Sounds Like London Read online

  SOUNDS LIKE LONDON

  100 Years of Black Music in the Capital

  Lloyd Bradley

  SOUNDS LIKE LONDON

  100 Years of Black Music in the Capital

  SOUNDS LIKE LONDON

  First published in the UK in August 2013 by

  SERPENT’S TAIL

  3A Exmouth House

  Pine Street

  London EC1R oJH

  www.serpentstail.com

  All text copyright © Lloyd Bradley 2013

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-1846687617

  Contents

  ‘Why Sounds Like London needed writing’ (Jazzie B)

  Introduction

  1. ‘They come over’ ere …’

  ONE Mash Up in the Mother Country

  Calypso, cold winters and a black ballet company

  TWO ‘Are They Going to Play Music on Dustbins?’

  How London learned to love the steel pan

  THREE Sounds of Freedom and Free Jazz

  South Africans in exile move modern jazz to prog rock

  FOUR West Africa in the West End

  Mods and Afro-rockers

  FIVE Bass Lines, Brass Sections and All Things Equals

  London gives up the funk

  2. Nobody’s going anywhere

  SIX The whole world loves a Lovers

  Lovers’ rock sells reggae to Jamaica

  SEVEN Living for the Weekender

  BritFunk chanting down the discos

  EIGHT ‘If You’re Not Dancing, Fuck Off’

  The new sound systems rewrite raving

  3. Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner

  NINE Who Needs a Record Company?

  London bass in the digital age

  TEN From Pirates to Pop Stars

  London’s black music rules

  Thanks, photo credits, index

  Without whom …

  Photo credits

  Index

  Why Sounds Like London needed writing

  by Jazzie B

  I was born and brought up in Hornsey, north London, and I remember music from a really early age because I was always interested in the Blue Spot gram we had sitting in the front room. It wasn’t just the glowing lights; one of the things that attracted me to it as a young kid was the smell. The gram would go on at maybe seven o’clock in the morning, and wouldn’t go off until midnight or one the next morning, so those valves used to get very, very warm, almost part of the central heating system, then they’d give off a certain smell!

  So you could say I grew up fully immersed in the music. I was about seven or eight then, but subconsciously I was becoming aware of how important music was to the lives of the immigrant communities – not just from the Caribbean, but also the Irish and the Greek communities that were all around us. We were all working-class people, out all day, and the ultimate prize once you owned your own house or your own room was to get some entertainment in there. For black people in London in the fifties and sixties, the Blue Spot gram came a long way before the telly. It became the central piece of furniture, and a showing of your wealth.

  Critical to all this, though, was the music – the software, if you like – which was the link back to the Caribbean, as it became a story of what was going on back home, and kept people in touch with who they were. Then, moving on a few years, for us that was born here, a lot of the reggae music we listened to in the seventies, we lived our life by it, listening to people like Big Youth or Brigadier Jerry articulating about life. The difference between what my parents listened to – there was calypso and ska, but country & western was massive, and then there was Engelbert Humperdinck – and what my generation listened to, was that my parents were trying to adapt, but we were trying to make our own way. All of this was reflected in the music we were listening to before we were making any of our own, and as we took the lyrics of this story-telling music seriously the messages were coming through.

  Not that our relationship with our music was always so serious. One of the greatest things about having our own music was that it could be like our own private world in the middle of London. Take the calypsonians. Everyone was so coy and conservative in their attitudes outside, but these records were very explicit and that was our own world. It was particularly fun for us young people, because we knew they were covering things we shouldn’t know about, so we’d make up our own lyrics. It was only years later we discovered that was what they were singing about.

  I got into sound systems early. All my older brothers owned sound systems, so I was born into it and it was synonymous with us as young black men coming up at the time – we didn’t go to the pub and we had our own style and culture. I must stress that this wasn’t so much a black and white thing among my generation, it was a working-class thing, and so many white kids were genuinely interested in experiencing our culture. I lived the sound-system life through my brothers, and the white and the Greek kids in our area all knew all about the sound systems and the music.

  The importance of the sound systems was far more than just playing music, it was your connection with people in the Caribbean, with each other here. It was a refuge from everything that went on during your week at work, where you could be around like-minded people or where you could meet people, and it was how you expressed yourself. For the operator too, it was a business opportunity, and there were others that made money from around the sound systems, so it was a fusion of music, business and life, and something we were in control of for ourselves – in our Sunday football league there were a load of sound systems that put out football teams.

  At the Soul II Soul clothing launch, Jazzie B and Lloyd Bradley show Frank and Dino how it should be done.

  The music was absolutely key to how we lived in London. It helped to relax us, it helped to educate us, it helped us to enjoy ourselves, and the sound systems were always central to that music’s success. They provided the platform for the music we were making to get heard, and they also kept it under the radar, meaning this story of London’s black music is something that hasn’t been talked about much in the regular media. Mostly that’s been a good thing, because it’s allowed the various genres to thrive, away from influences that might have turned them around a bit. It’s a story that shouldn’t remain hidden, though, for future generations and people now who want to know about what went on before you saw the Dizzee Rascals and the Tinie Tempahs. It’s a story that needed to be told by somebody who really cares about it, and the most important thing about this book is Lloyd Bradley. The reason this story of London’s black music hasn’t been told before is because we haven’t had a Lloyd Bradley before, and up until now he wasn’t ready to write it.

  I first met Lloyd when he wrote a press release for us about twenty years ago. As I got to know him, I realised that during my years in the music business I’d never really met anybody who had his level of knowledge or experience of this music, and had such a passion for it – he’s as much a part of it as anybody else. Lloyd’s one of the few people out there who have dug as deep as he has to build up a real genuine knowledge, and then been dedicated enough and smart enough to take on this role as historian. You’ve
only got to look back to some of the things he’s done in the past, like his book about reggae, Bass Culture, or his writings in Mojo or the newspapers, to see the depth of his interest in those arts, how he understands the power and the passion of all of this black music, and, most importantly, how he looks into the truth of it all.

  Lloydie loves London too. He went to school just up the road there in Hornsey, he’s a lifelong Gooner, and knows exactly how this music is such an essential part of London and why it couldn’t happen anywhere else. Which all comes through in the book, as it puts London as probably the most important city in black music history worldwide, because it wasn’t just one style that started here, it’s been years of different movements. Lloyd is aware of all of that, and he’s seen so much of it happen around him.

  Personally, I’ve been inspired and been informed by a lot of the stuff he’s written over the last few years, and now I’m proud to say I’m a friend of his, meaning I’m one of the select bunch of people who knows just how good the lemon meringue pie he makes is.

  Introduction

  STAND FOR LONG ENOUGH on any street corner in London, and you’ll hear music. Chances are, these days, it’ll be black music of some description – dubstep, hip hop, grime, reggae, R&B … It’s been like that for a while, at least since cars had cassette players and ‘portable’ stereos evolved to the size of suitcases. The difference between then and now, though, is that the black music you’ll be hearing will probably have been written and recorded within a few miles of wherever it’s disturbing the peace.

  British black music has never been so prominent. Indeed, it’s at the point now where artists such as Labrinth, Tinie Tempah and Dizzee Rascal are bona fide pop stars, with a young mainstream audience that accepts them in the same way as they would anybody else. Just as hip-hop stars like Jay-Z or Beyoncé have across-the-board acceptance in the US and beyond.

  The brilliant thing – sorry, the most brilliant thing – about the current state of British black music is not so much that it has come so far in a mere fifty years (less than three generations), but that it has done so almost entirely by itself. Unlike the Americans cited above, who for the most part benefited from the full might of a global entertainment industry, our guys have very often succeeded in spite of the UK music business rather than because of it. In almost every case, enduring stylistic advances have been the result of intuitive and inspired individuals nurturing their ideas away from the lure of the mainstream. In fact, as the story unfolds, it’s when black music has opted to put itself in the hands of the regular music business that progress has fallen apart. Mostly, though, and in true immigrant style, it’s been shrewd self-sufficiency and a work ethic that’s never scared to learn or look for opportunity that have powered this astonishing trajectory. ‘Doing a t’ing’ as it used to be called, is now all over the British charts.

  Sounds Like London is a tribute to the many single-minded characters who have trusted judgements honed by years of servicing black audiences that were never slow to let them know if something wasn’t up to scratch. A Saturday-night crowd in a Harlesden dancehall will be far more informative than any amount of focus groups. Furthermore, when the mainstream punters are presented with the genuine article, it’s usually far better received than anything specially tailored for them.

  Sounds Like London also documents how the city’s black music has made a steady transition from being viewed as something that came from abroad, and therefore didn’t need to be taken seriously, to a music that so completely has to be that the BBC have devoted a digital channel to it. Attitudes towards the musicians themselves have similarly shifted. As the music has evolved from calypso and jazz to dubstep and grime, so the people making it have gone from being clearly identifiable as immigrants to being second-generation Londoners, blurring geographical backgrounds to the point that British is all they could possibly be. Despite what certain aspects of the media continue to think.

  It’s an arc that leads from Lord Kitchener coming down the gangplank of the Windrush singing ‘London is the place for me …’ to Tinie Tempah sitting on the Breakfast TV sofa giving advice about what tea is best to use with London’s hard water (Yorkshire Gold, he reckons). And in between those two points, large numbers of black people have arrived in London, mixed it up with their new neighbours, done pretty well regardless of establishment attitudes, and now, for better and for worse, are part and parcel of life here. Most importantly, they are doing so on their own terms.

  AS MY PREVIOUS BOOK, Bass Culture: When Reggae Was King, also made clear, it’s impossible to separate this social transition from the development of the music. Throughout the entire story, we see the former reflected in the latter. At first, black music held back, seeking to accommodate a broader audience. When that didn’t work, it tried too hard to identify with other established black music forms. Next, after trusting the mainstream perhaps a little too much led to its being patronised, it responded by retreating into itself in a conscious attempt to find an identity. That in turn provided the confidence to bring the mainstream to the music, rather than the other way around. Finally, black music displayed the intelligence to set itself up in such a way that it didn’t need the mainstream, but if the mainstream wanted to join the party … Sounds Like London is about the triumph of spirit as much as the triumph of music, which along the way enriched the host nation as much as it did the arrivals.

  Coming to grips with a saga that begins in 1919, just after the First World War, was a mountain of a task. (OK, so it falls a little short of the advertised 100 Years of Black Music in the Capital, but that made a much snappier sub-heading than 94 Years of … or Not Quite a Century of …). Some selection process therefore had to be employed. Sounds Like London is not a chronicle of every form of black music that has touched down in the capital during that period; that alone would take a hundred years, and require four or five volumes. Instead it discusses the impact several of those forms have made on mainstream music and culture.

  That means the city itself is as important as the music, and the styles and scenes that this book examines could only have happened here – lovers’ rock reggae was a London music; Osibisa’s sound was the result of sessions in a Finsbury Park rehearsal room; Brotherhood Of Breath were a product of a particular Soho jazz club. Among the most pleasing aspects of many of these London developments was that they also found success abroad. In several instances – calypso, African rock and lovers’ rock in particular – they influenced the styles from which they emerged, after being taken on board because they came from London. It’s also worth mentioning, incidentally, that although for reasons of space and continuity this book is devoted to London, several other British cities – including Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol and Birmingham, to name but four – had their own unique and pulsating black music scenes.

  SO THE BOOK IS ALL ABOUT STYLES that evolved because of life in London, and either left a footprint on the mainstream music or culture, as with calypso, or were invented to service a community that could only have been found here – jungle, f’rinstance. The key is for the music to interact with its London environment, rather than exist as a hermetically sealed subculture, or simply develop as a duplicate of some overseas style. Therefore, even if the vast range of black music to be found in the capital can offer all sorts of exciting nights out, this is a book about London music, first and foremost. Not, say, Zimbabwean music in London, or Londoners trying their best to sound like they’re from the Bronx. Which is not to denigrate such scenes; there simply wasn’t room to include them here alongside their more interactive counterparts.

  Sounds Like London begins even before the great wave of Commonwealth immigration, with the moment in 1919 when the Southern Syncopated Orchestra made its debut as the first black band to play in London. Although the music in its earliest incarnation did little to affect its environment, the story of the pre-war era provides a solid basis for what is to come. It also gave me a few surprises, with regard to the cultural con
tributions made by black people in Britain over the last hundred – sorry, ninety-four – years. Did you know there was a very successful black ballet company in London during the 1930s, run by two Jamaican immigrants?

  Apart from that, the book does its best to beat a chronological path from calypso to black pop in ten stylistically self-contained chapters. Sometimes the timeline crosses over itself within chapters as well as from one to another, and in a couple of instances different chapters run in parallel. Please bear with me; it’s all part of showing how British black music has evolved and diversified. It’s been astonishing to see the shared connections and characters that carried the story forward in a single evolutionary sweep. You don’t need six degrees to connect Lord Explainer to Light Of The World, or Maxi Priest to Matata.

  Ultimately, the whole story is a tribute to individuals, most of whom refused to play by the rules of what had gone before, and used whatever was available to make their music and to get it across to the widest possible audience.

  1

  ‘They come over’ ere …’

  ‘It was hard to leave my home country.

  I made the decision with tears in my

  eyes, but I don’t regret it. It turned

  out very good for me.’

  Sterling Betancourt, steel pan maestro

  CHAPTER ONE

  Mash Up in the Mother Country

  Calypso, cold winters and a black ballet company

  WHEN CALYPSONIAN LORD KITCHENER stepped from the gangplank of the SS Empire Windrush at Tilbury, on 22 June 1948, he barely had a chance to feel Mother England beneath his feet before a microphone was shoved into his face. The coterie of English reporters waiting for the five hundred new arrivals from the Caribbean knew to look out for this imposing, snappily-dressed figure, whom they’d been told was a bit of singer. Never one to pass up an opportunity, Kitch, unaccompanied and apparently ad-libbing, broke into song: