LETTER FROM BRITAIN

LETTER FROM BRITAIN

Penny Valentine

by

LOOKING AT THE BLACK & WHITE WORLD

Hearing “Winter of 79” three years after is initial recording comes as a shock. As undisciplined, chaotic, and downright lousy as punk was, at least it produced its own kind of militancy. And now here’s Tom Robinson scuffling through the EMI vaults and emerging with a collection of TRB tracks that weren’t released on an album during the lifetime of the band. The reaction to hearing that friendly, exuberant and often out of tune line-up is that in '' .a1?^ ^8 there was that driving naive optimism that things could change. Now, when change is needed more than it ever was then, everything’s gone underground. Muffled, silenced, under a cloak of music’s traditional role: entertainment.

If 1981 was the year of the rise of the white electronic bands, it was also the rise of their shift from “experimentalists” to dance aficionados. The year ended with Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me Baby” (only a skip away in essence from white 60’s pop) at the top of the chart. A reliance on melody and a return to the simple things of life in lyrics (romance, loneliness, wimpy bars) took over from the art school pseudo-intellectualism. It has its own kind of nostalgia. And it had been, from the start, white music for a white audience.

With such a reliance on the synth and away from the non-computerized, manmade fibers of such instruments as the bass, perhaps it’s not surprising that there has been a noticeable lack of the original interesting cross-breeding between British white musicians and reggae. Costello, Clash and Joe Jackson took that form over three years ago and gave it recognition to a large white audience. Now only the Clash still dabble in dub, Jackson having gone back further into the good time black music of Louis Jordan, while Costello has gone pure white with his dive into country.

Black music stands alone again. The difference is that reggae (having crossed over from the black British culture) has stayed on; the original mixed ska line-up of the Specials—despite their demise in ’81—having created its own wave, followed through in more overtly political ways by Birmingham’s UB40 (white and black musicians playing British non-Rastafarian reggae) and the Beat (ditto).

Funk and rap (both American forms) are a major impact on British music, salsa too. The interest here lies in music that relies on familiar dance rhythms and that is able to be played by (mainly) white bands with some jazz experience in their backgrounds. And so it has been. The two best-known black musicians in Britain right now are David Grant and Sketch of Linx. While Grant is an ebullient North Londoner who places the majority of his influences in soul and Motown (particularly Stevie Wonder and young Michael Jackson); Sketch plays “baad” bass man in the tradition of much reggae. Tall and lean to Grant’s smaller, bouncier form, he plays it super cool onstage, letting his fingers do the walking. Despite this, their recent packed concerts were played to an overwhelmingly white audience: very young, very clean, very into dancing (which they did). Their act is designed to appeal to the South London white funk following they had built up a year previously. Despite all the onstage flash of their backdrop and lighting, their concerts were a peculiar mix of non-sophisticated Americana and—with their predominantly white back-up band—relied on an audience rapport based on having fun in the tradition of the (white) holiday camp. It looked as disconcerting to the few black members of the audience (who were standing around waiting to be moved by something) as it did to me waiting for a similiar experience. I still haven’t worked out why this should be a problem (the fault of the white critic reared on Motown itself)?

After all, as Clint Eastwood and General Saint say: -“It’s just a feeling, you know? Like going to a blues and finding that the vibes are low and cold. So we try to make it happy at all times by taking up the mike and saying something to entertain the people as well as entertaining ourselves.”

Eastwood and Saint have come to prominence as the two leading “baad” DJs. Taking over the turntables in the dub tradition, Eastwood (from JA) and Saint (from London) have their own call signs: “Oinks” and “Redeeps”—sounds which punctuate the work at hand and which the audience join in with. In the summer their “Another One Bites The Dust” was The Single for both the riots and the Notting Hill Carnival. The duo have emerged from their own community (and the blues party that culturally spawned their particular style of reggae DJing) to tour in the mainstream tradition, packing out ostensibly white venues like the Venue in London, which is becoming their regular showcase, ‘as well as many of the universities.

More JA musicians visit London regularly; enjoying the trail laid down by Bob Marley’s year of prominence. It was Marley, without a doubt, who broke the mold. Greensleeves Records, once merely an import company, now enjoys huge sales from white record buyers as well as their original West Indies devotees. Black Roots is growing as a label for British black reggae musicians like their own Players, as well as importing the work of JA artists like Sugar Minott (and bringing him in to tour).

While the cultural exchange continues nobody has yet emerged with that—as it seems now—extraordinary Marley mix of essential reggae, Rastafarian beliefs and political acuteness. Aswaad and Black Uhuru have come closest (particularly in repeating the ambivalence of Marley’s position) yet both have emphasized—to the white ear—the ambiguousness of Rastafarianism in a white culture. Aswaad’s New Chapter album, their first for a major label (CBS), is problematic because, while the music is bold and forthright the lyrics retain the essentially religious belief that in the end Jah only will provide the answers. The Children of Africa may suffer in the British high-rise but the answer lies in their hearts, their consciousness of their true roots, not in opposing the oppressor in direst terms. Equally, Wolverhampton’s Weapon of Peace talk about riots and trouble in bitter terms, but as observers, not as participants. How can a white audience identify with a black religious and cultural belief? By stepping out from their own community Aswaad may be fenced withexactly those problems. Eventually Marley knew that a stand had to be taken. “Stand Up For Your Rights” was not, by accident, his most famous number outside of the love song “No Woman No Cry.” It hit the individual and collective initiative of its audience (black and white) in a late 70’s arena that—looking back now—produced the most openly anti-establishment antistate response in musical terms there had even been.

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 31

There was a time when the white critic took reggae as the most potent form for political change in music; that same critic now has problems with it merely reflecting its cultural base where they can find no point of identification. No wonder then that those critics with a leftist sensibility in the middle of a right-wing backlash, in their search for something other than danceability, have suddenly rediscovered Gil ScotHeron. 11^