This paper was originally presented as an informal talk at the Rebelstar Activist Retreat, Crescent Beach, BC, Canada on November 26th, 2001.

Musikal Resistance: A Short History (I)

History.

Rave Culture began at the juncture of several political social movements.

i) Jamaican Dub Soundsystem Culture of the 70s/80s

ii) UK Traveller Culture (ex-hippies); Punks; New Agers; also a centuries old tradition of Carnival on the Common Lands

iii) Austin, Texas, 1986: the impact of Ecstasy

iv) Continuation of Chicago Disco into house music; the rise of gay culture and the Funk Movement

v) Detroit: the artistic-social backlash to the failed modernist city-project resulted in Detroit techno and rap.

vi) The late 80s in the UK saw the rise of Acid House music (Chicago house with a 303 overtop, the combining of Chicago dance culture with UK rebellion), which took on new social importance due to its context: “dj’ed,” on turntables, mixed by djs with pitch controls (this is a new thing!), in illegal spaces: occupations of warehouses, farmlands, public and private spaces.

More here

DIRTY HISTORY…

KINGBEATSOUNDSYSTEM’s owner/ production manager DirtyHarry caught the soundsystem bug at thirteen watching sounds like Jah Shaka, Youth Sounds, and Jah Trinity play the Dub Club at the Dome Tufnell Park in 1993. Harry became a “box boy” for UK reggae outfit RDK HI-FI Soundsystem at sixteen years old, touring Europe, selecting tunes and engineering as part of the sound’s crew by the age of eighteen.

Harry launched KingBeat in 1999 as a roots and culture sound playing dates at Aba-Shanti’s resident club the House of Roots and the RootsGarden in Brighton, but clubs were closing their doors to the soundsystems. Touring soundsystems don’t suit club owners needs; staff have to be paid to come early and stay late, the speaker boxes and flight cases scratch walls and chip the paint on the way through, and any good soundsystem would make their crapy noise restricted in-house P.A look bad. Possibly more importantly as our goverment fought “antisocial behaviour” on multiple fronts club owners who exceeded strict council noise limits lost their licences. This meant only the biggest sound men could get dates, as club owners simply wouldn’t risk it for some little youth who may not get a crowd. “Dirty” Harry had been a squatter since 1998 and regularly attended squat parties and outdoor raves. This was where Kingbeat found its audience for the next few years.

The way reggae and dancehall has blown up on the London party scene is something to be very proud of. Harry, Bashment Bish (Negusa Negast), Steve Bedlam (Spiral Tribe/Bedlam Sound), and a very few others pioneered that sound playing to 20-30 people while hundreds raved to tekno somewhere else in the building. With such small numbers early on when Negusa Negast and KingBeat were both out they would either link up or Harry would host hip-hop, jungle, drum’n'bass and breakbeat DJs.That’s where KingBeat found it’s current blueprint playing reggae, reggae infused, and reggae inspired music, week in week out (2000-04) at one of the London parties, Southern outdoor raves or European Teknovals blowing up the reggae dancehall sound.

More at KingBeatSoundsystem.com

History of the Bristol Underground scene

Bristol has long been a multicultural city. In the 1950s and 1960s there were waves of immigration that made Bristol one of the most racially diverse cities in the UK. This mix included greater access to new strands of music such as reggae. “In 1980, following a police raid on the popular Black and White Café, the St Pauls riots erupted, the first of the decade’s civil disturbances.”

“Around this time, the Bristol underground scene was steeped in punk and reggae influences, and soon embraced hip-hop – and with it the colourful New York-style lettering at the most creative end of the graffiti art spectrum.”[6]

The 1990s was when the scene began to create work of international significance. 1991 saw the releasse of Massive Attack’s Blue Lines, an album which has met international critical acclaim. Blue Lines was named the 21st greatest album of all time in a ‘Music of the Millennium’ poll conducted by HMV, Channel 4, The Guardian and Classic FM. Stuart Bailie of BBC Northern Ireland stated that “It was soul music. But it had bold, symphonic arrangements. It featured samples of the Mahavishnu Orchestra … It had funky breaks and an emotional power that was hard to figure. It sounded anxious and lost. But there was a grandeur in the music also. People who came across the record became obsessed, spinning it endlessly.” The release in 2006 of “Live With Me” is proof that the trip hop scene is still capable of producing great work.

Darkness

The Bristol underground scene was characterised by a sparseness and darkness. Bands like Portishead and Massive Attack used sparse sounds – a simple bass line, a vocal and a few other effects, and usually very melancholy lyrics. Banksy also tends to use very few colours, concentrating on blacks and whites and sharp outlines, and often looking at controversial topics such as war.

Separately to this, some writers have talked of an undercurrent of darkness within the City due to its history.[7]

Racial tensions within the City

An article in 2008 in The Telegraph stated that: “Racial matters have always carried a historical resonance in Bristol, a city made affluent on the profits of tobacco and slave-trading. Street names such as Blackboy Hill and Whiteladies Road remain as reminders.”

“It’s a past that we feel equivocal about”, says Steve Wright. “It’s a double-edged thing. There are the beautiful Georgian terraces that we love, but they were built on the profits of slavery. It’s our shady past, and Bristolians are a bit self-effacing, a bit ashamed of it and are quite keen to layer new associations on top of it. There’s always been a defiant, subversive streak in Bristol, and Banksy’s work is very much in that tradition.”[8]

There has often been a slight undercurrent of tension both in the politics and creatively with artists and musicians in the merger of black and white culture. During the 1950s the Bristol evening post carried what many today would consider openly racist articles, warning of the dangers of black bus drivers.

Creative tensions within bands

Some of this tension spilled over into some of the artists creative work. Massive Attack for example were wrought with creative tensions over their 1998 album Mezzanine, which resulted in one of the three core members leaving. Robert Del Naja has described the dark atmosphere within the group: “There was always this tension between control and collaboration. Always… We were just trying to get the job finished… Everything became thinner and smaller. All that warmth being spun into a tiny little thread, then that thread just being cut.”[9]

Most of this is actually quoted from this article about Banksy in the Telegraph.

A likkle history of jungle music, as told by Carlos Soul Slinger:

In the early 1990s, MCs who were predominately Black and from the ragga scene, began to add their flavor to techno beats from the white dominated rave scene. This eclectic marriage of styles, roots and electronic music, laid the foundation for modern jungle. Jungle began as the integration of musical forms which came from a variety of cultural perspectives. The socio-economic mix of the London underground community fostered an environment which encouraged the intermingling of cultures and one love between all people. The natural evolution of this, musically, is jungle. The pioneers of UK jungle were Rebel MC, Ragga Twins, Shut Up and Dance and Two Bad Mice (Rob Playford). In July, 1991 underground white labels’ records from these groups started showing up on the NYC dance scene. Fortunately, I happened to be in the right time at the right place and realized my responsibility to start playing and producing jungle. I first spun jungle at the infamous NYC dance club, the Limelight, at the major techno event called Future Shock. The Future Shock promoters didn’t get jungle and shut me down. A year later, I helped to found NASA (a new, different kind of underground party) with db, Scotto, Jason Jinx and On-E. This became the first successful breakbeat party in America and launched the US jungle scene. The next major turning point for US jungle was a party called Jungle Warriors. This was the first big jungle event in Manhattan that brought together top junglists and live drummers (including Marque Gilmore). Here we learned and taught each other and changed the course of US jungle forever. Today in NYC, Koncrete Jungle (props to Mac and Kathy) and Egg (Liquid Sky posse) have maintained the tradition of NYC underground parties and are the weekly family gathering places for the NYC underground.

From Soul Slinger/Jungle Sky Records myspace bio…

LTJ Bukem released his first jungle choons in 1991-92: Demon’s Theme / A Couple Of Beats