Subterranean Blues ...

Dingo Baby is determined to show me an underground London, in the sense of a rave culture rather than the inner workings of the Tube. There is perhaps a justifiable pride in rave's history in the UK. In its hey-day in the 1980s, illegal gatherings and squat parties were a means to rail against Margaret Thatcher's oppressive ordering of society and privatisation of everything that moved, except dancing. But there is a debatable question as to whether it was a political movement that generated a space of equality as everyone took off their weekday wear, whether a suit or overalls, and put on baggy jeans and t-shirts, or whether it was just another form of pointless hedonism. Personally, much as I love a good dance, I don't think the Conservatives or any other bastion of law and order should be too worried about the impact of raves today. They are for the most part in line with Thatcher's denial of society ... individuated experiences, now legal apart from the substances consumed to get the party started; underground but not subversive. This is not Notting Hill.

To be fair, there are some remnants of an ideology left. A recent event in the cavernous bowels of London Bridge's arches was billed by the organisers as 'a magical indoor festival combining musicians, DJs, VJs, performers and artists from all corners of creativity, joined by various proactive NGOs and charities with the expressed aim to make a difference'. At this event not only could I dance to some brilliant psychedelic trance and world music, I could draw what I love, learn to make a seed bomb, model endangered species in clay, undergo various healing and alternative therapies, or get a cup of chai and just sit and chill while listening to talks on climate change. In the 'inspiration hall' area, some of those involved in the early rave days 20 years ago talked about its impact and the state of 'the scene' today. There was some talk about spreading love with the music and bringing in people from different faiths. I wondered how much love would be in the room of mostly white party-goers if a group of young people arrived to dance who happened to be black, Muslim and wearing hoodies ... how much love and how much tension. Ironically, a young man was shot and killed the next night outside the same venue. There was debate on what to call the event with the standard interruptions from a man of indeterminate age but who probably left his personal growth and social skills in the 1960s. 'It's a gathering'. Okay, it's a gathering, and I wondered how much love was being extended his way or if people were getting irritated (okay, maybe not 'people' per se, but I for one was getting annoyed and was going to have to get my chakras cleaned again in the healing area). I also wondered on the irony of why it was that he who bore the hall marks of a 'new age lifestyle' as an alternative to capitalism's privatised, industrialised, mass-produced society, in fact reproduced characteristics of the very thing he was protesting about, a system that is crippled by a lack of social skills, empathy and tolerance. It came down to Paradox, 'a one-legged existential stand-up beat poet' to put it all into context with his self-referential piss take on 'tribalists' who take it a wee bit too seriously and then take the glow sticks out of their hair when they put their suits back on to go to work in the city on Monday.

Perhaps rather than indulge in gazing at 'the scene's' navel and getting nostalgic for times past that were probably not as bold as a drug induced haze has made them out to be, I suggest we just love it for what it is and go home as the sun rises (or in my case as I'm getting old we could only make it to 5.30) because that is a brilliant time to see the city waking up, and think about important questions such as why do British men dance better than Australian men, why do some of them wear thick wool beanies while dancing inside in a hot room, and why it's so difficult to find a bag small enough to be able to dance with it over the shoulder but big enough to put a can of deodorant in. As for bigger questions on political, economic and social change, perhaps the best we can hope for is to create a moment of collective energy and good-will that impels the converted to keep going.

How to lose friends and alienate people ....

Try carrying a cello on the London tube in rush hour. May I introduce 'Yo Yo'. We have a few years to go before we start playing Bach's Suite for Unaccompanied Cello together but we're enjoying each other's company for now. I'm not sure the neighbours are, and my finger tips are slightly worried by the idea that they may have to bleed for their art, but I'm sure we'll all adjust in time.

Notting Hill Carnival, 24-25 August 2008

The Carnival: ... that which can't be held, can't be repressed, can't be organised into neatness. The fear of politicians everywhere: the crowd in the street; the uncontrolled, uncontrollable display; the random, unpredictable event that punctuates the facade of normality, the facade of power (A. Jach,1999, The Layers of the City, Sydney: Hodder Headline, p 91).

I used to think that Sydney’s Mardi Gras was the pinnacle of parties … at least 12 hours of dance-fuelled hedonism culminating in the pleasure of sliding between thousands of smooth torsos at 9 a.m. in the morning, staggering outside to see the sun already up and doing its worst to make you look like a hag now that the eyeliner has washed down the face to mingle with the glitter and the sweaty hair that has fallen out of the ‘do’ it took hours and half a can of spray to create.

But I have to reassess …

Dingo Baby seemed especially keen that I come with him to Notting Hill Carnival and being up for anything remotely resembling the reoccupation of public space by the public I thought it sounded like a good idea. Notting Hill is not far from my place and the impending excitement was palpable in the street the night before. Diversion signs and barricades had been going up for well over a week beforehand. And those barricades were not just the usual crowd control metal gates but, as it turned out, the entire boarding up of shops and houses along the main parade route and all the way up Portobello Road. This was clearly going to be no ordinary party.

Notting Hill Carnival is overwhelmingly massive. It is noisy, messy, dirty, chaotic and sex on two dozen sound systems. It is a street party for two million people over two days. The entire suburb becomes a dance floor. There is a parade that starts around 12pm each day which is basically made up of trucks with sound systems on them with any number of dancers, some in costume, some just following on behind. It takes all day and into the evening for the floats to get around the route. Then dotted around the suburb are sound systems which are basically a DJ dwarfed by stacks of speakers: ranging from the highly professional, commercial outfits such as the darlings of the Ibiza set, Sancho Panza, and Good Times with the legendary Norman Jay, MBE, to the local DJ who seemed to have found the money to get together a few mates to rig speakers up outside his block of council flats. It is surround sound music at full decibels cranking out until 7pm. And once the music is shut down you can wander over to the parade route, find a truck you like and join in there till late in the evening.

There is reggae, there is house and all its derivatives, there is trance, techno and drum and bass. There are steel bands and most importantly, there is soca music and if you’re blessed with a big arse you can wind it for all it’s worth with thousands of other beautiful women similarly blessed with big arses. 

By the end of the day you will be covered in sweat, glitter, chocolate, someone’s cocktail and/or mug of beer, and a layer of smoke from joints and jerk chicken being BBQ’d on the thousands of improvised stoves in every second front yard that has become a mini-store for the weekend also selling cold drinks and the use of their toilet from £1 to £5 depending on how far you are from an official one. I’m not sure how many chickens, pigs and salted fish gave their lives for the weekend but I’m sure they think it’s worth it.

It does get edgy when the sun starts to set. Everyone is drinking and smoking something, even your grandmother. As we started walking home on the second evening down Portobello Road, a group of young men ran past, one or two with faces covered by keffiyeh. Moments later a group of police also ran past and Dingo Baby and I made it home just before the fighting took off. Buses from south-west London were stopped before they could unload any more young men to do battle with each other.

I’m wondering if we’d be much better off if all young men were given The Dangerous Book for Boys, or better still were made to dance all day behind my favourite float oozing soca and the mantra ‘no knives, just chocolate’.

Instead there is the constant buzz of the ‘eye in the sky’ police helicopter, and homes and offices are co-opted for use as CCTV stations manned by police with binoculars and laptops. Being spied on is not a comfortable experience although I’m glad there is a strong police presence on the ground, most importantly for silently and unobtrusively directing people into other routes when one street becomes too crowded. Many seemed to be having a good time of it as well and in a crowd of two million people I don’t think 330 arrests is too bad; up on last year but violence was down.

The ‘criminal’ factor is given as one reason why the Carnival should be shut down or moved to somewhere like Hyde Park where it can be suitably controlled, patrolled and ordered. For our safety, for the safety of residents, and fair enough, I’m sure it’s a pain to board your shop or home up for a few days a year and come back to find people have pee’d against your fence. But I’d probably argue that it is dereliction of cultural norms and borders that is even more threatening and discomforting for the Carnival’s opponents. Given its size and what it represents, a celebration of Afro-Caribbean culture, it is inevitably going to be a battle ground of class, culture and gender; between mixo-phobs and mixo-phils (thank you Zygmunt Bauman); between the newly gentrified set from the movie of the same name, and the estates and tower blocks that somehow never made it into the film; between release and restraint, order and chaos.

The different crowd at each sound system is a demarcation of the city: it is mostly white and middle class arm waving in front of Sancho Panza’s DJs but get closer to the floats, the frenetic heart of the Carnival, and it’s a sea of Afro-Carribean. Kilt wearing Thais dancing to reggae music and selling jerk chicken are going to confuse anyone’s sense of order as may 80 year olds who are still dancing to Drum and Bass, and heaven forbid in this god-fearing Christian civilisation where they still give out the Bible on Desert Island Discs as one of the books you have to take (BBC Radio Four), loads of flesh, cleavage and the strong whiff of sex that lingers in the lyrics of the music and on many bodies. And yet despite all this, on Portobello Road two days later the straighteners had been through and it was business as usual, spic and span. So to those who find it all too much, I beseech you, for the greater good, let there be a few days of discomfort, let there be disorder, let there be noise, let there be release, let there be carnival. It will all return to normal soon enough.