Swing as Surrealist Music

Cultural Correspondence (1975-83) was a remarkable US-based radical journal with a particular focus on popular culture. Its entire archive is now available online and is a real treasure trove. I've been browsing through a 1979 special on surrealism, which has lots of music and dance related content. The following text is by the American philosopher Horace Meyer Kellen (1882-1974), an extract from his 1942 book Art and Freedom. I would certainly take issue with its association of jazz and swing (and by implication black people) with the 'primitive' - these developed as modern urban musics created by sophisticated virtuoso musicians. But the text does express very well the enthusiasm of its followers in that period for a music that seemed to embody liberation:

SWING AS SURREALIST MUSIC

'The musical equivalent of surrealism in painting and literature is not obviously connected with either its theory or practice. It develops as a practice entirely innocent of theory, as an unwilled expression of alogical spontaneity, of irresponsible, personal invention unenchanneled by form, unchecked by musical knowledge or learned tradition; develops thus with all the differentiae which the connoisseurs ascribe to surrealist creations. The name for it is Swing. Its native habitat is the United States of America, and it is indigenous to the southern portion, especially to the Mississippi riverfront at New Orleans. Unlike its literary and pictorial parallels, which sustain a local life already below the level of subsistence among selected groups of intelligentsia, Swing has attained a world-wide diffusion among all classes and occupations. The event is natural enough. Verbiform and graphic symbols require interpretation; sheer sonorous rhythm does not. Swing is caused in a medium which issues from and speaks to Dr. Freud's Unconscious direct, without disguise, without distortion...

...Swing arrived as the latest phase of a progression from Ragtime through Jazz. The trick of heightening emotional tension by opposing one rhythm to another became conspicuous as a practice about the same time that post-impressionism made its start. The matrix of Swing is said to have been opposed and mixed body-rhythms of the pasmala as danced in New Orleans bawdy-houses and honky tonks. The manner of mixing and opposition was carried over from dancing bodies to  sounding musical instruments. Popular songs so treated were said to be "ragged," and the treatment came to be called Rag-time. The singers and dancers and players who devised Ragtime were American Negroes with remnants of an eroding African culture in their body-rhythms, in their social habits and in their personal outlook. They were primitives indigenous to industrial civilization, with its timeclocks, its rigid divisions of the hours of the working day, its patterns of machine-logic and rationality. Negro Ragtime was the beginning of a break from that. In less than a generation the Negro's social heartbreak was absorbed into Ragtime's terpsichorean breakdown and Ragtime transmuted to Jazz. The vehicles of the American Negro's heartbreak is the Spiritual and Jazz, which is said to derive from jaser, an Acadian word meaning to gabble, to chatter, is the compenetration of the rag and the spiritual. Body, voice, wind and percussion instruments are its vehicles.

Jazz began to spread through the great industrial cities of the North American continent about the same year that the First International Exhibi-ion of Modem Art began its epoch-making trek across the States. This exhibition, which for the first time brought before the unaccustomed eyes of Americans the works of all the schools and cults that Europe had bred in two generations, had been arranged under the auspices of the Association of American Painters and Sculptors. Ragtime, which might be said to correspond to the cubist phase of the pictorial and verbiforrn arts, spread to Europe while modernist painting and poetry were acquiring a vogue in America. The four years o' the First World War were a plowing of a cultural soil wherein Jazz could take deep roots, and when the War ended it flowered indeed. . . .

The metronomic noises of the railroads and factories, the monotonous roar of the cities de-manded their rhythmic compensation. Even  formal music brought them forth. Percussion and wind instruments — brasses, saxophones, trombones, xylophones, bells — became more noticeable in orchestras. To atonality or to polytonality, which dropped modulation, which set key against key and scale against scale, was joined a continuous shift of rhythm or a contrapuntal opposition of many rhythms. In 1893, Dahomey Negroes, beating tom-torns for the entertainment of gaping Americans at Chicago's World Fair, had, by using feet and heads as well as hands, produced a triple cross rhythm which constituted an unconscious counter-point of rhythms. . .

Formal professional music, however modem, somehow failed to release the emotions which the industrial workday blockaded and starved. Night, that so long had been the time, not for living, but for sleeping away the fatigues of the living day, became conspicuously the time for living. The existence of the folk of the industrial cities is now a cultural schizophrenia of day-life and night-life. Day is the time when they earn their livings, night is the time when they live their lives. During the day most people are producers, disciplined to the machine, their bodies held to its rhythm, their minds constrained to its motions. By night, they are consumers; their body-rhythm seeks to recover its native physiological patterns, their movements search to resume the human form appropriate to autonomous human function. The extraordinary spread and influence of Swing testifies that in it the seeking and searching come to a haven; that it owns the power of gratifying the needs which launch them. Also its well-spring is the Negro of the urban jungle in New Orleans; also its centers of power are the great industrial areas — Chicago, New York, London, Berlin, Moscow, Shanghai, Tokyo.

Atonal, polyrhythmic, Swing cuts itself loose from every rule and canon that tradition has brought down or craftsmanship confirmed. It asks of the performer two things, a maximum of virtuosity on his instrument, a maximum of spontaneity in his performance. That must needs be sheer, unrestricted improvisation, the free, the anarchic expression of his Unconscious, undisguised and unashamed. Nor is the expression sonoriform only. His whole body collaborates: as he plays, he dances, he acts, he sings, he leaps and twists and weaves like an acrobat, and the different behaviors pass seamlessly into and out of one another. He becomes the leader, not only of his band, but of his audiences: they step from their seats into the aisles and dance with him in an ecstasy — orgiastic or mystical or both according to the observer's lights — of release and self-recovery. It is the liberation of Dionysos from Apollo, of the living organism from the automatic machine, an insurgence of the depths into a conscious experience without connection and without analogue, though perhaps revivalist religious gatherings do enfold likenesses wherein convert and jitterbug are one under the skin. Swing might with good reason be called surrealism in excelsis'.

(full text below- click to enlarge)

London Nightlife 1983 - Colin Faver on Camden Palace and Heaven

From the Face magazine, February 1983, as part of an overview of the soundtrack to London nightlife at that point, an interview with the late Colin Faver 'One of the Camden Palace's four DJs who also plays Cha-Cha, the one nighter that provides a pansexual sideshow to Heaven's straight night each Tuesday'.

"The Palace on Saturdays is definitely the most upfront disco in England. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays educational, 50-50 disco and electro pop;  Thursday sticks to the no-funk groove; so on Saturdays we mix in funk and disco funk.

A lot of bands that have come out of the Palace initially as cult groups are now soft pop, like ABC, Culture Club. George proudly brought his first single to us and a whole new dancestyle developed from the girls in the Culture Club outfits, probably because they're so hard to dance in.

But the reaction has been a return to heavier underground sounds: Iggy,  Theatre of Hate, Lou Reed, Passenger. A lot of people don't like funk and we get asked for Killing Joke now which normally rarely gets played in discos. I reckon it's due to the influence of the Batcave and bands like Sex Gang Children and Bauhaus.

When the Palace opened we were almost totally electronic –  Visage, Soft Cell – but the most noticeable difference has been towards an acceptance of disco which was once a dirty word, particularly since electronic funk like Whodini and Man Parrish. Saturdays are good because people will dance to what's played. We've tried gay disco like Patrick Cowley and Roni Griffith and people to listen. Hard New York disco funk for sure came into its own last year on three labels in particular: Prélude, West End and Salsoul. For me this is the underground music. It's just like the days of punk because it revolves around small labels. D-train and Peach Boys really began the move.

I do get pissed off by NME not giving space to disco. If ever they do get round to reviewing it the records are so old. And then it's only a mention just to sound hip. Yet I'm sure there's a market judging by the numbers of people who ask in clubs.

We can get as ahead as we like at Cha-Cha so long as we include Simple Minds. I made a point of introducing a 50% funk policy over the past year because I get bored with the pompous futurists like Ultravox. A lot of people haven't heard Gil Scott-Heron and there is no way they can't dance to James Brown.

The quintessential Cha-Cha sound sound is Patrick Cowley's 'Mind Warp'. Heaven on a Saturday is basically very very fast 130bpm wild dancing but these days more gays complain that it's too fast. Where gay music once led trends, the interesting crossover has Yazoo's two singles which they now play in Heaven. The gay market wouldn't normally touch them but the German mix of 'The Anvil' and the ABC remix have crossed too.

In fact there's never been more choice than we have now: excellent imports and so many brilliant British bands. Those two Blancmange singles must have been last year's best. And listen for Set The Tone's first single, it's gifted. And small English one-offs like Animal Nightlife and Shriek Back are going to do well"

State of the Dance:

Yello - Heavy Whispers (acetate, electro funk)

Divine - Kick your Butt (gay disco)

Vaughan Mason - You can do it (hard funk)

Members - Go West (English dance music)

Set The Tone - Dance Sucker (Scottish dance music)

The interview was written by David Johnson who now runs the Shapers of the 80s website, which includes a wealth of information about London clubbing in that period, in particular the so-called Blitz Kids/New Romantics scene, which as he notes nobody actually in that scene called themselves! He discusses this article in the context of what else was going on in 1983 here.

See also: Steve Strange and Camden Palace, articles from Smash Hits 1982/3

Queerness as Utopia (José Esteban Muñoz RIP)

'Queerness is not yet here. Queerness is an ideality. Put another way, we are not yet queer. We may never touch queerness, but we can feel it as the warm illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality. We have never been queer, yet queerness exists for us as an ideality that can be distilled from the past and used to imagine a future. The future is queerness’s domain. Queerness is a structuring and educated mode of desiring that allows us to see and feel beyond the quagmire of the present. The here and now is a prison house. We must strive, in the face of the here and now’s totalizing rendering of reality, to think and feel a then and there. Some will say that all we have are the pleasures of this moment, but we must never settle for that minimal transport; we must dream and enact new and better pleasures, other ways of being in the world, and ultimately new worlds. Queerness is a longing that propels us onward, beyond romances of the negative and toiling in the present. Queerness is that thing that lets us feel that this world is not enough, that indeed something is missing. Often we can glimpse the worlds proposed and promised by queerness in the realm of the aesthetic. The aesthetic, especially the queer aesthetic, frequently contains blueprints and schemata of a forward-dawning futurity. Both the ornamental and the quotidian can contain a map of the utopia that is queerness... Queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality or concrete possibility for another world' ( Cruising Utopia: the Then and There of Queer Futurity, 2009)

Cuban-born American queer theorist José Esteban Muñoz died last month in New York at the age of 46.

See also: Having a Coke With You: For José Esteban Munoz (1966- 2013):

http://punctumbooks.com/blog/coke-jose-esteban-munoz-1966-2013/

Classic party scenes (3): Desperately Seeking Susan

In Susan Seidelman's 1985 film, bored housewife Roberta (Rosanna Arquette) swaps lives with bohemian rock chick/gangster's moll Susan (played by Madonna playing herself), leading Roberta's husband ('the spa king of New Jersey') to seek out Susan to help him find his wiife. 'Meet me at 30 West 21st Street' says Susan/Madonna and so the hapless yuppie finds himself dancing to 'Get Into the Groove' surrounded by an assortment of post-punk/new romantic haircuts. Earlier in the film, by way of contrast, we've seen his own tedious house party - a few nibbles, no dancing, conversations with dentists. Out on the dancefloor he really lets go, well loosens his tie anyway - 'only when I'm dancing can I feel this free'.

The scene was shot in real New York club Danceteria (fondly remembered here before by Charles Donelan), with various regulars and staff from the club in the film scene.

Tina Modotti

Tina Modotti (1896-1942) is best known as photographer, but her's was one of those lives that joined the dots between different radical and cultural scenes in the first half of the twentieth century. She was born in Udine, Italy, where her father was a militant worker and member of a banned socialist group. Tina had to drop out of school and earn a living as a silk worker in a sweatshop where 'the silk reelers were sometimes allowed to sing as they toiled. At first pianissimo and barely audible over the whirring of machinery, the juvenile voices would soar into the popular 'They call me Mimi' from La Boheme or 'ves doi voi che son dos stelis', a Friulian love song they had all been humming since childhood'.


In 1913, aged 16, she moved to San Francisco where she became an actress. She had a starring role in a Hollywood silent movie, The Tiger's Coat (1920), playing a Mexican servant who ended up heading a dance troupe.

After a period in Los Angeles bohemian circles she ended up in Mexico City in the aftermath of the revolution, living with the photographer Edward Weston, befriending Diego Riviera (who she modelled for while he worked on some of his murals), Frida Kahlo and B.Traven, and throwing herself into radical politics, including the unsuccessful campaign against the execution of the Italian anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti in the USA in 1927. Another of her lovers, the Cuban revolutionary Julio Antionio Mella was shot dead as the two of them walked together. In this period she was increasingly developing her practice as a photographer, with her work appearing in international radical publications such as El Machete, Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (AIZ), and New Masses.

She joined the Communist Party, and like many radicals of her generation was compromised by her links to Stalinist terror, particularly during the Spanish Revolution/Civil War where she worked alongside her lover Vittorio Vidali, a notorious henchman implicated in the death of many Poumistas, trotskyists and anarchists (including Alberto Besouchet, the first Brazilian to join the International Brigades, who disappeared after being denounced for Trotskyist sympathies - the evidence against him including an association with the Brazilian singer Elsie Houston, ex-wife of the surrealist Benjamin Peret who we have mentioned here before).

Leaving aside this terrible episode (in which the extent of her complicity is a bone of contention), I think we can still appreciate her photography and wonder what it would have been like to have gone to one of her legendary parties. Just after the First World War she lived with her lover Ricardo Gomez Robelo in LA:

'The most enduring memories of 313 South Lake Street are of boisterous parties in the studio, mobilizing Los Angeles's small bohemia, a provincial avant-garde striving for effect. "Intense, dreamy and vibrant", in Robelo's recollection, evenings throbbed "with the magic of art and congenial, exquisite friends and Saki!" Photographer Edward Weston noted of his fellow revelers: They were "well-read, worldly wise, clever in conversation,-could garnish with a smattering of French: they were parlor radicals. could sing IWW songs, quote Emma Goldman on freelove: they drank. smoked, had affairs .... "

The screen door slapping open and shut, Tina greeted her guests wearing something flowing and distinctive, her tie-dyed tunic perhaps, over a long skirt. She adored silk stockings and stacked jangling bracelets on her arm. Her eyes were rimmed in black, mouth painted into a ripe cherry, hands smoothed with her favorite honey-and-almond cream... As the evening heated up, the gregarious, streetwise Wobbly Roy Rosen might set the room on a roar with tales of the scoundrels he confronted as a "tough, tough baby" bill collector. Rosen hailed from New York, but many guests were refugees from San Francisco art circles: the painter Clarence Hinkle and his wife, Mabel, and the curly-haired Mexican Francisco Cornejo, who had created costumes and decor for Xochiquetzal, the "Toltec ballet" staged by the Denishawn modern dance troupe. An unruly sexual charge swept around the room, sending tall, tousled ex-barmaid Dorothea Childs reeling into somebody's arms as the lecherous and amusing old satyr Sadakichi Hartmann pranced from one woman to another. Jazz or Japanese music spinning on the Victrola, the studio dis:olved into a smoky, incense-fragrant maelstrom dotted with pools of colored lights from Tina's homemade Japanese lanterns. The crowd wrangled oveer aesthetics, got drunk on bootleg sake, and sucked on cigarette holders as they quoted Nietzsche and Wilde. Eyelids drooping, Robelo recited Swinburne while couples drifted out to the porch in a fever of kissing and groping.

Among the Richeys' guests was Ramiel McGehee, a baby-faced man with one glass eye and a pinched, disapproving mouth. Once a dancer who had toured Asia and was obsessed with Eastern mysticism, Ramiel metamorphosed into an undulating contortionist at the first sound of a sitar or daibyoshi'.

Living in Mexico City with Edward Weston, Modetti was once again at the centre of bohemian social life:

'New Year's Eve found the kitchen at 12 Lucerna in an uproar as Lupe Marin whipped up a spread of firecracker Mexican dishes, for which she had shopped, thus enabling a couple unable to scrape up January rent to throw a lavish party. Guests fox-trotted their way into 1924, pausing to quaff rum punch and smack their lips over the delicacies. So successful was the tertulia that Tina and Edward made it a weekly event, to be underwritten by passing the hat. "Because of grave conditions resulting from the revolution," the pair chortled, they kindled up the fabled Saturday nights, turning the Modotti-Weston household into the most dazzling light on the vanguard social circuit.

Virtually every well-known writer and artist in Mexico participated. Mexican-born, Texas-educated journalist Anita Brenner described how 'workers in paints drank tea and played the phonograph with union and non-union technical labour-scribes, musicians, architects, doctors, archaeologists, cabinet-ministers, generals, stenographers, deputies, and occasional sombreroed peasants."

....Invariably hungry, they dug into Tina's spaghetti with butter and cheese Anita's version of chongo, a traditional syrupy curd, which she served with cinnamon toast and tea, and a delicious curry and sweet rice prepared by an Indian revolutionist named Gupta. After dinner, the men heaped Colts on a table as tangos and the wicked Cuban rumba scratched their way our of the phonograph. On one memorable occasion, a guest stumbled upon her lover entwined with another woman and holloed him from room to room, popping at his feet with a small pistol. On another, Tina and Edward exchanged clothes, mimicking each other so convincingly that revelers were perplexed until Edward kicked up his pink-gartered legs and vamped outrageously. Edward loved to prance, but Tina, clumsy and uncomfortable on the dance floor, caught her breath on the parties' less frenetic edges, where talk gravitated to revolutionary art and politics'.

Quotes from Patricia Albers, Shadows, Fire, Snow – The Life of Tina Modotti, Clarkson Potter, 1999. See also this post at Museworthy.

Ten Years On: 1997, a year of dancing dangerously

This chronology of raves, clubs and policing was compiled from the dance music press at the time (Mixmag, Muzik, Eternity, DJ etc.). Much of it is the familiar story of cat and mouse chases between police and sound systems in East Anglia, Wales etc. - just as happened in 2007. But some things have changed - no more Reclaim the Streets parties in England, and more positively people being able to go out dancing in the north of Ireland without having to worry so much shootings and plastic bullets.

January 1997, Scotland: Fusion close down operations in Grampian after police threaten the licence of any venues allowing them to put on events

January 1997, London: Club UK in south London loses its licence. The club had appealed against the council withdrawing its licence, but this was upheld by a magistrates court.

February 1997, Holland: Police confiscate vans containing tripods, sound systems and banners to prevent a Reclaim the Streets party outside the Amsterdam motor show. After police baton charge the crowd, there is free food, music and dancing with a huge bonfire in a market square [Earth First Action Update, March 1997]

February 1997, USA: A nail bomb explodes at the Otherside Lounge, a lesbian club in Atlanta, Georgia, injuring five people. The attack is claimed by the far right Army of God saying it is aimed at “sodomites, their organisations and all who push their agenda”.

February 1997, London: Battersea police licencing section announce they are to oppose the renewal of the public entertainments licence for the club Adrenalin Village, up for renewal by Wandsworth Council.

February 1997, Leicester: Hardcore club Die Hard raided by 50 police - everyone searched.

February 1997, London The Cool Tan the building in Brixton, previously evicted, is resquatted for two parties and then evicted after a fortnight.

April 1997, London: A man dies from a heart attack and 8 people are arrested when riot police raid a squat party in Putney.

April 1997, Luton: The Exodus collective win the right to appeal against eviction from their site by the Department of Transport

April 1997, London: Linford Film Studios in Battersea, south London loses its licence

April 1997, N.Ireland: Robert Hamill a 25 year old Catholic father of two, is kicked to death by Loyalists while on his way home from a dance at St Patrick’s Hall in Portadown. The attack happens in full view of police who refuse pleas to intervene. In March 1999 his family’s solicitor, Rosemary Nelson, is killed by a car bomb. She has been preparing to bring private prosecutions against those involved and the Royal Ulster Constabulary

April 1997, London: 5000 party in Trafalgar Square at the end of march for social justice in support of Liverpool dockers, organised by Reclaim the Streets. Police seize sound system at the end and arrest four people in the van, charging them with conspiracy to murder for allegedly driving through police lines (charges later dropped). 1000 riot police clear people out of the square

May 1997, London: Southwark Council refuse licence to Urban Free Festival (formerly held in Fordham Park, New Cross), after earlier given permission for it to take place in Peckham in July
May 1997, Wales: Police use helicopters and road blocks to stop free party at a disused quarry in North Wales, seizing the T.W.A.T. sound system and dispersing a 4 mile convoy of party cars to the English border (despite this two parties go ahead later)

May 1997, Manchester: Police and bailiffs evict treetop and tunnel protesters, including the Zero Tolerance sound system tied into the trees, at the site of the proposed Manchester Airport Terminal 2

May 1997, Brighton: Police action prevents parties at three venues in Brighton, but one goes ahead on a travellers site at Braepool on the outskirts of town. A Noise Abatement notice is served, and the Council begins legal action to evict the site [Big Issue, 4.8.97]

May 1997, Hull: 300 party at Hull Reclaim the Streets, with sand pits and dancing for three hours (no arrests)

June 1997, Bristol: Police make 22 arrests at Bristol Reclaim the Streets and confiscate the Desert Storm sound system

July 1997, N.Ireland: Police open fire with plastic bullets on young people returning from a teenage disco on the Falls Road, Belfast. A 14-year-old boy is left in a coma.

July 1997, USA: The Stonewall Inn in New York is once again under threat, scrutinised by the city’s Social Club Task Force because of concerns about noise levels and ‘illegal dancing” [Pink Paper, 8/8/97]

August 1997, Wales: Two people on their way to set up an open air party in Deiniolen, North Wales are stopped and strip searched by police, who set up road blocks to prevent the party going ahead.

August 1997, London: Local councillor calls for the Dog Star pub/club in Brixton to be closed, claiming it is a magnet for drug dealers.

August 1997, Surrey: Hundreds of people turn up at a free party in old chalk pits in the Mole Valley in Surrey by the time police turned up the next morning to serve a notice under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act most people had gone home [Guilfin, September 1997]

August 1997, Portsmouth: Police with dogs and video surveillance teams ring a common in Portsmouth and search people trying to attend the Smokey Bears Picnic; council byelaws banning music on the common are enforced and 10 people are arrested [Guilfin, September 1997]

Summer 1997, Surrey: Police close down a free party in a forest near Guildford put on by Timber sound system.

September 1997, France: Police in Paris close down five mainly gay clubs supposedly because of ecstasy dealing (Le Queen, Le Cox, L’Enfer, Le Scorp and Les Follies Pigalle). 2000 people march in protest with one banner declaring “Paris, capitale de l’ennui” (Paris, capital of boredom).

October 1997, Russia: Moscow gay club Chance is raided by “a team of men wearing special troops uniform, black masks and carrying automatic guns”. The special police claim to be searching for drugs; dancers are beaten up and abused a 90 people are arrested [Pink Paper, 17.10.97]
.
October 1997, Wales: 24 police raid a party in a private house in North Wales and impound the sound system. The Country Landowners Association have set up a Rave Watch scheme in the local area encouraging local farmers to tip off the police about possible parties

November 1997, Greece: police violently raid the ACID trance club in Thessaloniki.

November 1997, Norfolk: Police bust squat party at Thelveton Hall, an unoccupied country house in Norfolk, seizing the Brighton-based Innerfield Sound System and carry out intimate body searches. The house belongs to Sir Rupert Mann, but had been empty for seven years.

November 1997, Oxford: Police use a helicopter and horses in an effort to stop Oxford Reclaim the Streets party. Despite the seizure of the solar powered sound system, and the Rinky Dinky Sound System being escorted out of the city, 400 people party in the road [Peace News, December 1997]

December 1997, N.Ireland: Loyalist Volunteer Force open fire on a disco in Dungannon, County Tyrone, killing a doorman. Another man is killed in an attack on a bar in Belfast.

December 1997, Scotland: Street party halts traffic for 1.5 hours outside the Faslane nuclear submarine base . Several people injured by Ministry of Defence police.

December 1997, Wales: 22 arrests in police drug raid on Hippo Club, Cardiff.

December 1997, Israel: Trance outfit Juno Reactor are deported from the country, where they were due to be playing at a 5000 capacity rave, prompting the launch of a Freedom to Party organisation. “Indoor parties are usually legal, as opposed to outdoor parties which are usually not. But even so, many of the indoor parties are constantly being raided by the police” (Dream Creation July 1997)

December 1997, N.Ireland: Edmund Treanor killed and five injured in a Loyalist Volunteer Force attack on New Year celebrations at the Clifton Tavern, Belfast.

December 1997, Brighton: 27 people arrested as police try and close down New Year’s Eve squat party in Brighton; people throw bottles at police.

Somali Rap and Radio

From Waayaha Cusub (from Reuters Nairobi, 9 April 2010):

For centuries, Somalis used poetry and songs to pass protest messages to powerful rulers they were too afraid to confront directly. Now, some young Somalis are using rap to speak out against Islamists who they say are using religion to wage war in their country. The 11-member Waayaha Cusub band, currently in exile in neighbouring Kenya, wants its rap lyrics to encourage fellow Somalis to stand up to Islamist rebels known as al Shabaab.

They have handed out at least 7,000 free copies of their newly-released album titled "No To Al Shabaab" to residents in Nairobi's Eastleigh neighbourhood, home to many Somali migrants. "We will wipe out the fear of our people that no one can speak out against al Shabaab. We will show our people that we can challenge them," said Shine Abdullahi, the group's founder... "They are unkind, teach terrorism, and worthless lessons, they blindfold, and cause pain, inject drugs, that lead to actions, force them to kill their fathers and relatives," one of the group's raps goes.

The group's only female member, Falis Abdi Mohamud, is a rebel in her own right. In one video, the 23-year-old is not covering her head as most Somali women do, and is wearing tight jeans. "They criticise me and say 'she is not Muslim because of wearing a trouser'. I am Muslim," she said. "I want to reach my people. I will not stop my mission because of fear or other people's desires. History will tell who is right and wrong."

Mohamud was born in the southern town of Kismayu that is now an al Shabaab stronghold. The insurgents have banned music in areas that they control and allow only Arabic Koranic chanting. Waayaha Cusub toured the semi-autonomous northern region of Puntland in July but Mohamud hopes to perform in her hometown one day. "The trip to Somalia was great. That is when I realised people like our music, and it really gave us confidence not to stop our campaign because a few people who dislike us." The group's youngest member is 15-year-old Suleqa Mohamed, who is a student at an Eastleigh school.

Most of them want to return to Somalia and live off their music when peace returns but currently survive on sponsorships by businessmen and Somalis in the diaspora. Their songs have angered some people. Even in the relative stability and security of Kenya they have been attacked. Gunmen shot and wounded Abdullahi in 2007. He believes the attack was because the group released a series of songs criticising Ethiopia's incursion into Somalia and suicide bombings by the insurgents. Even mobile phone text message threats from al Shabaab sympathisers in Kenya and Somalia have failed to intimidate Abdullahi.

He says he will never be cowered by what he calls "religious warlords" who present an awful image of Islam to the world. "The attack was aimed at silencing the group, but that did not work," he said, showing scars on his stomach from a bullet and the surgery that followed. "We will not allow anyone to silence us. They misread our religion and kill people. They are cursed," he said...

(Here's one of their tracks - this one is not really hip hop, but a great slice of hypnotic dance music . There's lots more stuff at their youtube channel)



Interview with K'naan (Chicago Tribune, 7 April 2010)

'Gangsta rappers have been known to boast about how mean their hometown streets are, but none of them comes from a more violent ‘hood than K'naan. Born Keinan Abdi Warsame in 1978, K’naan grew up in Mogadishu, Somalia, amid one the most brutal civil wars in history.When he was 13, K’naan and his family fled Somalia and took refuge in New York and finally Toronto, where they still live. Coming from a family of performers and poets, K’naan naturally gravitated toward the arts to make sense of his new home and to process the trauma that nearly overwhelmed him in Africa (three of his friends were killed in the conflict). A poet, spoken-word artist and rapper, he has spoken out about his home country’s plight at the United Nations and recorded two albums, the latest of which is “Troubadour” (A&M), released last year. The album blurs the boundaries between spoken word and hip-hop, and incorporates everything from heavy metal to reggae.

Q: What were your memories of growing up in Mogadishu? What about the music there? Did it have an impact on you as a child?
A: I grew up in the Mogadishu of dreams. During an idyllic and optimistic time, and music [was] almost its Siamese soundtrack. I remember realizing very early how music could so seamlessly go from being fun in one moment, to deadly serious in the other. A song would play in the record player at home, and you could sing along loudly and then another would come, and mom would turn it down swiftly, as the song might be considered what they called "anti" - usually music with subliminal poetic messages against the government' (full interview here)



Somali anger at threat to music (BBC News, 7 April 2010)

'Radio stations broadcasting out of Somalia face a dilemma this month after a powerful Islamist militant group ordered them to stop playing music. Saying that the playing of music was un-Islamic, Hizbul-Islam announced on Saturday that stations had 10 days to take it off air. The punishment for failing to comply was not specified but 11 radio stations based in the capital, Mogadishu, are thought to be directly affected. If they drop music, they stand to lose listeners. If they ignore the warning, they face the wrath of the militants.

Music-lovers in the war-torn country are indignant at the idea they will not be able to tune into their favourite pop, which is largely recorded abroad, in North America and the UK. However, there appear to be limits to Hizbul-Islam's ability to make good on any threat. Somali pop music, ranging from the plaintive songs of Abdi Shirre Jama (aka Jooqle) to the hip hop and rap of K'Naan, is widely on sale in Mogadishu.

It can be heard playing in the tea shops of the government-controlled area, which amounts to about a third of the capital, says local BBC reporter Mohammed Olad Hassan. Somalis have to be more discreet about music in non-government areas. Al-Shabab, the country's other big militant group, are known for their own strict interpretation of Islam, frowning on music and cinema.

"You can see drivers on passenger buses playing music inside the government-controlled area, then turning it off when they cross into non-government territory," our reporter says. Pop music is genuinely popular in Mogadishu and many people resent being "bullied" into what they can hear on the radio, he adds. Hizbul-Islam would have all music, right down to the jingles, taken off air, he says. "Deny a Somali his music and his poetry, and you deny him his voice," says Christophe Farah, a journalist of Somali descent in London...'

Somali stations air animal noises to protest extremists' music ban (CNN, 13 April 2010)

'Roars, growls and galloping hooves replaced music Tuesday on some of Mogadishu's radio stations in a protest of a ban on music imposed by Islamic extremists. Radio Shabelle, along with the stations Tusmo and Hornafrik, were responding to threats from Muslim militant groups that believe music is un-Islamic and want it prohibited. Mogadishu's 14 private radio stations stopped playing music Tuesday after Hizbul al-Islam, an Islamic extremist group, issued a 10-day ultimatum. The threat was backed by the main militant group al-Shabaab, which has been linked to al Qaeda. A statement from the National Union of Somali Journalists said several stations received calls, warning them that there would be consequences if they failed to comply with the ban within 10 days.

But the three stations decided to broadcast the noises instead of music. Radio Shabelle announcers could be heard speaking on air, backed by the sounds of hooves, ocean waves, gunfire - even the roars and growls of big cats'.

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

From the 1978 NME Guide to Rock & Roll London, the section on Disco compiled by LeRoy Z. Jefferson, with listings and reflections on the music in London clubs:

'The thing to remember is that Southern Soul is a whole different ball game from the much- publicised Northern brand. In the North, the more obscure '60s foot stompin' scene still dominates, around London it's mainly imported flash funk and deep soul from the likes of Earth, Wind & Fire, The Commodores, Slave, Cameo, Parliament and Pockets, plus a side order of reggae and thankfully just a smattering of android Euro-Disco (Baccara and Amanda Lear) and New York aural soft-porn (Andrea True Commection)'.

The legendary Crackers (201-203 Wardour Street W1) gets a mention. I had no idea that it was the place that hosted the Vortex punk club on Mondays and Tuesdays. Bar prices are given: 50p for lager, 40p for whisky, 27p for coke.

Also mentioned is a forthcoming All Day National Soul Festival on Easter Monday (March 27 1978) at Tiffany's, Brighton Road, Purley (near Croydon), with DJs Chris Hill, Greg Edwards, Robbie Vincent and Chris Brown.

Other places listed include:

- Chelsea Drug Store, 49 Kings Road SW3
- Columbo's, 50 Carnaby Street W1
- Fangs, Praed Street W2
- Fouberts, Fouberts Place W1
- Global Village, Villiers Street WC1 (replaced by gay club Heaven later in 1979)
- Hatchetts, 67a Piccadilly W1
- Hombre, 78 Wells Street W1
- Kareba, 63 Conduit Street W1
- Le Kilt, 60 Greek Street W1
- Saddle Room, Park Lane W!
- Samantha's, 3 New Burlington Street W1
- Speakeasy & Speakearly, Oxford Circus
- Sundown, Charing Cross Road W2
- Thursdays, 36 Kensington High Street W8
- Tiffanys, Shaftesbury Avenue W1
- Upstairs at Ronnie's, Frith Street W1
- La Valbonne, 62 Kingly Street W1

See also:

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

If it's called a festival, is it one?

'Festivals are collective phenomena and serve purposes rooted in group life. Systems of reciprocity and of shared responsibil­ity ensure the continuity of and participation in the festival through the distribution of prestige and production. Most fes­tivals provide the opportunity for individual religious devotion or individual performance, and this opportunity is a primary motive for the occasion. Other unstated but important purposes of festivals are the expression of group identity through ancestor worship or memorialization, the performance of highly valued skills and talents, or the articulation of the group's her­itage.

Rarely do such events use the term festival, employing instead a name related to the stated purposes or core symbols of the event: Mardi Gras (Catholic), Sukkot (Jewish), Holi (Hindu), Shalako (Zuni), Adae (Ghanaian), Calus (Romanian), Namahage (Japanese), Cowboy Reunion (American), and Feast of Fools (French). Those events that do have festival in their titles are generally contemporary modern constructions, employing festival characteristics but serving the commercial, ideological, or political purposes of self-interested authorities or entrepreneurs' (Beverly J. Stoeltje, 'Festival' in Folklore, Cultural Performances and Popular Entertainments, ed. Richard Bauman. New York, 1992).

Interesting point, but 'authenticity' isn't everything. John Eden reviews Bestival, arguing 'Whilst I agree with History is made at night’s comments on the commercial festival boom I would never really have been up for imposing something like Stonehenge Free Festival on children. I’ll take corporate sponsorship over hells angels, drug hoovers, and police brutality any day. They can discover all of that for themselves when they get older, ha ha'.

And indeed despite my earlier comments on festivals, we shouldn't fall for the myth of the earlier 'free festivals' as some kind of communism in one field contradiction-free utopia. There was certainly plenty of buying and selling , with the corollary of the threat of violence to preserve market share, and the violence of cops preventing Stonehenge festival in the mid-1980s was prefigured by the earlier violence of biker gangs - who, for instance, beat up punks at Stonehenge in 1980. As Penny Rimbaud from Crass recalled:

'Our presence at Stonehenge attracted several hundred punks to whom the festival scene was a novelty, they, in turn, attracted interest from various factions to whom punk was equally new. The atmosphere seemed relaxed and as dusk fell, thousands of people gathered around the stage to listen to the night's music. suddenly, for no apparent reason, a group of bikers stormed the stage saying that they were not going to tolerate punks at 'Their festival'. What followed was one of the most violent and frightening experiences of our lives. Bikers armed with bottles, chains and clubs, stalked around the site viciously attacking any punk that they set eyes on. There was nowhere to hide, nowhere to escape to; all night we attempted to protect ourselves and other terrified punks from their mindless violence. There were screams of terror as people were dragged off into the darkness to be given lessons on peace and love; it was hopeless trying to save anyone because, in the blackness of the night, they were impossible to find. Meanwhile, the predominantly hippy gathering, lost in the soft blur of their stoned reality, remained oblivious of our fate'.

Festival Communication, Festival Time

'Festival communication actively engages the participants. It is this feature that distinguishes festival from those large-scale forms that may be observed from a distance or by television or those events in which the participants passively receive messages but have no choice in their roles. Therefore, we can describe festival action as a combination of participation and performance in a public context. Very little festival action is private; those acts that are, such as courtship or religious devotion, are nevertheless made possible and defined by the special purposes of a particular festival. Moreover, what is spo­ken, acted, or displayed in festival - public or private -anticipates a response, social or supernatural. This active mode, then, makes demands on participants, requiring their attention. And this concentration of attention heightens consciousness, creat­ing an intersection of individual performance and social reflex­ivity.


Festival communication involves a major shift from the frames of everyday life that focus attention on subsistence, routine, and production to frames that foster the transformative, reciprocal, and reflexive dimensions of social life. Such a frame shift does not rule out the mundane or the dangerous; com­mercial transactions flourish in many festivals, and mask and costume have on occasion disguised bloody violence. The shift in frames guarantees nothing but rather transposes real­ity so that intuition, inversion, risk, and symbolic expression reign.

The messages of festival concern the shared experience of the group and multiple interpretations of that experience. Shared experience may be enacted as myth, music, or drama; it may also be the marked representation of a segment of everyday life such as harvesting; it dominates the rhetoric as well as the action of an event clearly defined as "ours." In all socially based festivals, however, the messages will be directly related to the present social circumstances as well as to the past. Because festival brings the group together and communicates about the society itself and the role of the individual within it, every effort either to change or to con­strain social life will be expressed in some specific relationship to festival...

The manipulation of temporal reality

The temporal reality of festival incorporates time in at least two dimensions. In the first the principles of periodicity and rhythm define the experience. Not surprisingly, this cyclic pattern is associated with the cycles of the moon in cultures in which the lunar calendar is or has been used in recent history. With the passage of time festival occurs again and again, marking the cycles of the moon, the annual repetition of the seasons, and the movements of the planets governing the solar calendar. Festival occurs calendrically, either on a certain date each month or on a specific date or periodic time each year. The cycles of lime are the justification for festival, independent of any human agent. Unlike rites of passage, which move individuals through time, and unlike private parties, which structure a way out of time, festival yokes the social group to this cyclic force, establishing contact with the cosmos and the eternal processes of time.

In the second of these dimensions of temporality, expres­sions of tradition and change confront each other. Meaning in festival derives from experience; thus festival emphasizes the past. Yet festival happens in the present and for the present, directed toward the future.

Thus the new and different are le­gitimate dimensions of festival, contributing to its vitality. In the festival environment principles of reversal, repetition, juxtaposition, condensation, and excess flourish, leading to communication and behavior that contrasts with everyday life. These principles can be applied to every code in use for com­munication. Repetition, for example, operates so that the sound of drums, fireworks, or singing voices may be continuous throughout an event, or the major visual symbol such as an image of a bear or the symbol of corn or the cowboy/gaucho may be shown in many circumstances...'

Beverly J. Stoeltje, 'Festival' in Folklore, Cultural Performances and Popular Entertainments, ed. Richard Bauman. New York, 1992. See this post for another quote from this essay.

Photos of Carnaval del Pueblo in Southwark, August 2009 (a Latin American festival in South London), by love of peace (top) and vertigogen (bottom) via flickr.

This Feast of Flunkeyism - Agitate, Educate & Organise

On the occasion of Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee, I am reminded of James Connolly's denunciation of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897:

'“The great appear great to us, only because we are on our knees:  LET US RISE.”

Fellow Workers, The loyal subjects of Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, Empress of India, etc., celebrate this year the longest reign on record. Already the air is laden with rumours of preparations for a wholesale manufacture of sham ‘popular rejoicings’ at this glorious (?) commemoration. Home Rule orators and Nationalist Lord Mayors, Whig politicians and Parnellite pressmen, have ere now lent their prestige and influence to the attempt to arouse public interest in the sickening details of this Feast of Flunkeyism...

During this glorious reign Ireland has seen 1,225,000 of her children die of famine, starved to death whilst the produce of her soil and their labour was eaten up by a vulture aristocracy, enforcing their rents by the bayonets of a hired assassin army in the pay of the –best of the English Queens’; the eviction of 3,668,000, a multitude greater than the entire population of Switzerland; and the reluctant emigration of 4,186,000 of our kindred, a greater host than the entire people of Greece. At the present moment 78 percent of our wage-earners receive less than £1 per week, our streets are thronged by starving crowds of the unemployed, cattle graze on our tenantless farms and around the ruins of our battered homesteads, our ports are crowded with departing emigrants, and our poorhouses are full of paupers. Such are the constituent elements out of which we are bade to construct a National Festival of rejoicing!'.

Connolly goes on: 'To you, workers of Ireland, we address ourselves. AGITATE in the workshop, in the field, in the factory, until you arouse your brothers to hatred of the slavery of which we are all the victims. EDUCATE, that the people may no longer be deluded by illusory hopes of prosperity under any system of society of which monarchs or noblemen, capitalists or landlords form an integral part. ORGANISE, that a solid, compact and intelligent force, conscious of your historic mission as a class, you may seize the reins of political power whenever possible and, by intelligent application of the working-class ballot, clear the field of action for the revolutionary forces of the future. Let the ‘canting, fed classes’ bow the knee as they may, be you true to your own manhood, and to the cause of freedom, whose hope is in you, and, pressing unweariedly onward in pursuit of the high destiny to which the Socialist Republic invites you' (full text here).

Agitate, Educate and Organise

I am intrigued by Connolly's use of the Agitate, Educate, Organise meme, a phrase that became common in 20th century radicalism. I wonder about its origins - the earliest reference I have found is from 1882, when the Knights of Labor (a trade union) held what was in effect the first Labor Day parade in New York: 'on Sep 15, 1882, a handful of laborers, organized by Peter McGuire,  began a march uptown through lower Manhattan, carrying signs that read Agitate, Educate, Organize  and  Less Work, More Pay.   Mocked by fashionable New Yorkers they continued their trek as more and more laboring men, women, and children joined them.  By the time they reached what is now called Union Square, there were over 10,000 strong and cheered by thousands more in the Square.  It was the first real Labor Day' (article here).  Irish emigrants played a key role in the formation of the Knights of Labor, and later Connolly himself became involved in US radical politics in the 1900s.

Of course the phrase made its way on to 1980s dancefloors via 'How we gonna make the black nation rise' ('we're gonna agitate, educate and organize') by Brother D with The Collective Effort (1980) - one of the earliest explicitly political rap tracks.



In 1987, Irish band (with American singer) That Petrol Emotion used the phrase in their track 'Big Decision' with its rap section 'What you`ve gotta do In this day and age. You gotta agitate, educate, organize'. The track was no doubt influenced more by Brother D than Connolly, but its references to the use of plastic bullets in Ireland put the band in Connolly's republican tradition.

Geoff Dyer on Underground Culture in 1980s London and Now

The novelist Geoff Dyer wrote an article for the Observer this week entitled 'Underground culture isn’t dead – it’s just better hidden than it used to be' (5 April 2015):

'Looking back – and I’ll explain later how I came to be looking back – I realise how much of my social life in the 1980s was spent at “underground” events of one kind or another... In my teens, I’d been a devotee of magazines such as Frendz and Oz with their illegibly swirling psychedelic designs and still blurrier editorial agenda. These publications represented an (open) marriage between insurrectionary politics, prog rock, fashion (loons) and porno graphics. I was interested, mainly, in photographs of Hawkwind.

That may have been the golden age of the underground, but its spikier manifestations or descendants were part of the social landscape of London in the 1980s: the squatted cafe in Bonnington Square, Vauxhall, the Anarchist Centre at 121 Railton Road, Brixton, and, of course, the ubiquitous underground parties that later morphed into raves'.

Dyer's initial take is that all that is in the past - 'Maybe new variations of such things still exist in London and I’m too old and square to know about them but, broadly speaking, the counterculture has given way to an over-the-counter culture of cool cafes and pop-ups that lend a subversive slant to one’s retail experience'.

But attending an event in New York changes his mind -  'my visit... got me thinking about the long and nourishing role the underground has played in my life. It also made me realise how easy it is to fall into elegiac mode and how important it is to resist doing so. In different forms, in spite of everything, places like this will keep popping up, unbeknown to the middle-aged likes of... me. So, as a way of combining the urge to lament and the need to affirm, we’ll close with the final words from Larkin’s Show Saturday in High Windows.. “Let it always be there.”'

I generally agree with Dyer's position, even though I think the notion of 'the underground' itself has always involved a heavy dose of self-mythologisation. Of course I was most interested in him name checking places I used to hang out at too in the late 1980s/early 1990s - Bonnington Square cafe, scene of many Community Resistance Against the Poll Tax benefit nights, and the 121 Centre (which has been mentioned many times on this blog). Dyer lived in Brixton in the 1980s, I think slightly earlier than me, and his first novel - The Colour of Memory (1989) - is a fictionalised account of Brixton dole life in that period.

121 Railton Road, Brixton, in 1984/85
(photo from Kate Sharpley Library)

Japanese Silk Workers Songs

In late 19th century and early 20th century Japan, thousands of young women workers were recruited from villlages to work in the cotton and silk mills. The work was hard with long hours and dangerous conditions, and even outside of work the companies controlled their workers' lives, keeping them in dormitories and controlling their movements.

'Many did not get out of their dorms until the end of the year when they were allowed to visit their homes for New Year's. In order to keep the girls confined, factories built tall fences around the compounds - much like those of a prison camp. In fact, factory girls used to sing:

Working in a factory is like working in a prison
The only difference is the absence of iron chains'

In 1927, silk workers went on strike in Okaya. They 'marched through the town of Okaya singing labor songs, one of which went:

Harsher than prison life is life in the dormitory
The factory is like hell
The foreman is the devil,
and the spinning wheel is a wheel on fire

I wish I had wings to fly away to the other shore,
I want to go home, over the mountain pass,
to my sisters and parents.'

Source: Mikiso Hane, Peasant, Rebels and Outcastes: the Underside of Modern Japan (New York: Pantheon, 1982, p.185-196.

From this moment, Twitter ends and tactics begin

Earlier in the week it seemed that every other tweet from the twitterers I follow was telling the world to #saveplasticpeople. In quickly disseminating news of the threat to close the London club, this was an exemplary case of new media communication. Naturally a facebook group was also set up for people to immediately express their solidarity.

But then what? There is a sense that all of this virtual politicking often goes nowhere. Breathy accounts of how twitter was going to bring down dictatorships have been replaced by more sobre assessments of the resilience of well organised regimes confronted with slacktivism and what Annabelle Sreberny has termed the 'mousy solidarity' of clicking on petitions. Communication might be an essential part of developing social movements, but communication alone does not constitute a movement. Clouds of tweets and facebook posts can vanish as rapidly as their meteorological counterparts.

So where does that leave us in relation to something like saving a club like Plastic People from closure? If, as Gramsci would have it, the art of politics begins with an analysis of relations of force, a starting point would be to consider in more detail who our opponents are, what are their weaknesses, where the immediate battleground is to be found (e.g. when and where are decisions made). At the same time, we should consider who our allies are and our actual and potential strengths.

But Gramsci also famously distinguished between the 'war of manouevre' and the 'war of position'. The former refers to the immediate fighting on the battleground, the latter to the wider struggle to mobilise across society to achieve political ends. In relation to Plastic People, the quick war of manoeuvre might be appropriate for the urgent task of dealing with the pressing threat from Hackney Council and the local police, but the war of position is necessary to shape the context in which such decisions take place and to confront the wider criminalisation and over-regulation of forms of musicking and dancing. Is it possible to move beyond just complaining about individual club closures and mobilise a movement that can challenge the whole basis on which they happen - including the notions that music and dancing require the advance approval of the state (licensing) and that the 'war against drugs' and crime should be waged on the dancefloor?

This might seem like a fantasy, but in the mid-1990s there was a significant movement in the UK against the anti-rave measures of the Criminal Justice Act. Mass demonstrations might not have stopped the law, but they did strengthen the whole free party scene so that when the law came into effect it was not able to vanquish a highly-motivated and organised culture. More recently in New York there has been a campaign against the clampdown on nightlife that has included open air parties outside the Mayor's house, with people chanting 'dancing is not a crime'. If grime is being driven out of the public sphere in London, can't we bring grime en masse to City Hall? As Reclaim the Streets demonstrated in the 1990s, sound system + truck + crowd = all kinds of possibilities.

All of this would require communication, yes even using twitter and facebook, but also the harder slog of organising, mobilizing and taking action with our bodies as well as our virtual selves. In relation to Plastic People, there do seem to be signs that physical people are prepared to do more than just tweet with, for instance, suggestions of a meeting to set up some kind of 'Friends of Plastic People'.

(sharp eyed situationist-spotters will have noticed that the title of this post is derived from Raoul Vaneigem's The Revolution of Everyday Life: 'from this moment, despair ends and tactics begin').

Decoder: The Sound of Muzak

Another classic article from the zine vaults, again incredibly not already online. 'Decoder: the sound of muzak' by Tom Vague was first printed in Zig-Zag in Feburary 1985 and then reprinted in his own Vague zine (May 1985). This article had a big impact on me, not so much in terms of the film it describes, but in introducing to me the notion of music as a form of control.

As far as the Concise Oxford Dictionary is concerned it doesn't exist. As far as the majority of people are concerned it doesn't exist. As far as the Muzak Corporation is concerned that's just fine. Muzak Corp is the only company in the world that doesn't advertise it's product to the public. In fact they don't even want it widely known that Muzak is a product. They're quite happy for it to be known as harmless background music.

That's not to say that the people who create and use Muzak don't think highly of it; 'Muzak is more than music. It's an environment,' is the catchphrase used in the Muzak manual. And that's not boastful hard-sell either, that's factual information. 'Muzak is scientifically-engineered sound,' continues the manual, 'The sound of Muzak is subtle and musical. But it is not music which is meant to entertain. Because music is art. But Muzak is science. So it does not require a conscious listening effort. Yet it has an enormous effect on those who hear it ... Muzak is programmed to motivate office and industrial workers, relax restaurant patrons and medical patients, make shopping more pleasant and less hurried ... The entire process is known as Muzak Stimulus Progression ... It provides an overall feeling of forward movement, can mitigate stress and produce beneficial psychological changes.'

However, not everyone is in a state of stimulated, blissful ignorance of Muzak's supposedly beneficial psychological effects. Beneficial to whom and who decides what is beneficial, you may well ask. Hamburg journalist/director, Klaus Maeck did so, at great length. Eventually turning his obsession with Muzak and the harm it does into the new German underground movie, 'Decoder’.

Klaus used to run Hamburg's 'Rip-Off' Records and as a journalist covered the likes of Einsturzende Neubauten, Abwarts, Xmal Deutschland, Malaria and Psychic TV. He had previously documented the likes of the aforementioned on Super-8 and gained some recognition as a Punk film maker, because in his words, "Nobody else was doing it in Hamburg." After the collapse of 'Rip-Off' and disillusionment with journalism, Klaus began to concentrate on his idea of making a film about Muzak. Over a couple of years he researched the phenomena and compiled the 'Decoder Handbook'; to support the film with information about Muzak and related subjects; like Cut-ups, Infra-sound, Dream machines, cassette-piracy and frogs. (Still don't see how that last one fits in.)

His research entailed visiting Muzak control offices - In every main city in Germany - Hamburg, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Munich - there is one office for this purpose - And he got to interview one of the directors, but found himself responding in a peculiar way; "I sat there talking with him and I really felt something. When I arrived there I wanted to ask him some quite provocative questions. After one hour I was really calm and talking with him very gently. He explained to me, really he told me and I really believed him, that Muzak is good in hospitals. Instead of having valium, you hear some Muzak and you're really calm before an operation.

"I think that's the good thing about Muzak." Klaus concedes, "To be used in that way instead of chemicals, pills and so on. But that's the only good thing about it. You can manipulate the brain with it. Mainly it’s negative, but it could have some good effects. I still can't believe, this director told me they use the same Muzak in hospitals, supermarkets, fast­food chains, offices, factories. I cannot believe that, because in supermarkets its purpose is to make you comfortable to buy more. In offices it's to make the working atmosphere more relaxed to increase efficiency. But he told me it's the same. And there is only one tape reel running in this office, going by telephone cable to all the different places. You don't get anything on tape or record. It's just through cable.

"It's built up on the human bio-rhythm, on the normal daily rhythm people have; like you start work at 8, so around 11 they make the Muzak more exciting because you're thinking about lunchbreak. Then in the afternoon it’s calm because you've just had a break. Then at 3 they make the Muzak more exciting again. The tape runs and runs all day, endless. You can't decide for yourself which Muzak you want to hear. They decide in the office. Even if you turn it off you're still in that rhythm. I think it's pretty dangerous. You never know when Muzak is on the radio - many major groups arrange their music using Muzak techniques. You never can be sure."

And so using the basic theme of Muzak; the damage it can cause, how to deal with it and ultimately decode it, scriptwriting began for 'Decoder’. At this stage Klaus brought in Muscha, a young film maker from Düsseldorf, who had the experience necessary to direct the proposed one and a half hour film. And together with Volker Schaefer and Trini Trimpop, they set about building a plot around three central characters: The main protagonist, a young noise-freak, played by Mufti of Neubauten/Abwarts fame, sets out to decode the hidden information of Muzak. But Mufti's quest doesn't interest his girlfriend, who works in a sleazy sex show on Hamburg's Reeperbahn. She's played by another familiar figure from the German underground, Christiane F, who in the film is obsessed with frogs. In real life of course it’s something else.

As Mufti and Christiane's relationship breaks down, a sub­ plot develops around Jager, the Muzak Corporation hitman, who's being blackmailed back to work to bring an end to Mufti’s decoding. During Jager's frequent social jaunts down the Reeperbahn, he begins to show more interest in Christiane than Mufti does. But he doesn't discover the connection until the end, when he decides, too late, to finish the job in his own interest.

The Jager role is played by the only pro-actor in 'Decoder', Bill Rice, the star of another nocturnal delight 'Subway Riders', and a well known face on the New York theatre scene. In fact his desperately appealing, sad face was why he got the part. "He's not famous but he had such a good face we just had to have him," enthuses Klaus.

Finally the Austrian-American director of photography, Johanna Heer was recruited to the team, and shooting began in sterile computer centres, even more sterile hamburger joints and, as a contrast, glaringly Iit peep-shows and underground sound-labs. At times I found it a bit hard to follow the sub-titles and I was watching it in the morning, the wrong time of day to watch it according to Klaus, but I thought the story did well to unravel itself from the various ongoing sub-plots and themes. And the use of colour and tone carries the film through; each central character is Iit in different fluorescent shades between neon and argon, which often explode into 'architectures of fire’.

However the soundtrack (available on 'Some Bizarre') is probably its most endearing feature. Regular Zig-Zag readers may already be familiar with 'Decoder' because of Dave Ball's work on it, which he said something about in the March issue. Various Psychic Tellys, Collapsing New Buildings and Some Bizarros did their bit to add to the general ambience. And I even found myself liking Marc Almond's 'Sleazy City' in the peep-show sequences. Their soundtrack is cut with FM news broadcasts and the scientifically programmed art-product of industrial psychologists, musicologists and marketing engineers. There's a war on, as Klaus outlines;

"I think Muzak or music in general can be used to manipulate the brain, in any way· for relaxing, or getting you excited. And they work with it. They do it. And I think you, we, whoever can do it also in a different way, like Mufti does in the film; he does the opposite. He develops Anti-Muzak for his own purposes, to provoke in the end street riots; first to make people puke instead of feeling relaxed in the burger place. I'm still convinced, even if it sounds funny, that you really can do it. If you have 3 or 4 people with tape recorders on the streets you can provoke something like that. You get manipulated all the time by the media. So why shouldn't we use the same techniques for our purpose, to try to break that down. I think that's okay, necessary even."

There's a war on. An information war: 'Decoder' credits its two major influences in this field with cameo roles of their own design: Genesis P.Orridge appears as an anti-pope sort of figure, leading an underground resistance movement - I think all the people in 'Decoder' parody themselves to a certain extent, but Gen's parody is the funniest. In one scene Mufti stumbles into his bunker, where he becomes a not entirely willing participant in a nihilistic noise ritual. Gen's main line to Mufti before he's sent packing is; "Information is like a bank, and we have to rob this bank."

Rob a Bank. Storm the Reality Studio and Retake the Universe: Ironically the development of functional music and subliminal techniques owes a great deal to Brion Gysin and William Burroughs. Advertisers and god knows who else have been using their Cut-up technique to manipulate people ever since Burroughs first applied it to his literary works. He used it to seemingly rearrange a text at random to create new words and watch the future flood out. But it can of course be used for more down to earth motives, such as profit and greed.

Burroughs also wrote a book called 'The Revised Boy Scout Manual', which gave instructions on how to use his techniques on the streets. It was planned for this to be incorporated into 'Decoder', with tape-terrorists/pirates using cut-up tapes to provoke a riot in the final scene. But when the 'Decoder' crew arrived in Berlin to shoot footage of the anti­-Reagan riots, they were astounded to find the cassette-pirates already there. Ghetto blasters had been set up in open windows and helicopter and gunfire noises were being played in the streets. Hundreds of tape recorders were confiscated as a result.

As an acknowledgement of the debt the film owes him, Burroughs himself crops up in Mufti's dream sequences; first leading Christiane across a field in Jarmanesque ambience. The second time handing Mufti a broken tape recorder on Mufti's TV - this was shot when Burroughs was staying in Tottenham Court Road for 'The Final Academy' in 1982 – Ain’t nothing here now but the recordings. So hit it! Pause it! Record it and play! C-30! C-60! C-90! GO!

Here's a section from the film Decoder (1984), featuring Genesis P.Orridge. His speech seems quite prophetic now of the internet age, just on the horizon at the time of the film: "Information is like a bank. Some of us are rich, some of us are poor with information. All of us can be rich. Our job, your job is to rob the bank"



See also: Sonic Attack

'The Rhythmic or Throbbing Crowd' (Canetti)

From the chapter on Rhythm in Elias Canetti's Masse und Macht (1960), translated as 'Crowds and Power':

'Rhythm is originally the rhythm of the feet. Every human being walks, and, since he walks on two legs with which he strikes the ground in turn and since he only moves if he continues to do this, whether intentionally or not, a rhythmic sound ensues. The two feet never strike the ground with exactly the same force. The difference between them can be larger or smaller according to individual constitution or mood. It is also possible to walk faster or slower, to run, to stand still suddenly, or to jump.

Man has always listened to the footsteps of other men; he has certainly paid more attention to them than to his own. Animals too have their familiar gait; their rhythms are often richer and more audible than those of men; hoofed animals flee in herds, like regiments of drummers. The knowledge of the animals by which he was surrounded, which threatened him and which he hunted, was man’s oldest knowledge. He learnt to know animals by the rhythm of their movement. The earliest writing he learnt to read was that of their tracks; it was a kind of rhythmic notation imprinted on the soft ground and, as he read it, he connected it with the sound of its formation.

Many of these footprints were in large numbers close together and, just by looking quietly at them, men, who themselves originally lived in small hordes, were made aware of the contrast between their own numbers and the enormous numbers of some animal herds. They were always hungry and on the watch for game; and the more there was of it, the better for them. But they also wanted to be more themselves. Man’s feeling for his own increase was always strong and is certainly not to be understood only as his urge for self-propagation. Men wanted to be more, then and there; the large numbers of the herd which they hunted blended in their feelings with their own numbers which they wished to be large, and they expressed this in a specific state of communal excitement which I shall call the rhythmic or throbbing crowd.

The means of achieving this state was first of all the rhythm of their feet, repeating and multiplied, steps added to steps in quick succession conjure up a larger number of men than there are. The men do not move away but, dancing, remain on the same spot. The sound of their steps does not die away, for these are continually repeated; there is a long stretch of time during which they continue to sound loud and alive. What they lack in numbers the dancers make up in intensity; if they stamp harder, it sounds as if there were more of them. As long as they go on dancing, they exert an attraction on all in their neighbourhood. Everyone within hearing joins them and remains with them. The natural thing would be for new people to go on joining them for ever, but soon there are none left and the dancers have to conjure up increase out of their own limited numbers. They move as though there were more and more of them. Their excitement grows and reaches frenzy.

How do they compensate for the increase in numbers which they cannot have? First, it is important that they should all do the same thing. They all stamp the ground and they all do it in the same way; they all swing their arms to and fro and shake their heads. The equivalence of the dancers becomes, and ramifies as, the equivalence of their limbs. Every part of a man which can move gains a life of its own and acts as if independent, but the movements are all parallel, the limbs appearing superimposed on each other, They are close together, one often resting on another, and thus density is added to their state of equivalence. Density and equality become one and the same. In the end, there appears to be a single creature dancing, a creature with fifty heads and a hundred legs and arms, all performing in exactly the same way and with the same purpose.

When their excitement is at its height, these people really feel as one, and nothing but physical exhaustion can stop them... Thanks to the dominance of rhythm, all throbbing crowds have something similar in their appearance'.

We can only assume that when Canetti talks of 'man' he means 'woman' too! Photos: top, a dance at the University of Sydney; bottom, dancers at Poe Park in the Bronx, New York, September 4 1938.