for 'Drop Top Caddy' by Aphrodite and Mickey Finn.

All questionnaires welcome, just answer the same questions - or even make up a few of your own - and send to transpontine@btinternet.com (see previous questionnaires).

BP: your party's over

Is there a more obscene media spectacle at the moment than British newspapers like the Daily Express whipping up people to rally round BP (see for instance this front cover from June 11th)?. On the one hand, Obama is criticised for calling them British Petroleum when they have rebranded themselves as plain old multinational BP (British Polluters?); on the other we are told that the British Government should do more to defend them because of their importance to the British economy. It may be true that a collapse in BP's share price will hit pension funds, but that just highlights the absurdity of older people's incomes being at the mercy of the market lottery. Of course other oil companies are just as bad, and indeed governments all over the world, including Obama's, are deeply involved in their activities.

But what about BP? Never mind the unfolding environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, 11 workers died in the Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 20th - something that every report on this should be mentioning, but which seems to frequently be 'forgotten'. Likewise 16 workers died in April 2009 when the helicopter carrying them from BP's Miller field crashed into the North Sea. And 15 people died in the infamous March 2005 BP Texas City refinery catastrophe.

Shortly before the Gulf of Mexico explosion, there was a protest against another BP operation - the strip mining of a huge area of the Candadian wilderness in Alberta to extract oil. The International Day of Action on the Canadian Tar Sands on 10th April was marked in London with a 'Party at the Pumps' at Shepherds Bush Green BP Petrol Station. Using a tactic developed in the 1990s Reclaim the Streets parties to outwit the police, people gathered at Oxford Circus tube station, most of them unaware of the location of the protest. They followed a few people with flags on to a train, who signalled with a whistle blast at Shepherds Bush station that it was time to get off. Meanwhile an advance party had occupied the petrol station forecourt.

More than a hundred of people took part in the four hour long 'Party at the Pumps', dancing to live music from the Rhythms of Resistance samba band, the Green Kite Midnight ceilidh band and the Bicycology sound system

photos © Peter Marshall 2010; loads more at his My London Diary site

Meanwhile, in Casanare, Colombia, workers have been occupying a BP plant in a wages dispute. According to the Colombia Solidarity Campaign (6 June 2010):

'There has been an upsurge in workers and community protests against BP in Casanare since the beginning of 2010. Workers at the Tauramena Central Processing Facility (CPF) starting 22 January went in strike supported by USO, the National Oil Workers Union of Colombia. On 15 February riot police brutally attacked the picket line, sending three workers to hospital. Demonstrations and popular assemblies in support of the stoppage took place in Tauramena and surrounding villages from February onwards. The USO union and many different community sectors came together to form the Movement for the Dignity of Casanare. The strike ended after 30 days when BP promised talks...

On 21 May workers involved in construction operations in the Tauramena installation entered into occupation demanding: a wage increase; the establishment a wage scale; due process in disciplinary decisions; and labour guarantees for the workers. On 2 June army forces entered the plant and at time of writing are harassing the workers, who stay overnight chaining themselves to plant equipment so that they cannot be dislodged'.

In the past activists opposing BP in Colombia, whether on environmental or workplace issues, have been killed by right wing death squads.

BP started out as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) in 1909, after oil was discovered in Iran. It was renamed the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) in 1935 with the British Government taking a controlling interest, and the British Petroleum Company in 1954. It notoriously played a role in the 1953 military coup which overthrew the Mohammed Mossadegh as Prime Minister after his government voted to nationalise AIOC. As Stephen Kinzer, author of All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, summarised in a recent interview : 'the oil that fueled England all during the 1920s and '30s and ’40s all came from Iran.... Every factory in England, every car, every truck, every taxi was running on oil from Iran. The Royal Navy, which was projecting British power all over the world, was fueled a hundred percent by oil from Iran'.

Loughinisland 1994

All over the world, pubs and bars are full of people watching the World Cup, drinking, singing, celebrating, commiserating. On this particular day I would like to remember some people who went out to do the same during a previous competition and never came home. 

On 18 June 1994, people were watching Ireland play Italy in the Heights bar/O'Toole's, Loughinisland, a small village in County Down in the North of Ireland. Two masked gunmen from the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force burst in and opened fire, killing six men: Eamon Byrne (aged 39), Barney Green (87), Malcolm Jenkinson (53), Daniel McCreanor (59), Patrick O Hare (35) and Adrian Rogan (34). Five others were injured: "It was in the second half of the match about 10.20 pm and Ireland were leading 1-0 when the two UVF assassins entered the small bar. There was one available entrance and exit and having effectively trapped their victims inside, two members of the death squad started to fire their automatic weapons. Survivors recounted how the masked UVF men moved from one person to another shooting each between two and five times before running out of ammunition. More than 30 shots were fired from the two assault rifles with almost every bullet striking someone at point blank range... On leaving the bar, one of the UVF death squad was heard by one of he survivors shouting 'Well done boys, good job'" (An Phoblact/Republican News, 23 June 1994). 

 Nobody was ever convicted, and relatives of the victims have campaigned up to the present to find out the truth, with consistent allegations of the involvement of British security force agents in the attack. At the very least, it seems that some police agents knew that the attack was planned, and it also appears that the police destroyed evidence, in particular the getaway car.

More posts on Ireland

The Hunger Strike, the Irish War and an English Town: Luton 1980-81

Remembering Bloody Sunday 

May Days in Dublin 1994

Time for Peace, Time to Go: demonstrations in Belfast, Dublin and London 1994

Unfaltering commerce with the stars

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

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

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

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



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

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

Margins Music Live at Deptford Albany

In the past couple of years there have been several albums aiming in some way to reflect on life in early 21st century London. Think The Bug's London Zoo or Nitin Sawney's London Underground (both 2008) or even, on a more historical tip, Madness's The Liberty of Norton Folgate (2009).

Dusk and Blackdown's Margins Music is very much in that lineage. As Martin Clark/Blackdown told Woofah magazine: 'We pretty much noticed that all the music we liked from the city, from UK garage to jungle/d&b, to dubstep and grime, came from the rougher edges not the safe centre'. With this in mind, the album explores particular sonic territories associated with specific zones of the capital, from the East/North East London grime heartland to 'Croydon, Streatham, Norwood and Norbury: the places where dubstep was born'. But of course margins refers not just to geographical areas, but to socially marginalized people and spaces, 'strange hidden studios, night buses, deserted overland stations, squat parties, council estates, Iranian corner shops, Bollywood tape shops' (Woofah #3, 2008).

Although the album was released in 2008, it feels like a project in progress. Starting out with a series of 12" single releases in the second half of the noughties, followed by the album, then a remix album by Grievous Angel, they are now taking it several steps further with live performance.

I went along to their first night last Saturday at the Albany in Deptford. Must admit I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I tend to be sceptical of attempts to render electronic music as live performance - sometimes just a guy standing on a stage behind a laptop in which case you think 'why bother?', sometimes a horrendous jazzification whereby perfectly good samples are reproduced by live musicians suggesting a crisis of confidence, as if 'authenticity' requires 'real musicians' noodling away.

But for this show, Dusk and Blackdown got the balance just right. Not cluttering the stage with lots of musos, but foregrounding the live elements that really added something, in this case the voices of Farrah and Japjit, and live percussion from Renu (plus Dusk and Blackdown themeselves and keyboard player Bobbie). Another key ingredient was the visuals masterminded by Jonathan Howells - a mix of old London newsreel (some great shots of women dancing), Bollywood and contemporary urban shots of lots of the capital's postcodes.

What makes Margins Music particularly ambitious is its recognition of the South Asian musical influence in the great London soundclash. With everything else that is in Dust and Blackdown's mix, this could easily result in a kind of tepid fusionism. But they are sufficiently grounded in London bass and beats (DJing on Rinse FM etc.) to be able to bring in these desi flavours without creating a bland mish mash.

To create a sonic space in a studio in which disparate social, musical and cultural elements are brought into play is one thing. To create a physical space in which people with different backgrounds and experiences come together in a single continuous performance is much harder. Margins Music Live managed to pull this off, with the South Asian themed opening shifting into Trim's grime verbal gymnastics towards the end.

It was a respectable crowd for a first live performance, but a bigger audience and the increased confidence of having a glitch free debut behind them could lift Margins Music Live from really good to another level. So if you get the chance, check this out with gigs this week in Brighton and Manchester and follow ups in Reading and Kendal. Details here.

I went along with John Eden, who beat me to getting his review up.

More photos at Blackdown's blog

General Ludd vs. John Henry

A while ago I went to a talk by the great radical historian Peter Linebaugh on 'The Invisibility of the Commons' . In the course of it he compared the two 19th century songs, John Henry and General Ludd's Triumph, as reflecting two approaches to work - suggesting that maybe one had historically been more typical of the US working class and the other of the working class in England.

In the former American song, the railway bosses' introduction of a steam-powered hammer to replace human labour is viewed as a challenge by Henry the 'steel drivin' man', who works hard to demonstrate his superior power even at the cost of his own life - he beats the hammer only to die as a result. An assertion of the dignity of labour at one level, but also a willingness to compete with mechanisation by voluntarily intensifying work:

John Henry told his captain
Lord a man ain't nothing but a man
But before I'd let your steam drill beat me down
I'd die with a hammer in my hand

Here's Mississippi Fred McDowell's version:



In the latter English song about the Luddite movement, the introduction of machinery in the cotton industry is responded to not by workers working themselves to death, but by them sentencing the machines to death through sabotage:

Those engines of mischief were sentenced to die
By unanimous vote of the trade,
And Ludd who can all opposition defy
Was the grand executioner made.

And when in the work he destruction employs,
Himself to no method confines;
By fire and by water he gets them destroyed,
For the elements aid his designs.

Here's a version by The Fucking Buckaroos (personally I prefer the version by Chumbawamba, but it's not on youtube):



Admittedly, on the basis of these versions, John Henry is a better song, even if it's not a better strategy...

Dancing Madness

'Dancing, when poor human Nature lets itself loose from bondage and

circumstances of anxious selfish care: it is Madness'

Image: Untitled (Dancing Madness) painted in the 1970s by the Egyptian artist Hamed Nada (1924-1990); quote from Samuel Taylor Coleridge - he wrote these words in his notebook in 1804 during a trip to Sicily, where he had been watching (and possibly dancing with) the young opera singer Anna-Cecilia Bertozzi at public balls - they may have had an affair (source: Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Darker Reflections, 1998)

Datacide Roman Holiday - Electrode09

Looking through some pictures I realized that I never got round to posting on my trip to Rome last year to take part in Electrode09 - Independent Electronic Music Festival. As it was one of the highlights for me of the last year, I do want to document it. So hot off the press and nearly a year late (it took place on 12-13 June 2009) here's my report.

(flyer - click to enlarge).

The venue was the very impressive Forte Prenestino Occupied Social Centre, a former military base left abandoned until it was squatted in 1986 (bit of history here). It's a huge site, with two big outdoor arenas, and lots of rooms coming off various tunnels seemingly built into a hillside. The food and drink were excellent - unlike in any squat I have been to in in the UK, there was a selection of very nice wine! (in fact the venue has hosted whole Critical Wine events).

The scene before the party started:

My contribution was to take part in a panel of Datacide magazine contributors talking on aspects of 'Cultura Elettronica e Controcultura', based on the similar event held in Berlin in Autumn 2008. As usual at these kinds of events, most people don't turn up until late for the music so it was a more select audience for the talks, but still worth doing. Christoph Fringeli talked on Hedonism and Revolution, Hans Christian Psaar on Kindertotenlieder for rave culture, and Alexis Wolton on Tortuga towerblocks: pirate signals in the 90s (yes, the Nightingale Estate in Hackney was mentioned in the city of the Tiber). My talk developed ideas from my article on dance music history I wrote for Datacide, but looking more specifically at the Hardcore Continuum debate and some its deeper historical roots (will post the talk sometime).

The music was mainly on a techno/minimal tip, it was OK but for my taste there were too many live sets consisting of a bloke fiddling around with a lap top and twiddling nobs, though Antipop Consortium at least had some presence. Personally unless there's something to see or the music's really good, I would generally rather have a no nonsense DJ set.

We were reliably informed by our London in exile translator that there was another squat where happy hardcore was to be had, and she was about to promote Rome's first UK Funky night. As it was, the only bit of that which got aired over the weekend was when I played a bit of Perempay with Maxwell D from the stage, in order to illustrate the convergence of reggae MC, soca and disco/house strands with their respective social histories of carnival and contestation. Or something.

Anyway I had a dance obviously, seem to remember bouncing up and down to some Thomas Heckmann.

Electrode2010 is taking place soon at the same venue (June 11-12), so if you're in that part of the world you might want to check it out.

Claremont Road 1994: 'the rave had to end sometime'

The movement against the M11 linkroad in Leytonstone (or Leytonstonia as we termed it then), North East London, was one of the more inspiring struggles of the mid-1990s. In particular, Claremont Road was squatted and turned into a protest site for the best part of a year before being evicted by the police in 1994's 'Operation Garden Party' The street was demolished, but like at Newbury in the same period the defeat of the immediate movement was also some kind of victory - by increasing the costs of road building these struggles led to other road projects being shelved. 

 The Channel One TV programme below from 1994 includes the classic line: 'Claremont Road was notorious among locals for its psychedelia, squatters and new age travellers. But everyone living in this time warped street of the 60s knew the rave had to end sometime'. There was a strong overlap between this scene and the free party scene - both united in the movement against the Criminal Justice Act which criminalised raves and protest. I remember, for instance, people from Claremont Rd showing a film at Megatripolis, the techno/trance club at Heaven.

The 'Just Say No' flyer reproduced here (click to enlarge) is from a benefit party I went to for the M11 campaign held on 2 April 1994 at Arch 21, Valentia Place, Brixton (one of the railway arches between Loughborough junction and Brixton). The party was put on by Sunnyside 'with the boundless co-operation of the conscious club'. Some good dancing I recall and good conversation. As a bit of a househead I was always quite glad to go to a free party where the music was a bit broader than just acid-tekno, much as I loved some of that too.

The flyer includes the words 'the eco-consciousness is rising, carry the vision out into the mainstream of society, keep it sweet, keep it right, remember this is a peaceful fight'. This alludes to the bitter arguments in the anti-CJA/roads movement at that time between the 'fluffy' pacifist faction and the 'spikey' riotous faction. Up until this point I had been politically inclined to the the 'spikey' side, but despite rejecting the absolute pacifism of some 'fluffies' I came to appreciate that tactically they were sometimes achieving more than those 'spikies' who seemed to want to kick off a confrontation at every opportunity regardless of the terrain, balance of forces or risks for those around them. Anyway there were some lovely people in the anti-roads movement (as well as some casualties), and nobody can say that they didn't have a go. Some dark times ahead perhaps, so learn the lessons well.

Dancing on Clapham Common, 1989 & 1995

Courtesy of Pops (Sentinel Design) and Wayne Anthony, some classic acid house footage from July 1989. It starts off with a Biology rave in Watford, but after about 3:15 minutes the action switches to Clapham Common with people dancing in the sunlight.

The Common was the scene of a few parties in this period. Test Pressing has reproduced Whose Smiley Now? an article about it from The Face (August 1982), written by Sheryl Garratt:

"'Mental, Mental, Let's go fucking mental!' There were stories last year of people dancing to police sirens, traffic noises, anything to stretch the Summer of Love out a little longer, but never before have I seen people dancing to a generator. It started when a sound system was set up on Clapham Common on the Sunday morning after a Saturday all-nighter, the party simply carrying on in the middle of this South London park. Word spread, and the following week clubbers truned up for a repeat performance. 1,000 people danced their Sunday away on the grass while police took souvenir snapshots from nearby buildings.

When the same thing happened one week later the police took a more active part and refused to allow the sound van onto the common... Towards the end of the afternoon the heroes of the day arrived. These were the people shouldering a hired generator and a home stereo, bringing much of the crowd to its feet in anticipation. The generator all but drowned out the music, but the chants were loud, the atmosphere hot, and with a few hundred people packed protectively around the sound source, the police retreated, with a hail of bottles and cans following amiably in their wake. Surprizingly (but given that no-one was doing any real harm, sensibly), they didn't return. 'It's only a matter of time' said one obvserver with relish, 'before there's a riot'."

I wasn't at these 1989 parties, but I was on Clapham Common on Sunday April 30th 1995 when a 3,000 strong march against the Criminal Justice Act ended up there. There was a May Day festival in progress there with bands and marquees, but neither the police nor the festival organisers (the GMB union) were keen to allow the United Systems anti-CJA rig on to the Common. It pulled up alongside the park, and we danced on the grass.

I came across some photos from that day by David Minuk, an American visiting London at the time:

Thanks to Controlled Weirdness for tipping us off about the film footage

Stop the Tivoli Gardens Massacre

The precise details of what's going on in the Tivoli Gardens area of Kingston, Jamaica are still unclear. But it is already established that at least 44 civilians have died in a massive police/army operation to arrest alleged gangster Christopher "Dudus" Coke. Doubtless some of the dead are unofficial soldiers in some gang or other; doubtless too many are entirely innocent. Meanwhile residents of the area are trapped in their homes, some without food, water or medical care.

In the poverty-stricken parts of Jamaica off the tourist trail, people have long since been caught up in the crossfire between the interlocking miltia of the 'security' forces, gangsters, and the main political parties. In May 1997 for instance, three women and a six year old child were shot dead by state forces in Tivoli Gardens (see Amnesty International report). In July 2001, at least 20 people died there in a similar operation.

Tivoli Gardens has an important place in musical history. Aside from its role in reggae and dancehall (including the weekly Passa Passa street parties), it gave its name to a whole genre of UK drum and bass: 'The term "jungle" first emerged on a Rebel MC sample in 1991. This terms is associated with an area of Kingston, Jamaica, called Tivoli Gardens, known as "the Jungle" and frequently cited in"yard tapes" (Les Back, New ethnicities and urban culture: racisms and multiculture in young lives, 1996).

Here's a couple of old classics, sadly still relevant.

From 1978: U Roy - Peace & Love in the Ghetto:



From 1976: Junior Murvin - Police and Thieves ('in the street, scaring the nation with their guns and ammunition').

Special Request to all the Worker: in memory of Romano Alquati

Went to an event at the 195 Mare Street squatted social centre in Hackney last weekend. Very interesting film and short talk from someone involved in Gurgaon Workers News about workers struggles in the Gurgaon Special Economic Zone in India.

The building itself was quite impressive, a spacious but run down Georgian mansion that was most recently the New Lansdowne Club (a working men's social club I believe). The party after the talk didn't really get going while I was there, some interesting chat notwithstanding. But I did get to hear this great reggae track:

Johnny Ringo (1961-2005): Special Request/Working Class

I'd like to dedicate this to the memory of Romano Alquati, who died last month at the age of 75. Despite very little of his work being translated into English (as far I can find), Alquatti was very influential, through his involvement in Italy with Quaderni Rossi (Red Notebooks) and Classe Operaia (Working Class), in formulating notions of workers autonomy, class composition and workers inquiry which were central to the development of Operaismo, a Marxist current stressing self-organisation and working class power as a motor of social development.