 Mae gael yng Ngyslun i. Rwy'n digwydd i. Gweithiwch. Gweithiwch, rwy'n gweithio i chi ddwy gwrs am y glwydd. Mi'n ddim yn Cathol Melville. Roeddwn i'r eitb Goldfynidol, am broses – rwy'n rhan – ac yn rhyw gydag bobl ar y gyfnod, mae'n grŵr gyfnoddiedeg ffesdifol, rhaid gwneud hyn sy'n ffesdifol, ac mae hynny mae'r tîm peth. Mae'r tîm ffesdifol yn galw'r ffesdifol. The theme of the festival idea is thinking through music, we're thinking about music and we're using music as a way of thinking and specifically we've been thinking about music and dance, we've been thinking about, we started off with a jam session with steam down over there and with so as students, we've had a panel on dance, we've had a panel on the relationship between music and film, we've talked about why Adorno hates jazz and why he's wrong about it and we've got a couple more events coming up, there's a panel, an online panel next Tuesday which is about decolonising music education. With a great range of panellists, musicologists, ethnomusicologists, music technologists, we've got a panel about the relationship between the visual arts and music on Thursday and then we're wrapping up on the 30th with a big concert celebration of the relationship between so as a mandate music, that's the music of West Africa and we've got the Cora master, Balacate Sissoko coming to play here, so you should grab yourself a ticket, he's a master, it's wonderful music. But today we're doing something else, I'm so happy, this is, you know when I was putting this festival together I thought what should I make it about and I decided to make it about things that interest me in the hope that they also interest other people and one of the things which interest me and has always interested me for the entirety of my adult life has been DJing and DJs. The book called Six of London Thing which was kind of about DJ culture in London from the reggae sound systems of the late 50s all the way through to Grime and I find it a fascinating issue and I have been lucky enough to manage to persuade an amazing panel of people to come together to talk about it, people, some of whom I know, some of whom I know of, some of whom I've read their work and I hope that we can have a really lovely conversation about the art, the craft, the job of being a DJ, what is it, what does it entail and why it might be more than just a bit of fun on Saturday night, although it might include a bit of fun on Saturday night, so why don't you, I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to introduce the panel to you. First of all let me tell you the format of what we're going to do, so we've got a two hour session in here, we're going to talk to the, it won't go for that long do we, but I'm going to talk to the panellists, ask a few questions, get them to talk to each other and to me and then we're going to throw it out and hopefully you can get involved as well. We'll find a natural end to that conversation somewhere in between now and eight o'clock, then we've got some snacks which the DJs have already steamed into because of course they like to eat before they do their sets, which we will have in the lobby as we gradually make our way from here through the lobby to the students union where we've got decks set up, CDJs set up and we're lucky enough to have even more DJs not just here but sitting over here, so Tim who's sitting right here will be starting us off in the student union, we've got a late license in there so we'll be there till two in the morning, please do join us, I'm not sure our DJs will make it that long, we'll see. Anyway, I'm thrilled, welcome, welcome. Let me start at the end of the table, I'm going to work this way and I'll tell you, I'm not going to give you the full bio because we wouldn't have time but let me just tell you why I invited these people and what I know about them. So at the end we've got Lene Denise. Lene is someone I've come across on social media, I've heard her mixes and I know something about the academic work she's been doing as well in relation to DJing, a very interesting topic that we'll be talking about. The reason why I feel so fondly about Lene in particular is because when I was finishing my book I was thinking about who I could get to blurb it, it's really important that you have the right people blurbing your books, right? So I asked Paul Gilroy and he said yes and that was great and I asked Charles Peterson and he said yes and that was also great. But I've lived in America for a long time in the 90s and I've always considered my work and my interest to be sort of bringing the conversation between America and the UK together. So I sent it to Lene because I actually really wanted to know what she thought of it as an expert on black music as a black American and she wrote a really beautiful blurb which you can read when you buy a copy of my book. So thank you for that and I'm paying you back by asking you to do more unpaid labour. Thank you and welcome Lene Denise who goes by the name DJ Scholarship and I should say that her work has been influential in me wanting to have this panel and we'll find out why in a minute. Next to her is Harold Heath. I don't know him personally, I've just met him but I feel like I do know him because I've read a quite brilliant book that Harold wrote about DJing which makes I think a really important point which is that DJs, we hear about the superstar DJs and we know about all the big money and the private jets and all of that but actually the vast majority of DJs are people who are doing it for very little money, in fact they're putting their own money into it and they're doing it for reasons other than fame and wealth and adulation although they'd welcome it if it came along and I highly recommend this book, it's got the most wonderful title, Long Relationships. A long relationship, my incredible journey from unknown DJ to small town, small time DJ. Is that right? I've got that one right. Highly recommended, velocity press, very cheap as chips, you should buy it and read it, it's brilliant. He's also a working music journalist as well as being a long time small time DJ. Next to him is someone I think we wouldn't describe as a small time DJ, this is Colin Dale, I don't know if you're a techno head but if you're a techno head you know Colin Dale. Colin Dale is a legend of techno, he's one of the people amongst his many claims to fame, not only in the techno world but all the way through from funky soulful dance music of the 80s and reggae, in fact all the way through to techno, is that he was one of the most influential people in bringing house music to London via his radio show, the abstract dance show on Kiss FM when Kiss FM was a pirate station and good. It was a key him along with another Colin, Colin Favre and Jazzy M, probably the three of you can claim to be the people who brought, this is long before Rave by the way and it's nothing to do with Paul O'Confold or Ibiza. Next to Colin we've got Nabil Iqbal, one of the reasons I wanted to invite her, she's someone who's just come onto my radar, I knew she was working in a very interesting part of dance music which kind of touches on a lot of different genres including jazz and South Asian music. And I knew she had studied at SOAS and I wanted to have a kind of someone from SOAS, she's one of ours. And so I'm really thrilled, thank you Nabil here for being here and I look forward to kind of comparing notes really between people of different generations. And then sitting right here is Charlie Duck and Charlie is, we have met before, we've been many many of the same places, we sort of come from roughly the same part of South London, he's a bit more west than me. We have friends in common and I've followed his career all the way from early doors, Attica Blues, he's been a performing artist, radio DJ and a DJ. And also now a runner DJ and runs the Rundem crew so we'll maybe talk about that. So please welcome my fantastic panel, what a panel. Right so we want to talk about DJing as something more than just playing party music, that's going to be a lot about what we talk about. But I want to start with a couple of reflections and a couple of propositions that we might just be able to get out of the way. The first reflection is that it's ironic in a way that setting up a panel where we're also having a party afterwards, it reminds me that being a DJ isn't just about playing music, it's also about running around trying to find a cartridge for a 1210 deck because it's broken and having to go down to the shop and persuade the guy to rent you one. It's about cleaning stuff up and moving tables, it's about running a door, it's about promoting, it's about doing all the legwork that it takes to put a party together. Not always but that's part of it. So here are two propositions for you and I just want to see if you lot will agree with me. It's not that we won't talk about the stuff but we can sort of move past it if you do agree with me and if you don't tell me why. So the first proposition is that DJs get into DJing fundamentally because they love music. That's my proposition. Are you prepared to agree with that? No, hard agree from me. Charlie is a naysayer. I think they should get into music because they're into music. I don't necessarily think that has happened. That's true of every DJ and there are other reasons why DJs might be getting into it other than the love of music. I think there's definitely a different reason now. Can we agree that everyone sitting at this table gets into DJing because of the love of music, the fundament? We can move past that but of course the love of music is going to come out as well. The second proposition is the primary role of the DJ is to move arses on the dancefloor. Do you agree with that proposition? The primary role. I know. Turn on your mic. I've been inclined to agree with that. Me playing kind of electronic and techno music. Maybe it applies more there, getting people up and dancing. So I'd agree with that. I think you weren't sure about that. I think on a dancefloor setting then it's definitely the primary goal. In the dancefloor setting I think that's a good way of putting it of course. I feel like as a DJ you might play in a lot of other types of settings as well. So it just depends where and when and who's your audience and what you're trying to do. I mean in the early days I used to have this regular gig of DJing at the top shop. Which I just used to practice basically because people aren't going to dance. Although some people did but you know it's just there you just want people to notice the music at least. Okay so it's not specifically about dancing. Charlie I think you've disagreed as well didn't you? I think it's more about taking people on the journey than it is about primarily getting people to dance. Again I'm kind of coming at this with a bit of an older head. But I think there are a lot of people now who they just come out and they're playing whatever they will play whatever that gets the crowd moving. I'm not necessarily concerned about taking people on the journey. It's lowest common denominator that they are. Low hanging fruit DJing. Can I just jump in here? I do agree with what Charlie's saying. Especially as you do radio shows. I do radio shows as well and then there's a totally different angle on it. It's not about getting people to get up and dance and then you can really take them on some sort of journey. Okay all right thank you for those qualifications. I accept them. Obviously you know DJ the term DJ which is disc jockey right? DJ which derived from the radio function and it was only later that the idea of the you know it back in those days of course most dancing was done to live music. Okay so we've got broad agreement but we've got already we've got some you know disagreements which is great and qualifications. Lynnae I'd like to start with you because you've inspired this discussion and you've inspired me and I'm interested. Tell me about DJ scholarship. You've called yourself DJ scholarship. Okay yeah. What is it and what do you mean by that? Okay so first of all thank you for allowing my work to inform the conversation. So I don't call myself DJ scholarship. My name is Lynnae Denise but I have created a system of sounding that I call DJ scholarship which is a form of scholarship that is committed to a critical listening practice. And it's about listening to for me race and music in place matters and so DJ scholarship is about a critical listening practice that centers sort of rhythmic you know regional forms of black expression. And so I'm interested in Detroit techno, Chicago house, LA gangster rap you know South African quite so right so music and plays matters. But for me DJ scholarship is also bound up with listening to black folks broadly listening to their literature listening to film listening to sort of diasporic echoes of black lived experience. As my partner would say so I think that it's just about a sort of I hope humanizing listening practice that engages music beyond its entertainment value. And there's something ambivalent about that entertainment value let's just kind of cut to the chase in that you know the American music industry has been an extractive industry which has taken the raw material which has primarily been produced by African Americans and exploited it without returning the benefits back. And that continues in your view. I mean I'm thinking about that in the UK context in terms of I mean you know island records comes up for me I think it's a kind of global exploitative extractive practice and I think there's evidence that points to a system that you know especially I'm thinking about just the black Atlantic experience and the kind of corporate sort of circle around the way that we make sounds and music in our community. So yeah my focus as a black American is on thinking about the relationship between slavery and the music industry and the American sort of music industrial complex that developed and emerged alongside the quote unquote reconstruction era right with the kind of hyper exploitation of witnesses of slavery who then go on to create this thing called the blues right. So I just think that it's a global practice but certainly rooted in the system of slavery which is a transatlantic endeavor so. In terms of your interest in place and locating can you just give us an idea of where you came up as a DJ where was your kind of testing ground and. That's important so I am a Capricorn. I think that's. Sagittarius. No but I am from Los Angeles was born in 1975 born and raised which means that I witnessed the 80s and I witnessed the sort of emergence of electronic music. And so interestingly enough I'm thinking about the role that Dr. Dre played in developing my ear because he was a DJ on L.A.'s first hip hop radio station which was called KDAY. So I listened to KDAY closely. I bought Maxwell cassette tapes. I recorded shows. I listened to those shows for hours. I memorized lyrics. I wrote those lyrics out. I used to break down to those lyrics. I would go to school in battle fools like so it was a way of life for me in the 80s. That's Los Angeles for me. Wonderful. Harold I'm imagining that you've got a different story that it wasn't L.A. And just just it's very interesting that I think on this panel I don't know how we're going to cut it but you know some of us are from the pre-hip hop. We discovered music before hip hop and hip hop is obviously such an important bedrock for so many people but I'm going to speculate Harold that you are when you were kind of discovering music. It was before hip hop or early just that it was so electro which was kind of pre-hip hop. Where were you? So I grew up in a little town called Bryson Edmonds which is in Suffolk. Was there a hooray there? There was. It's the East Anglia massive. So my first real love was music like all the people here. I was really into buying records even as a little kid but it was electro in I don't know 82. Those kind of first records and the kind of birth of breakdancing in this country as well. I was a breakdancer. You were a breakdancer as well. So past his backspinning berry by the way. So yeah that was my gateway into the kind of culture that for me is yeah into dance music culture really that whole. Cos it wasn't just the music right? It was graffiti, it was the clothes, it was the way you spoke. Yeah I'm thinking of the difference in a way between what Linnea said and you. You know I mean there's a racial difference right? And so for you and I'm here I'm not just pinning it on you because I think it was myself as well. It was something a little bit more remote in a way. We were looking at something else and you know the graffiti, the breakdance. You see throughout history of white people in Britain going that black stuff is really good. I mean it's as simple as that. I love that culture. We embraced it wholeheartedly cos it was better than what we had here. It was better than what we had here. And this is the two sides in a way of what we talked about in terms of the extraction and the appropriation and some of the troubling things which have happened. Because I would imagine Harold you would want to argue that there was some, you know that wasn't strictly you just trying to take something and make money from it or something. What's the time now? Like that later on we see that. I mean my friend's fell in love with it do you know what I mean? And that's like I say that's happened in history for as far back as I can see with popular music. In this country we used to think George Formby was a bad jam until we discovered black music do you know what I mean? I think it's such an important point isn't it that you know growing up as a white English bloke, like we both did you know the available music culture was naff. It wasn't good. It wasn't you know. There was no dancing. There was no art. There was you know people would, the culture was you go to a nightclub and everyone gets drunk and you know you try and pair on. Try and pair off. Yeah. And just silly dances you know. I mean comedy dances and stuff. And I don't know about your family background Harold. Did you have music in your family? Did you inherit a musical culture? Not particularly no it was just me and my friends. Yeah same with me. I mean my parents musical culture was one that they had aspired to you know classical music. It was something that they but it didn't feel that it was part of a family. Put it like this I never danced with my grandma right or I never saw my aunts dancing. Now to move on to Colin right so we're of a similar generation maybe Colin. You and I grew up very close to each other. But you grew up within an Afro-Caribbean family where music did matter in a different way. Describe that. Sorry. Well yeah with a lot of black and Afro-Caribbean and African families music very important. And I was lucky enough to have parents that were really into music like reggae music and soul music motown and stuff like that. And so I got into music really early about 1617. I started doing some very very local pirate stations and stuff like that. And that was born out of having a record collection. It was only tiny back then that I wanted to share with people. And I wasn't hearing it on the radio I was listening to which would kind of push me into doing it myself. And I'd done a lot of radio, worked in record shop for about 15 years, pushing the music as well. And then landed at KISS FM, spent 18 years there with the radio show. Can I take you back to something I remember. I've interviewed Colin before very kindly and used some of this interview in my book. And the thing that I found really interesting that you were telling me. So you grew up not like the white English people who were your neighbours because I was one of them and I didn't have that reggae culture. I could hear it but I didn't have it in my family. But you also sort of broke away from that in a way and you found that a little bit. You told interesting stories about how your cousins and your family sort of treated you breaking away from reggae into another kind of musical genre. I was called names for breaking away from reggae music and that. But for me it was a natural thing. Lots of 16, 17, 18 year olds don't listen to the same music as their parent. Might have shades of it but it's usually not exactly the same. And also when I started I, my friends were like Fabio, Groove Rider, Jumping Jack Frost and lots of DJs that went on to do really, really well. We were all from the same area and all started at the same place pretty much. And that was actually, that was the roots of me playing music really. From a very young age. And even though you were moving towards disco, you liked up tempo dance music and disco, the model that you were working with, the way, the reason that you knew that what a DJ was presumably was based on sound system culture because it was all around you. You knew there was vinyl records. You put records on. Made a loud noise. What really got me into the DJing because I didn't go to a lot of reggae dudes to be totally honest back then. So for me it was DJs like Robbie Vincent and Froggy and Steve Walsh. This is called the Soul Mafia back when we were young. Yeah exactly. I started following these guys and that was the first time I saw two turntables really. Mixing as such unless you were Froggy. Of course that's right. And if you go to some reggae sounds like you go to Jar Shaka and there aren't two turntables, there's one right up at the top of his head over his head. Exactly. It's two very different things. I get the impression you're a slightly different generation. Correct me if I'm wrong. So what was your kind of intro into musical culture and then DJ culture? Well music was always my favourite thing growing up and Michael Jackson was my first musical obsession. Of course. And my mum has a lot of stories about me watching this tape of like a Michael Jackson documentary that they taped off TV and I watched it so much that the tape broke and then I threw like a massive tantrum so then they had to go out and buy me the southern Michael Jackson video which I remember really vividly still because I used to watch it every day. So that was like my earliest musical memory but my parents weren't like particularly musical, the household wasn't really but they like pushed us to learn a lot of instruments and stuff and I went to music school every Saturday and I played the flute and took the recorder really seriously and played like Descan and Treville and I was in a recorder ensemble and then guitar as well. And then I guess like in terms of finding my own path and what I liked in music, it wasn't through the DJ club scene at that time because it was like late 90s, early 2000s and I was really into punk and metal music. So my first experience of feeling music in a loud environment with people around me would be like at the underworld in Camden or electric ballroom and just like used to go to gigs every weekend from like the age of 13 onwards like that was just it really. And then yeah I just loved music and then coming to SOAS for university and studying, I did joint honours of history in ethnomusicology and I'd say that was one of like the most eye-opening formative experiences for me in terms of like a musical education but in a broader sense than just like learning music but realising that there's so many different types of music from all around the world and things which to our like western trained ears wouldn't even sound like music but you can still appreciate it. And it also made me think about not playing or listening to music for music's sake but just like the kind of like wider meaning and power of music that exists. And sometimes when I mean me growing up in London and you just watch like Top of the Pops and you go to gigs and you just think like it's like entertainment value. It makes you feel good obviously but then you don't think you don't necessarily think deeper than that. But I'd say you know like being in a nightclub and listening to like amazing techno house really loud with all your friends around you is like one of the most spiritual experiences you can have really. And for me I think there's feelings that I get from music that I don't get from anything else in my life like not human relationships, not film or art or anything. Music doesn't let you down. On our dance panel it was funny because one of the panellists was Indie, DJ Rupture, she runs drum and bass thing, ten years, proper hardcore drum and bass. And she talked about how in the middle of a drum and bass thing when people are slapping the walls and it's incredibly loud she can find a moment of stillness and almost a sort of meditative escape from the world. Close the eyes and you kind of lose yourself. Exactly. Rhythms are so intricate and so fast and it's just something else really. I feel like when I listen to drum and bass music I hear the blur. The Indian drumming those patterns are so similar and I'm sure a lot of the drum and bass producers in the 90s were probably influenced by people like Talvin Singh. Well of course we're there. Was there the moment of so-called New Asian call with Talvin Singh and Anoka at the Blue Note? Exactly. I mean that's just a good example of thinking about music with no borders in a sense. Everything is mixed and everything's always evolving and things are being borrowed and adapted and I just think it's beautiful. And then in terms of DJing I guess like the... So from uni times onwards or probably just after me and my friends who also did music we always used to put on our own parties in London. And the first time I started that I ever DJed was at this series of parties that we put on in Laundrette's, mostly around East London. And it started because one of my mates was living in a flat above a Laundrette on Columbia Road and somehow persuaded the landlord to let him use the Laundrette one Saturday night for a party. Tell me you call it My Beautiful Laundrette. Did you call it My Beautiful Laundrette? No, we didn't call it anything. It was just those pies. But yeah and anyway it just that kind of like motif just stuck with us so we put on different Laundrette parties and I learnt how to DJ using a controller. That was like my first experience of it. So what's a controller? So it was like a controller that sort of mimics what a normal DJ setup would be with like a mixer in two turntables or two CDJs but you link it to a laptop and it works with a software program. So I was using Traktor and I feel like that technological change is actually so amazing because it's really opened up the world of DJing to so many more people. It's expensive to buy turntables and a mixer. I very much want to get on to that subject and I'm glad you brought it up and we will get on to it when we find out a little bit about Charlie's entry into this world then. I always tell people that I got into raving, clubbing, music and DJing in the best era, which is the 80s. Because I think if you got into it in the 80s and basically you saw the progression of vinyl, CDJs, two inch tape to dat, dat to CDR, small clubs, basement clubs into super clubs. You've seen all of the different kind of shifts that have happened so it holds you in good stead to kind of survive during current times. But I was kind of blessed in that my mum is from Ghana in West Africa and she studied in New York during the 60s and she lived opposite the Apollo theatre. So when she came to London she came arrived with a suitcase, a summer dress and a box of records. She didn't have a winter coat. So for me music, a lot of the music that people kind of fetishise over and have kind of collected and mythologised was never special to me because it was just music that was played in the house, particularly on a Sunday when it was like chores day. The music and chores thing is quite, you know, James Brown forever reminds me of cleaning the stairs. But we had one of those classic rooms in the house that no one else was allowed in because that's where the sound system was and it was a valve sound system. So again, you know, if I go to like one of these analogue kind of super valve, you know, audiophile things, I grew up with that. That's the normal stuff that we had in our house. This wasn't something that was special. One of the best things I think that happened to me is I got sent to private school. I got an assisted place to go to private school in Dunledge and being a fish out of water, you kind of have to cling on to things that help you kind of survive this baptism of fire that you've been placed in. And because I had music, I had records and I was one of the only black kids in the school. There's like probably 2,000 kids, probably only four black kids in this whole school. So people just immediately assumed that I knew about music. So when people got to the point where they started having birthday parties, they were just like, you look like Charlie, can you DJ? And I think the Aces was a real period of DIY, say yes and learn how to fly on the way down. So you had a lot of people being like, oh yeah, I can DJ, I make beats, I make music, I can do this, I can do that. And no idea how to do it, but we learnt how to say yes early. And that was kind of, you know, my thing was DJing at school people's parties, Gatecrusher Balls, you know, various underground parties. Gatecrusher Balls, how interesting, because there's a connection there between Gatecrusher Balls and Rave, isn't there? Because the Tony Colston haters and those characters who went from Gatecrusher Balls were the balls for the posh kids. It's kind of rather sort of decadent kind of posh parties, which then they realised it was right around them. A lot of those guys became Rave promoters. Let's talk a little bit, thank you, that was really, really interesting. Let's talk a little bit about scenes, because I'm really interested in just sort of locating key scenes in your musical development. And I know that, you know, music, we've talked about how it all links together and it's, you know, people can get obsessed. But Linnae, you told me that you played in San Francisco and you were quite specific when we talked about the scene that you played in San Francisco. I've lived in San Francisco almost at the same time, but unlikely to have visited those scenes. Just describe that scene and what was going on there. Because there's an issue around house music involved in that as well, isn't there, in terms of how house is understood and how it's been, you know, marketed to us. What was that all about? What were you playing? What kind of thing were you playing in San Francisco? Yeah, that's, so I bought my first decks in San Francisco, so that's why it's significant to me, but I was a part of the sort of underground hip hop bay area scene. But I think the scene that developed my approach to the decks was actually in New York, right, and just the underground house music club scene there. That was in conversation with the art world. Right, so I think that there's, again, the listening, the reading as a part of the scene that my work is contextualizing and developed in. But yeah, for the Bay, I mean, you know, and I think about the history of DJ culture and turntableism and Q-Bird and like these hardcore Filipino crews in the Bay area, like, huge. Souls of Mischief. Souls of Mischief, absolutely. The, what are they called, the 1200 technique, do you guys remember? 1200 timeboats. No, what are they? I can't remember. It was the Scratch Pickles. No, not them, and I don't know them. But yeah, but so that wasn't, I mean part of what I was doing was, you know, developing a crew of women DJs in San Francisco. So our scene was about, yeah, we had an event, a party called She Story, which is very corny when I think about now, but very important in kind of helping me develop the confidence I needed to step to this game, right? Knowing we were being paid less, knowing we were expected to not excel and understand these kind of technological conversations, right, and just sort of being erased, marginalized and suffering the economic consequences of being. Black and women and queer. So our scene was about developing a kind of visibility and kind of demanding value by, you know, creating momentum around the work and then demanding that we be paid what these folks were paid. Well, I'm still trying to think of the crew, the 1200s. I'll come back to that, but they were just like these massive DJs that we know were being paid, right? And so we would be paid to come in. And race was a divider here, right? Race, gender and sexuality, right? And money. So I'm just thinking about gender equity and turntable culture and what scenes means in that kind. And it was politicized, right? Even if it wasn't, every track wasn't about didn't necessarily have political content, the whole thing couldn't help but have a political content. Yeah, I mean, to survive and to be able to play the music of folks who we know were suffering to play music that we know folks were creating under duress, right? Because we're talking about the 90s and we're talking about people who survived the 80s. You're talking about like, you know, what was going on with Reagan. So this California scene is informed by the fact that Reagan became president but started out as a Hollywood actor. He then became a California governor. And then, right? Like that he was part of kind of dismantling social systems that he was part of reversing civil rights gains, right? Which meant dismantling social programs that fed, you know, young folks, the sort of skills they needed to be creative. So what we were doing in terms of this scene was trying to figure out how to be creative in the midst of like depleted resources. And of course, during the 90s, you know, the Fillmore district was being, you know, derasinated. Oh yeah, absolutely. It was being knocked down and, you know, the black community was being ousted really from San Francisco. Absolutely, in the bay, yep. Talking about scenes, Harold, would I be wrong in suggesting to you that the rave scene was an important part of your upbringing and life and orientation? It would be right there, Caspar. It was terribly important. Tell me about your... Right, tell me what happened and tell me how it felt. Well, okay, so the rave scene, what happened? I don't know where to start with that. What happened to you? You can tell it through your eyes. Okay, so Colin will know because Colin was playing on the rare groove scene, right? You were playing funk records in the mid 80s, all these rare funk records that were getting sampled in hip hop. Me and my mates were really into that scene kind of thing. We thought it was amazing, but it's a kind of a weird little pause, right? It was a batwood-looking moment or a kind of educational moment, wasn't it? It was kind of like, let's learn about the American funk world. Yeah, 60s and 70s. You know, it's kind of looked down upon a bit that scene. I thought it was absolutely fantastic because people like me got to discover this whole new world of incredible music that we didn't even know existed. You never heard it on the radio. So it kind of opened my eyes to the fact that, you know, as DJs, it's all about looking for this special stuff, right? The stuff that you don't know about, you don't hear about. But while that was all happening, kind of obviously house music was being invented and techno was being invented in America. And then at some point it just came over here, didn't it, 87, 86? For me, it was probably 88, 89 because I was living away from a metropolitan centre. So I kind of arrived a little bit later. In what way did it arrive? Like, how did you suddenly notice like this? It's the very loud noise somewhere over there in the field. I don't know, it changed everything. The music came first and we were all a bit sniffy about it for about two weeks. I remember that. Much too fast. I mean, where's the soul? Exactly that, yeah. And then we would go to... All of us went to a first raid that had that experience and we came out of the, okay, we get this. This is something new. Everything about it was new and exciting. The music was like we'd never heard before. It was like music from space. But also the experience of all us people being there. For a lot of people like me, it's the first time we've danced with people from different races, cultures, sexualities. And it didn't matter. It wasn't a big thing, do you know what I mean? So I was a 16, 17 year old kid from the sticks. It's just amazing. It's beautiful. It literally changed my life. And I'm here whatever 35 years later talking about it. It's totally been the focus and the driver of my life ever since then. Those days changed everything for me. They showed me the power of music, the power of a crowd. What it's like to be in that moment with people completely forgetting your own ego and just letting go and just going with it and experiencing those moments of transcendence. You know, they're quite rare. I'm interested in the tensions that come along in these kind of things. When we were talking, not only did your reggae boys find it odd that you wanted to go and listen to disco but what Harold's just described, the reluctance of the rare groove and the soul crowd to accept house or face up to it led you to have to struggle quite a lot to introduce that music. I remember you telling me a story about being hired for a night at a Bobby and Steve club. Bobby and Steve were these two guys who played nice good house music but it was more of that kind of New York gospel-y sort of floor to the floor and you were playing more abstract, you wanted to go harder and they sacked you. No, that's not the exact truth. We were actually doing it, it was like a disco, soul and funk night. This is back in the late 80s and I could really see a connection in between the soul and funk disco music and house music so I attempted to introduce it at the club and they sacked me for doing that. Only to re-hire you. No, not re-hire me, a few years later I've been known for pushing that music. Oh, I see, the irony of it. It sacked me at the time. But very soon after that, I think you and the posse that you've just talked about Fabio and Groove Rider and Dave Angel and what not, found yourself playing at these mega raves. Just describe a scene of one of these out of town. For us, it was really strange because these guys, the names you mentioned, we all come out of a basement of Shubin in Brixton. It was illegal and Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights after heaven, everyone would go down to this Shubin in Brixton. In the space of about six months a year, all these guys, myself, Groove Rider, Fabio, went from playing this really tiny place where there were 60 people to doing these really massive 30,000 people mega raves. It was a really short space of time. It just blew up. How did you feel suddenly stepping up onto a gantry and looking out on 30,000 people? Were you nervous? It wasn't nervous, actually, because I was swept up in this thing that was moving so fast. I didn't even have time to think about it sometimes. Because it was happening to a lot of my peers, it was happening to all of us at the same time. It was a magical time when it all blew up. Like I said, amazing scenes. These massive clubs were flying all over the world. It was just amazing to go from one extent to the other in quite a short space of time. Charlie, I'm going to come back to you, Naby, because your story starts a bit after. What about you, Charlie? I associate, I'm probably wrong about this, but especially Attica Blues in that period of time, there was a reaction against rave culture and against house music. There was a club called Slow Motion, which was definitively 80 BPMs or slower. It was the anti-house club. It was a great club. Ronald and Blaze, and it was where the multi-culti London artsy party people. Now, I suspect a lot of them were sneaking off to raves as well, because I was as well, and I would see them there, and they kept it on the DL. But is that fair, because Attica Blues is much slower, was more associated with... Charlie was in a band called Attica Blues, I should say. On a label called Moex. Moex itself was more associated with a slower, more downbeat sort of feel. More weed than E. More weed than E, okay. So how did you feel about that situation? Is that fair? I think what people have to understand about the context of mid to late 80s going into 90s is the musical divides that were amongst people, but it was very, very tribalistic. When you tell people now, oh, my friends were into reggae, and I went off into house and I got ostracised from the community, people are looking at you like they don't understand it. But it really was a case of like, you literally would turn up, you'd look at someone's shoes, were they wearing clarks? I said, reggae man, okay, fine. And you know... Clark upon foot. So for kind of black kids like, I call us the original black nerds, pre-farel, like you get into skating, and skating starts to open up your minds to all these different stuff. So things like Cybertron, clear. I never knew that was a techno record. To me, that got played. Craftwork, I didn't associate them with techno, I associate them with hip-hop. There's all these stuff that I learnt later because you couldn't even go to a techno gym because you would turn up to the door and a bouncer would look at you and be like, not tonight lads, it's not your night. Because there was a racial quota, all the clubs had a quota. Even if Colin was playing. There was a racial quota on a lot of the clubs about the amount of people of colour that were allowed into the club. So even if you were into this super-redristic music, you couldn't go and hear it. So when you found people that either had tapes, cassettes, do you mean who had access, had a bring-in? You just gravitated towards them like glue. The whole Attica Moax thing was more a reaction against hip-hop. Because for a lot of us, hip-hop was the music that arrived around early 80s, the electro-compilation albums. We gravitated towards it. There weren't a lot of hip-hop jams. You were going to the jams. First of all, I met suburban b-boys. Really important thing. They were countryside kids that knew more about hip-hop than you. That would make you go and research even more. You just couldn't bear the fact that some bumpkin kid knew more about, you know what I mean. Maybe from Barry St. Edmonds. Maybe it was. Again, this is all part of the come-up. But I think for a lot of us, what happened is, Public Academy came to London in 86, 87. And as far as I'm concerned, after we walked out of Brixton Academy, London was never the same. Because you basically had predominantly black... It was a mixed crowd, but I think it was the first time that you heard people on stage really talking about stuff that you hadn't been taught in schools and you hadn't yet heard on record. And so you literally just... Chuck D dropped the mic at the end and you had a decision. You turned in Muslim next day. I knew some of the people who were there, and they were like, I'm changing my name. I'm going to start wearing beads. I'm going to go on a pilgrimage. I'm hanging out with the Muslim kids. I'm out. Like, you literally friendships were severed. They're so true. The thing about that show, I remember that show, was how they had that kind of army. Right, they're dancing. And it was very different. It was very different. It was very different. It was very different. Right. It was very performative. It was almost camp, the way that they sort of danced around the stage. There was something unusually performative about the whole thing. East London came to South, because that was another thing as well. South London didn't have tube stations. Your bit of South London. Sorry, I lived in Stockholm. The Victoria line. It's not proper south. They don't know about tubes in Battersea. It's all buses. Sorry, this is local business. What I meant by that is that if you went to a jam and there was someone from South London there, you knew they were into music because it was hard to get to the places. East London people always travelled on mass. So another thing about that Brickston Academy concert is like the EL Posse who used to follow Derek B. A great DJ who heard about Derek B check him out, came on force. So it was like the scene of the Warriors at the end of that concert. Everyone was going off in different directions. And I just think for a lot of us we came out of that and were just like, you know what? We don't have guns. We don't have gold chains. We're not driving jeeps. We've been obsessed with American hip hop culture for so long. But actually if you look around where we live our lives are really, really different. And if we want to make an impact in this music world we can't just carbon copy what these American cats are doing because we will never be accepted. It's such an important moment. Some of us went off down the trip hop route. Llanloposi started rapping in their own accent. Loads of repercussions started happening which obviously you can trace it then straight into the MCs in Jungle, in Garage. I always loved Rave. I loved House, I loved all of that because it was futuristic and it was new. And that point about were you scared about playing in front of 30,000 people. Of course you weren't because you spent so many years being contained in your bedroom waiting for this moment. So a lot of those guys when they came out they were the best DJs in London. They just weren't being talked about or recognised or spoken about as the best DJs in London. But it's the same as the EZ Boilering moment. Anyone who knows DJ culture knew that by the time EZ was doing Boilering I was like oh man he's about to kill it. These people don't even know what's about to happen. And then you saw it and it's kind of you're just sitting there laughing. I'm going to bring you in and I'm sorry I don't want to sort of cliche you as the younger generation but I am interested. I was going to say does this talk that you've just heard in terms of these very strong generic tribal affiliations and what not does it sound familiar? Was there an equivalent when you were getting into music or was it something from the past and it's not like that anymore. You talked about how the kind of technology you were using gave you access to a lot more music and you could play a cross genre. Were you able to play a cross genre when you were DJing? Yeah I mean I've always played a cross genre because that's just what I love doing like taking people by surprise and mixing things together that you wouldn't normally put together. So I don't know it might be like Rihanna with some Arabic dance music and stuff but I feel like those things are happening a lot more now but when I was first doing it around 2009 or 2010 you didn't hear that much that kind of mixing across like different ethnic types of music and stuff but I mean the tribalism I think for me existed the most probably when I was a teenager growing up and it was a lot about like how you looked and what you were but I feel like Instagram's really just changed that a lot because I think now when you look at people from my generation but also especially from the younger generations like Gen Z and stuff like you just see that it's more about kind of shape shifting all the time and it seems like a lot of the a lot of the fashion identities overlap so much more and you only have to look at even the big fashion brands all looking to streetwear now and all employing streetwear designers to lead their fashion houses just shows you but I think that's also a really important signal of how spending power has shifted and that also reflects on how I think like DJing and club culture and people who are going to clubs and people who are playing music has shifted too because we're living in this really interesting time now where it's like the first time ever in history where ethnic minorities have been at this level of education at this level of like wealth like it hasn't existed before and you have big companies trying to tap into that and I feel like Louis Vuitton employing Virgil Ablo if you want to be totally cynical about it probably was that because they wanted someone who would appeal to that demographic by their things but at the same time it's actually it feels quite empowering as well that when you go to for example a boiler room now or any kind of big club in London or somewhere else you do normally get a very mixed crowd and I know that people who listen to either the music I make or my DJ sets again is really mixed and I appreciate that because I'm a live artist as well and when my last album came out and I was playing shows I really noticed that there was this weird mix of like middle aged white men who were probably coming because they liked they probably thought my guitar sound reminded them of like 80s guitar music but then there were loads of young girls who looked like around my age a lot of brown and black girls all down at the front at a gig and it just felt amazing because I hadn't really experienced that before and so these are all the positives I think that are coming out now and I think it's important to just remember hearing all of these stories about passing there's like a nostalgia around it and I love listening to Charlie and Colin and everyone saying these things but when you talk about tribalism it still exists but also I feel like we're at this time now where that exists less and that's a really important thing to just be proud of a very interesting point let's talk about I'm going to get you involved don't worry but there's things I've got to cover here and one of them is we've talked about it a lot but I just want to kind of get into it a little bit which is about technology Harold when you started DJing I'm imagining that you played vinyl because that was the option did you switch from vinyl to digital at some point? I did eventually I was quite a late switcher I really loved my vinyl you kind of develop quite an attachment to them I was assuming you like your vinyl too you love your vinyl it's quite an impractical format it's very unreliable but I was quite a late switcher and then when I did I'd never look back I loved digital DJing I think it enables a DJ to work better to do a better job of it really and so you left the vinyls behind? I left the vinyl behind I still got an enormous vinyl connection I can't get rid of it I love it too much I've seen the storage I won't play it Did you then go and get the digital versions of everything you had on record? I replaced quite a lot but also that was during a period where there was an increasing deluge of music anyway so there's just so much and how many times have you changed the way in which you digitally DJ just the once because I had a huge collection of CDs and then eventually I switched to USB to USB so you carry a USB around and on the USB is what? an mp3 or is it a bigger file than an mp3? usually WAV files which you purchase from somewhere of course Lynna you're nodding your head CDs as well if you go out to play a gig what do you bring with you do you bring vinyl? I do especially in the UK I've laid their space for that there are always CDJs USB, situation and also decks and so that's helpful and you say in the UK is it unusual I've noticed that there are clubs out there which don't have vinyl decks are you saying in other places they've just given up on decks entirely? Yes for sure but also I feel like with this switch in the format I've dealt with a serious kind of depression about the amount of music that is available to me now that matters for me that I could actually sit with the music and listen and create themes and different shows and really continue to pursue this intimate relationship with the music that I think technology threatens just the kind of mass production of the music Netflix movie scenario how many songs can you carry on a USB we're talking about thousands of songs so I want that relationship so radio for me and with that I use Serato because it's really just about There was a weird transitional moment when people were playing digital music but they were using these kind of black plastic things that looked like records so they could manipulate them right Have you guys all used that? I know of the system but I didn't actually When did you make the switch? Did you make the full switch or are you still somewhere in between? No no I made a total switch years ago when I was working at KS in the mid 90s they had the early variations of the CDJs there so I've had access to digital since the mid 90s and I think it's probably about 10 or 15 years ago I made a total switch and I've got tens of thousands of vinyl but I was saying to my girlfriend the other day that I probably haven't played a record for the last 5 years like put the stylus on a record but I've got a house full of records and for me it's a real convenience thing as well if I think of a record and a track and I want to play it I can go wading through hundreds of vinyl or I can just call it up and that convenience is really good for me It's not bad for the back either Occasionally when I do pick up records I remember how heavy they are It's crazy talk so glad I don't know I had this experience I bumped into a friend of mine Julius, Judge Jules he was on his way to Ibiza to play like a four day residency he was literally just and he was like oh yeah here's my set and it was like on this thing here and it was just a nightmare you're playing a vinyl only set tomorrow is it? Is that something that you do almost as a kind of throwback or why vinyl? I just like I played on all of the formats over the years and I was a Serato beta tester so I was on the first people to ever DJ with a digital format in the club and I did an American tour where the club owners were freaking out like wear your records I don't understand like unplugging the mixer like what are you doing that was like a baptism of fire I just like playing records and you know for me I feel like it's a craft that needs to be maintained in a way that's open to people so I'm not one of these old dudes who's like oh I only play vinyl and if you're not playing vinyl you're not really a DJ I'm like that's just people middle class dudes who've got too much money and rotary mixers sitting at home who don't really like their misses and they don't like their kids so basically I've been sitting in the main I spend a lot of time on forums so they spend a lot of time complaining about every other form of DJing other than what they do Don't call it vinyls in that forum by the way For me I don't have time for that because if you're a DJ it's about sharing music with people and introducing people to music and letting people know what the titles are because there's always going to be records that's why some of the rarest records I play people ask me what they are I'm always going to find something to top that but I myself personally I like playing vinyl I like it fits in with my yoga practice and running practice because it keeps me honest so I don't run because I like running I run because I want to be strong enough to carry my record box across way out here because you know I'm not a superstar DJ so I don't get the trolley I take Garcia, don't I mean You had the trolley? Yeah he gets the trolley man but I just like it and what I find because with a lot of my audiences is you get kids who come up and they're really excited by the fact that I'm playing records and they're facetiming their mates telling them he's playing the record he played the Ron Hardy record again oh my god and they just kind of like that and I like you know I think as you get older as a DJ you have to start changing your relationship to it and stop trying to pretend that you're 20 because you're not 20 so you don't need to be doing thousands of gigs a year you need to be in the right gigs and I'm like when I come up to the thing and there are DJs in USB so there's four DJs on this build who are playing USB I'll be the DJ that plays vinyl I can play USB, I can play CDJ I can play Serato but let me be the one that plays vinyl so that at least the crowd who come can see the relation between the craft and how it's progressed in the different ways Does it change the kind of decision making like one of the things about being a vinyl only and I'm a very very small time much smaller than Harold, DJ things and funerals pretty much, bum is coming up 60 year old birthday parties of friends and I don't know how to do the digital and I'm a bit short-sighted and I can't really do the fiddly bit but one of the things that happens when you're preparing to go and play is you spend some time thinking about what am I going to put in the box and that really is a kind of important moment because you've limited your choices and the thing that kind of slightly scares me about the digital is that your choices haven't been sufficiently limited to the club so you could play virtually anything so you have to make a lot of decisions You just have to put less tunes on your USB But is that, I bring out 200 because of that exact problem I don't want to have 2,000 pixels Is that right? Presumably there is a way to grab it off digitally off the internet Presumably there are some people who are playing the equivalent of Spotify you can play from the cloud where you could play virtually literally anything in the world but it does choose what you've got Do you find that? For me personally the way I sort my records is really no different to how I would sort my digital records before a set you'd go through what you have and make a selection and like Harold says I don't go out with like 500 records to play a 2 hour set because you're going to spend all your time just going through them Second guessing yourself I would limit it down to maybe a hundred So on this subject Now obviously I'm going to assume here then if I'm wrong you can tell me you would never program a set from beginning to end and stick to that would you? At the start So you've got your 5 records, your 10 records First start DJing When I first started DJing I would plan my set and practice it loads because I just wanted to make sure I was getting it right and I wanted to play and I used to do that so much but now I never do that but I think also it's because the more you DJ the more you know you can plan your set but then actually the funnest moments where you don't plan it and then you suddenly come up with a really good mix and you're like oh that works so well and you'll remember it for next time so it just depends but obviously if you're taking out vinyl then you need to plan it a bit because you have to choose what records you want to take But then this raises the other issue The DJ job and this is separate perhaps from the DJ as radio DJ because in some sense you're on your own although you would hope there's someone listening but the club DJ you're not on your own you can't be on your own, you are in a relationship and that word has come up in your book and you've talked about it as well with the people on your floor and things can change if you've pre-decided what all you're going to do things it doesn't take account of the fact that there are human beings in front of you How do you manage that when you're playing what kind of relationship do you build with an audience do you look at the audience do you vibes with them in some way or how do you know if they're enjoying it short of them walking off I'm not saying they would that's an indication No, I think I rarely play out because I do feel like my relationship with the dance floor changed with something that I witnessed in New York was DJs playing songs for a shorter amount of time so that it becomes almost like a medley and I'm like can we hear the chorus it's just like an expectation that we're moving through the music and creating a medley of familiar songs I think the break from that is playing for folks in in house music spaces where there's a different level of patience for a longer song and so that's where I prefer to spend if I spin out I'm playing house, I'm playing techno because I feel like there's a range, they're not techno as much but actually I'm playing disco funk soul house and kind of having different conversations yeah through that call and response situation but I think that the pace of the dance floor has changed depending on where you are because of how much access we have to the music and how much music we have so what do you guys think about the pace yeah I mean I think when you play a lot with people who are playing on digital they race through tunes, particularly people who use record box because they've already everything's key you know key mat BPM develop and that's cool it's kind of exciting to watch it's not something that I necessarily like doing as a DJ myself and again this is what I always say to a lot of younger DJs I'm meant to always you can change the type of DJ you are in your DJ career and there are lots of different types of DJ that you can be so you shouldn't just follow the one blueprint because everyone lends their when you get bought to go and play for an hour I'm like no I don't want to do it because I can't even get warmed up my first record is going to be 15 minutes it's like this but yeah I mean again in the 40 odd years I've been DJing not once has anyone from the floor ever come up to the DJ booth and said you should change that record because you're not playing it on vinyl or you should change that record because it's an MP3 and not a WAV or you should you know alter the music in some way because the floor doesn't care they just want to be out there we're going through hard times at the moment and people want to come out they pay their money they don't really have they want to have a good time with their friends and I'm just helping to soundtrack your memories that's a beautiful way of putting it and just give you a nice moment for you to kind of I'm going to ask one more question to you and then we're going to throw it open to the floor and I'm going to start with Colin because not to sort of pick and choose or go hierarchies or anything but Colin you've been DJing a long time and you've had it what looks like from the outside is a successful DJing career you've played all over the world you've played what kind of a job is being a DJ well the answer to this question is going to be different if you ask all five of us but for me personally when I got into it I come from a generation of DJ where it wasn't a job as such or a career it was for a lot of people in my generation it was a hobby and if you were lucky it turned into some sort of form of employment and so originally for me it wasn't a job but I found the longer that I went on doing it it became more like a job because once I well I found this once you get to a certain level to stay at that level you've got to work really hard to stay there which is why I've got a lot of respect people like Charlie and our friends here that keep doing it for years and decades even so yeah it's very much a job it's not an easy job it's a job that's got lots of different things that you have to do it's definitely not just standing there and playing records that's you know let me be sort of not blunt about it but let me put it like this I remember you telling me and I put it in my book because it touched me so much when it took off you I think worked in a bank Groove Rider worked in a bank or an accountant you were able to give that up now had you stayed in that job you would have had a mortgage on a family and the stability that goes with having that kind of thing has DJing allowed you to I'm not saying that's necessarily what you want the stability definitely not giving me the stability for me personally I can go through stages where I have too much work and then the month later I haven't got any work so that can happen so it's definitely not unless you're at a certain level consistent level it's just a lot of hard work to sustain that level and primarily because there were so many DJs out there that word DJ it's a word that's so easily banded around now and it wasn't like that when we were starting out only people that were really dedicated went out and bought the decks and the records and stayed in their bedrooms so it's like for months and months and months would call themselves a DJ when people it's just an easy title to use nowadays so DJs need to do other things as well not only is DJing more than just playing records but DJs do other things Charlie's been in a band Harold you're a writer were you always a writer while you were DJing? no DJing definitely came first but you're right it is a very strange job it's a combination of many different roles it's part shaman part children's entertainer part technician part relationship councillor to a whole room it's a bizarre relationship councillor to a whole room what a nice way of putting it into a reel so the writing you're now it appears quite a busy journalist and you've written a book was that because you wanted to supplement your income or was it because it was part of the same it was because I wanted to work in music and my DJing career had dried up my productions were selling 10 copies over a year and you spend a few days working on a production and then a year later you get 15 quid so it was just a way of staying within that music culture but doing something else I was quite good at it indeed you are one of the things about DJing is the late nights the proximity to drugs and alcohol that kind of stuff I've never drank and I've never taken drugs I'm kind of the odd one out people always like your rider it only says water but you are in environments the only drug you really need if the music's good and you're with your friends and you're having a good time what else do you need I feel like when you don't have that that's when people try to overcompensate with other things but really I don't know I've never done it so I don't know what it feels like to take a pill or something I've felt amazing from just listening to music and dancing that's a beautiful sentiment that's a beautiful sentiment let's open this up now to people who might want to ask questions or make comments or don't feel shy just let us know how you're feeling Collin Dale is on the panel I only did this because they were like they were like Collin Dale not because of me not because of Naby that was there but have you do you have your hand up or you just just drink yes we've got a question here what about women who were DJs when I was growing up and promoters and so on and they did different things like they were they worked in diversity or work in a local council they did some fixed ministry and yet there's a risk of that being lost also the role of women at home and why we have parties I grew up and I my love of music came from going to parties not just weddings but everyone was having a house party there was self-assowed systems all through school all through my life including at my home where you'd have and I didn't know how they did it you had Alex in one room dancing and then they had their own music we were in another room and it was rigged up that information and there seems to be a revival going on because I hear you and this goes back Charlie would you say to anyone about no hanging fruit because I feel that there's a lot of music lovers who even want to go out and sweat and dance and the DJs aren't meeting their needs also the fact that I know that there's alternative nights that have been set up now the people are getting frustrated with this sort of like rush through the music that lack of love you know when you were a musician you'd stop saying why are you decimating that carrot show the carrot some love and respect and I think that what is actually is happening is that people are playing that vinyl I mean I know someone called DJ you need to you can cut who again you know works so if you do that on the 8th sector DJ for years doing disco stop doing it the thing is they play their own night sessions playing vinyl and sometimes they have both bits working people were patient and they loved it and so in the night it's doing so well and so what I'm saying is that and I think you know all of you do it particularly on Charlie and David Simon put the wire and everything else stop treating your consumer like they're stupid and especially in Britain you know because like you're saying about it's on 57 now and the love of music the type of music that we grew up with the eclecticism and that diversity so sorry so that's a statement over you a comment, question, statement I do think that you know and the fact that you all left it also are living legends what do you think needs to happen so we actually don't have a bit of non-plust people around where we're stating what we know and the way it must have been lived with us thank you that's a lovely question I don't know if he wants to take that it feels like it feels like part of your project is addressing precisely what we've just heard there yeah I mean because I guess in conversation with the question you asked about what the work is for me the work began with digging through or chasing samples right so chasing samples which led to digging through the crates and then kind of having this intergenerational conversation realizing how public enemy was sampling James Brown and just kind of thinking about again the social conditions under which the music was created studying album covers reading liner notes organizing I've developed a methodology a way of kind of understanding and for me the focus has been black music globally and sharing that information for me through the syllabus and kind of partnering with cultural institutions and academic institutions and bringing what I'm calling DJ scholarship into academia and having students think about erasure the erasure of black women in the conversation about the emergence of house and techno and how we can have full conversations about house and techno and really not think about the role that women play in developing it and especially when you think about techno in Detroit and the ways in which women's voices were removed from the sort of sonic signature of techno and so I think chasing those stories but for me the work is recuperative it really is about archival is trying to kind of be in conversation with the ghost who occupy both the dance floor and the speakers and try to name them and then try to teach those names to young people I think there needs to be more intergenerational conversations more spaces that welcome an intergenerational dance floor and we learned that from reggae because that's what the reggae dance floor that was a cross-generational and there's such a good reggae night that's really intergenerational I played that a few weeks ago at Wolfram Stowe trade hall I don't know if anyone knows it and it's called General Echo and it was one of the most fun experiences because it's in this really time-walked hall like an old working men's club and the crowd was super mixed and it had all these old school people that were like rude boys and like the old generations who were there there was one woman on a walking stick on the dance floor which I've never seen before loving all the tunes but then also loads of young people and it was just the best feeling so it does exist, I think you just have to maybe search out harder One thing that you were touching on which is something which has popped up recently via a, someone tweeted it I think, tweeted a purported fact which was that there are two night clubs closing every minute in the UK, is this something Harold that we should be worried about is it something that concerns you I mean absolutely clearly night clubs are in a terrible fix at the moment I think that because of the reputation of dance music as being something close to crime and drugs we don't get the support for our culture that we should get the opera, the story in the news this week You're all there up in arms about cutting the ear no funding aren't they exactly do you know what I mean so yes is the short answer Well my thing is I was saying this to my son recently and I was like look son I was saying to him look we've got to understand going to fabric is the equivalent of me going to a hippodrome back in the day there's nothing cutting edge about going to these super clubs and so I think what's happened is we've been kind of brainwashed in a way because a lot of people from our generation were not writers we were curators so the stories are not documented thoroughly and they're very one sided documentation so at a moment you have this thing where it's kind of people really like whatever resident advisor, whatever mix mag whatever DJ magazine whatever they're saying that is the bible and actually what they're really reporting there's a lot of stuff that's really super mainstream so I think there's a kind of like responsibility because no one's forcing you to go to these places but it requires you to just in some ways kind of take your research back to the old school days where it's like oh they're telling me I should go to this you know what I'm going to go to this because this is a bit more interesting no I mean one try is not to be nostalgic but the club culture I think that I grew up on that you grew up on was a club culture where those mainstream clubs you didn't want to go anyway there was a race quota the sounds weren't good the music wasn't good but what there was was a lot of empty space that could be changed the warehouse party thing now the problem is the privatisation of space has happened to such a degree that it's very, very hard to find that on the one hand, on the other hand is there still spaces around? and actually it's not even necessarily about the actual physical night clubs closing down so this means that there's no more night life because it's really easy to fall into that hole but things have been closing down forever gentrification has been happening forever we're in London but what is the thing that makes London London what attracts people to this city what keeps people here is the energy and the creativity of the people which doesn't matter what's happening in terms of buildings closing down you can never stop that you can never stop the drive the urge to have a party to create a dance floor to create a space to listen to music again that's always going to happen so people forget that DIY is an option because when I first started DJing and performing all the parties with friends when you're just starting out and no one knows who you are obviously a bigger club is not going to be like here you go Saturday night they're not going to do that but like I said we started off by doing parties in Lawn Drex and I put on a big party inside an old library by Leicester Square and we put a big function 1 system in there and just applied for a late licence and that one I did it all myself but it was rammed and it was so fun so if you're an intermediate internet age you forget like actually real life things you've got to do it yourself you've got to make it happen and it's that spiritual never die never die we've got a question here yes please so thank you six days ago the MOBA Awards the Music of Black Origin Awards announced electronic and dance music as a new category wow music is black music absolutely I think that's the point I just want to take in because I think people forget that this music genre was born out of a form of resistance to sexual and racial terrorism that was taking place so my thought slash question is around maybe the distribution of labour and maybe some of the ownership structures because when I look at when I go to Rave I've been raving since I was about 15 when I go to South London the music, everything you're saying these things that resonate with me it's not just something cool to do it's really art culture it's a language if you want to understand black people listen to our music listen to the hip hop, listen to the reggae listen to the soul, listen to the house it has a purpose so for me, I want to know what is ownership ownership and I've been able to curate these spaces because it seems now if I go to a festival, if I go to a rave this music is being played but all of the DJs are young, white, middle aged young guys and it's like where are the black DJs why are they not being played? I mean it's always been that way and that's something that people have to understand this isn't a new thing it's been that way I had a really amazing conversation with Norman J and he was telling me what it was like when he first started DJing and why he set up good times and started doing things himself I think there's always this hope that you think the landscape is going to change but ultimately at the end of the day one of the things I encounter is a lot of the times the people who are now the bookers for festivals owners of clubs promotion AGs they're young themselves they haven't been part of the community and they're in a very different way in the way that we've accessed the music so a lot of times they don't know who any of these people are and they don't understand why and as an older person when you're like oh man, if you're into techno you need to go Google Colin Dale they're like alright cool wicked great I'm going to go to YouTube and it's going to be like 10,000 things are going to come up so it's where do I start and again this is this thing that I say we don't have the spaces where you can actually educate people, pass on knowledge because there's almost this idea amongst music at the moment like if you don't know because the internet exists if you don't know about something to its utmost degree then you're not doing it the right way and actually I think it's just a thing of like if you're growing up with the internet then you don't really necessarily know about research because it's kind of a bit, you know it's the first five so you put the first five techno in my man's name's not coming up you know what I mean? my name's not coming up but my thing is this is how it's always been you can spend five days getting vexed about it or you can just be like you know what, I'm going to do my own thing and if DJ Mag or all these other people are not talking about it, cool wicked because that means I'm doing something proper and underground one thing that has happened or is happening is that there is a generation of black music makers who are starting to be interviewed to write, to teach more, do you think more than has been the case up to now I mean in terms of finding some spaces within the white institutional structures to sort of speak their minds and I mean so this is deeply personal for me thinking about house music and techno in particular in the south side of Chicago in Detroit and south central L.A. in Compton and also in Johannesburg and thinking about again the conditions that black people are facing while creating the music and so in terms of the political economy of black music that's existed for centuries I just have questions about whether or not you love black music and hate the conditions under which it's made right? that you are maybe thinking differently about if you are white the gigs that you agree to play and maybe like using your platform to talk about this very important question about exploitation or the fact that next door to Detroit Flint, Michigan didn't have clean water but the EDM right cloud of influence is a multi-billion dollar like force so I'm trying to figure out how to have this conversation and push us away from like thinking that's why I'm just like what does this mean for our sort of material existence so I don't even just want to see black DJs I'm looking at every year Forbes magazine does a top 15 richest DJs oh goodness my friend Jules is on it but if I was maybe number one but what are some of those numbers and who like what? no they were all white guys like 50 million a year they were all middle class Steve Aoki was on it Calvin Harris of course yeah so I guess there are so many things to be said here one of them is the operating the idea of the underground in some kind of way recognising that there was always a mainstream which carried the weight of the white supremacist, sexist violent drunken culture that we kind of grew up in and black music came to us via an underground it was the current of pirate radio it was the circuits of independent record stores it was carried in memory and knowledge and it was shared almost as a kind of secret knowledge linked with what Nabiha said about DIY expecting that all of the formal space I'm saying DIY as a way of reacting to that like if you haven't been in space but that doesn't mean that I think we should be stuck in DIY because we can't get into the mainstream and access but the point is that all these people whether it's like the Forbes 15 richest DJs or people who run labels like Island why would they want to give up their position of course they don't they're the gatekeepers, they're the richest and why would they be like no what it's 2022 it's time for the black and brown people to take over of course they're not going to be like that because no one would but all of these things need to change and it's just about how to change it so that point that you were making about the industry like what's the make up of the industry and the truth is that when you look at when people have conversations about we need more diversity and music they'll be thinking about artists and DJs and oh we need three more females on this festival line up otherwise we're going to get cancelled or whatever and it is like just for optics really because when you look on the flip side of that and actually the industry who runs the labels, who runs management who runs agencies it's all white men basically there's a question up there but before we get there I just want to ask Harold one thing we're both sitting here as white blokes involved in black music so there is an ethical orientation here describe do you agree with me about that in the sense that you have to be aware as a white person who's involved in black music how do you think it's really that as a 12, 13 year old kid getting into an electro and hip hop it wasn't an issue for me right but now very clearly it is and yeah I'm very aware of my place you know I'm a white middle class heterosexual male the world was made by men like me four men like me and I've pretty much cruised through my life in a way that others have not been able to others haven't you know I mean so yeah you have to be aware of that it's the most important thing actually the self-awareness because you can't talk you know like some people like all men are the same you can't do that because it's not true and so you have people with that level of awareness and when I think about the people that have helped me the most so far in my career it's white middle aged men honestly but it's people who have that kind of self-awareness and who see me and believe in me and I'm so grateful to that and we just need more of that I think and we just need more of people who aren't the status quo trying to get into the industry and trying to it's going to take a long time it's not an overnight thing at all but yes please at the back thank you still available presumably some way somehow I don't know go stream it you remember that from way back in the day wonderful comment okay there's one up here and then I'll come down here thank you lovely question who wants to take that I'll say just being authentic is the best thing you can do it's like you can think oh wait maybe I should play this kind of music because I haven't heard anyone play it but you need to be into it I just feel like in anything creative whether it's like a fashion designer or a musician or a DJ or an artist if you're not doing something that you don't believe in it's never going to last because people will see through it so whatever music you think you want to hear and you want to share with people that's what you've got to follow and that's the thing that will last I think one of the biggest advice I'd say to young DJs is don't become obsessed about the mix because the mixing part is such a small part of the craft and so you get a lot of DJs now who are just they're like I can't play because I can't mix I'm like I'm going to say selection beats mix skills any day of the week because I've heard a lot of boring DJs who can mix impeccably but a selection is just boring and I've heard a lot of DJs who can't mix for toffee but they're just excited they don't know what's going to come next and dancers can handle it the idea is if you do a bad mix or if it doesn't quite fit the dancers will rush off the dance floor or boo you or something as we know from the reggae dance it's like they can even wait for a bit there can be a bit of silence in there it's alright it's okay thank you for saying that anyone else want to respond to the young man up here okay let's go we've got a question here yes please I know of course he can he just doesn't choose to all the time he had to go to the house club that was the way he came to music but really I think what's changed is radio because that's how we were able to connect with the DJ if he even couldn't go to the house club and listening to them talk about the mix or talk about how they got the record that was that was how our society stayed alive in this session or in depression or in violence because you know why all they were coming off so my question is how do we I want to say recreate it that connection that you had where you had to listen I think we as the thing not just on the dance floor but listen on the radio or listen in the record shop that listening has gone that listening is a very important part we want to get the importance of DJ I guess my question to these DJs is how do you get that listening back very very interesting point yes I mean I totally agree with what you're saying but I think a big problem that we have in this whole music thing we've been spoke about when we're talking about the quick mixing of that and that is short attention span it's a big problem and I think that's a big problem you know people trying to squeeze in too much into and surely social media has got to take some blame for that digital culture how many browser windows have you got open at any one time how many things are you doing I mean radio still exists but it's just the audience has been so dispersed growing up with Kiss FM everybody in London was listening to Kiss FM all at the same time it felt great to be honest and it's been really weird to see the shift from there being four or five pirate stations that are very small access to black music to what we have now where literally anyone can go and start a radio station and get through friends together if they want so there's a massive shift on that front I mean my thing is always like I like nostalgia but I don't let it run my life so my thing is as a DJ if I think back to the DJs who first influenced me Cool Herk, Red Alert Froggy, Hip Hop DJs once they discovered that moment that this break in this record is going to hold the attention of the dance floor and then that became a thing so if I go out and rave with the 20-year-olds and it's like chorus half of the first verse into the next record I'm actually okay with it because in that moment that's what feels right and when I look around the room and there's 200-300 people and they're loving it this is kind of cool as a DJ let me go home and spend a week practicing to mix in this way so at least I had that skew on the left of my belt before I dismiss it because I think there's a lot of like I'm 52 basically as soon as this happens that they can't do or is a bit alien to what they've grown up with then suddenly it's like they dismiss it and this is what I think is causing the cavern and division amongst the DJs where basically it's like my son is just getting into DJing is he buying records, no is he about to inherit 20,000 records yes, is he happy about that not necessarily so because he sees that as every time we move house it's a big short they take up an incredible amount of room when I go out with my dad on the weekends I just want to spend time with my dad but he's got to stop and talk about a record that he made 30 years ago it's very different for him so when I see him and he's in the mix and he's playing whatever crazy stuff he's playing and the mix is flowing I'm like this is really interesting because if I was your age if I was 15 I'd probably be doing it that way too and so that is one of the things that I think has also got to change and the negativity is a repetition of what the old codgers would have thought of hip-hop in fact what they did think about hip-hop what are you doing in my record why are you scratching it, why are you maxing it my band was called Attica Blues because I went into SoulJazz when they were in Canada because I was basically I had Puma's Fat Laces and Big Baggy Trousers and they said to me you can't afford the record that you've asked about and that's why my band is called Attica Blues lovely story so there's always been a reaction and everything has always been about rebellion finding your voice you know what I mean and that matches the music though I think we've talked about that that has got that edge thank you, yes I think one of the things that's hard now is you've got people who run clubs and put parties on who don't actually like music and they have the power so a lot of times we've probably all had this where you go and you know you've absolutely killed it but when you read about the set afterwards or you talk to most afterwards they're kind of being a bit like that you didn't know you didn't know you didn't know you didn't know you're kind of being a bit like that you didn't really bring the rockers so I think that's because of that what happens is people don't want to take risks because actually there are so many DJs there's not enough bookings, there's not enough good clubs so a lot of people go in and just like I just want to get re-booked for next week I just want to get re-booked so I'll play whatever I need to play in order to get the Instagram moment which ensures that the wider world thinks that I'm a better DJ than I actually am and that is really if you look about the clips it's all about the drop and as I always say to people it's easy to get a crowd to go wild when you're playing music with sub bass on a digital system that's been designed for it it's much harder when you're playing you might bring out one of your obscure Peruvian just go record and stuff but what I mean is which was made before sub bass existed below 60Hz but I think a lot of DJs what happens is you get nervous, you don't want to play it because you'll be like oh what if no one's playing well that's a really interesting point isn't it and you always forget that actually there is a way in which you can reset by just turning everything off and when you start it up again you're no longer competing with my method of DJing by the way you'll be hearing me later I'll just stop the record and then put another one on but this does relate to this kind of role it relates to this idea of your role as a DJ which is to get people dancing let's say and people to have fun but it's more than that you've got a responsibility to the music certainly but I also just to combine these questions listening does matter to the art form and I think the critique of the pace is connected to a distance in the listening because I do think or it can be I should say I am someone who can just oh you just want me to like cut and like drop before the chorus I can do that but I'm also interested in listening and taking a risk and kind of developing a sonic signature which I feel like I learn that from selectors and like thinking through what it means to have this rapport with the dance floor and for them to expect a sound coming from you and not necessarily an artist where it becomes and for corporate music companies so I do think listening matters and then in terms of my work what was your question sorry no it wasn't a question it was a comment it was just about the responsibility that you have to one of the things in the quote that we used to promote this thing it was about the DJ being a knowledge expert really someone who carries the knowledge and therefore like a university lecturer or a parent or anyone whose job is trying to pass things on presentation performance trust between the DJ and the dance floor but the idea of what the DJ is doing off the dance floor matters as well right digging through the crates and presenting and it's not always fun digging the crates is it I mean it's dusty digging the how do you dig digital crates what's that all about you're just scrolling through stuff right it's not always fun but it can be quite thrilling getting into the figure going through that moldy stuff there let me just see we've got one here we've got one here sorry I can't see very well oh I'm so sorry we've got the space now we can have a bit of a moment and then we can listen that's interesting that's an interesting point that's an interesting point what do we think festivals have smashed the thing up I know what you mean I love Corsica Studios but the crowd does always seem same but I'm so glad it still exists it just depends for me this is something I really think about and also a lot of these themes like sharing music helping other people who I think have really good music taste or really good music so I put on my own series of events called Glory to Sound and I started it in 2018 and some of them are talks some of them are live music events then we also do loads of different club nights and at those ones we have a super diverse crowd every single time I don't know whether it's because in this kind of piecemeal way I've built up a bit of a following and all of these people they come to those nights and it's so mixed and when I do one of those events normally I'll be hosting or I'll play a bit but it's really for other people to play at it just feels good and it is mixed so maybe these things do exist but they're a bit more niche and perhaps on a smaller scale because the club that I do those nights in it's only 150 capacity but I'm so grateful for it because it's always a beautiful crowd but maybe you need to come we've got time for I will allow you to make a final comment but we've got time for one more question just up here I was somatically sponsored to sound in vibration which now I'm interested in particularly because we spoke about histories and comfort of extraction and how even when you speak about music the same black music rather than music made by black people but it's extracted and made global without the connection of black people from that culture so I'm interested to hear about the ancestral here how do you listen to these estimates from this timeline to create the narrative of what is your practice so the question is what is your narrative what is it that you're saying as a story type of human music that you put on the ancestral here on the ground and on the celestial plane alright now what we're going to do I'm going to hear from everyone on this everyone's going to have something to say on this I think that's a deep question you've brought us to celestial plane we've got ancestral and we're going to go with whoever wants to start yeah let's start with the name we're going to start with the name come on Capricorn oh thanks horns on how do you listen ancestrally and what's the time like that first of all brilliant question brilliant yeah that ancestral listening takes me to different places and it's important because I'm hearing folks talk about how much they love and have been shaped by black American music we have not had the same experience right where we have not had the same access to black British music we have not had the same access to Caribbean we've not had the same access so when I started listening to jungle when I started listening to South African jazz when I started listening to music from Zimbabwe I started hearing myself different echoes of myself so the listening my ancestral listening is like an echo chamber of connection between me and black folks globally the stories that I'm telling which is really interesting ends up being sort of close listening to the voices of women which is something that's sort of removed from the dance floor like just the voices of women so I listen to women across the diaspora and I'm just curious about you know what it means to listen to African women musicians how rarely we hear them certainly how I pretty much never heard them in the States how I rarely heard Jamaican women how I rarely heard South African women so my listening is connected to wanting to know how women right have articulated song and dance beautiful thank you Harold I can't really follow that to me well you can no I know what you mean but I mean how does that land with you that question and how do you can we ask the question again please well it's about ancestral listening it's about how you put it together in a story that you're then passing on how do you relate that you know it's part of you're part of the story as well maybe you think about ancestry slightly differently than the name might hear I've got to say again as a white middle class man it's not you know these issues that I haven't perhaps engaged with perhaps as much as the other people on this panel I feel like almost like an intruder on a line of history kind of thing not quite an intruder because I love it as much as anyone but also it's not my history but also it kind of is part of my history because I've been in this thing it's made you surely it's gone into making you who you are or being part of something that you say it's a tricky question I guess I feel like an interloper in someone else's history that I also secretly think is a little bit my history but I know it isn't right but your history is your history it's complex I mean just like of course it's a subset of a much larger complex relationship that white people have to have with white supremacy and the privilege that we've accrued through it so thank you I think that's a really honest and beautiful response Colin fantastic question by the way fantastic very deep question I took it a lot of thought and I mean I don't consciously I'll be totally honest I don't think I've ever listened to music with a cosier of it being connected with any past ancestral I'll be totally honest I mean I know there's a backbone of in my music that is connected to the roots but I've never I think what's happening with me it's probably on a subconscious level that this is happening because you know whether it be soul funk you know techno industrial or whatever I think it's for me personally it's got some sort of backbone that runs through the whole stream of all the different musics that I've listened to from reggae right through to techno there's something aligned that I connect the whole lot through and yeah very tribal for me it's that I mean it's the wonderful word somatic as well you know this idea of which connects right to a sort of vibration that's most definitely so um it's been a subconscious thing for me but it does run through everything I do I think we hear it we hear it Colin just a quick interruption just because someone from the audience mentioned that it's the drum yeah yeah simple yeah from this go through to house and techno it's that it's the pulse that rhythm it tribal thing you know lovely how does that land with you that question well when you think about music like in terms of what's the ancestral links like for me when I think about music I think about it as one whole thing like all music comes from one place it's been there since the start of humans right and I think like there's something really deep just in acknowledging that fact like music's existed for as long as people have existed and so it's like one of the oldest things we have and so I can think for me like when you ask that question I was thinking okay what are the like most there's three experiences that I've had which I'll always remember is like my deepest musical experiences one of them actually not connected to a drum but it was one was in Japan in Kyoto where I was in this in these like temple grounds of this temple that was not like touristy or anything and then suddenly I heard this Shakahachi music Shakahachi's like a Japanese bamboo flute coming out of a hut and I had to stop and it made me start crying because the music was one of the most beautiful things that I'd ever heard and it was raining and there was no one around and I couldn't even see who was playing the instrument I could just hear it and I wasn't supposed to be there I was just like stumbled across it and it just like I don't know it hit something so deep inside me and then the other time that happened to me was on a beach in Sierra Leone at night listening to boo boo music which is again like these bamboo instruments and it's a group of musicians and they all have like a different sized bamboo pipe they can only play one note and it's all polyphonic and interlocking rhythms and they all like go around in a circle while they play and there's drums and you know I was there just as a visitor again but like the feeling that I felt in those two instances made me realise like there's something that you can feel from music even when you're like an outsider because maybe you're not an outsider because it's all linked to the same thing and the third which was most recent and probably the most literal ancestral link was earlier this year in Pakistan in Lahore I went to Damal which I mean there was hardly I mean yeah it was a pretty pretty crazy experience is that this Sufi shrine and it's this thing that happens like every Thursday night these people mostly men turn up but not all men actually I mean I posted something on Instagram and it was like how did it feel to be a woman in that space I was like you have to go straight to that question and it's not even about that because there were other women but anyway that's a separate thing but anyway so imagine like really hot night people they drink this thing called pung which is like a mixture it's like a weed smoothie that's the best way to describe it and it gets you super high and the whole you know that sect of Sufism they believe the closest way to get an energy or God is through music and dance and singing and a bit of weed but they had these drums and it was so loud and there's all these drums playing these tall drums and just like the most intricate loud rhythms and like the people they dance until they get into a trance the way that you see those men moving is just they were in touch with something that maybe none of us will ever be in touch with in this lifetime but I also felt something at that time and it made me even think of like just being at that Abishanti sound system at Carnival you know when the bass drum gets inside your body and I had that same feeling in Lahore so for me it's about like all these experiences but all aligning in some way or other and the most important thing is to just listen to music with an open mind and that's maybe the way you can get in touch with the ancestral energy Charlie top that we had Sierra Leone Lahore, Japan where you going? Battersea? I am going to I am a black African dude from south London who has been fortunate enough to somehow navigate a DJ career where many others have failed so when I I mean I mean I mean serious you know because a lot of us who have never even got a chance to start because our parents were like there's no way there's going to happen for you so when I step up to set a turntable I don't really consider myself to be a DJ I consider myself to be someone who's sharing 50 years of black British club music with my audience I'm hoping to make an impression I'm hoping that they at some point have a deep listening moment where they realise the connections between the titles of the tracks and the journey that we've gone on and they might realise that the funky house tune has the same rhythmical pattern as the high life record that I played half an hour earlier for me it's always been about rebellion and it's always about saying to people we're here and we matter and we're important and we're not going away anytime soon regardless of what barriers are placed up in front of us we shout overcome at all times and it's about giving people a history lesson you know and being unafraid and what I've really loved about this conversation is the word black music has been mentioned without embarrassment because a lot of rooms you go into and there's kind of people who dance around and I've been someone who's been you know gone from are you're the kid that listens to black music we don't really want to know about you oh now you listen to urban music are you actually quite interesting we don't want to listen to you because urban music is quite violent and so on and so forth and so I just think for me it's like some people have the luxury of being able to play the music dig for the music, buy the music, share the music on their shoulders I'm happy to carry that on my shoulders and I think it's important that there are people like myself and the people on this panel who are out there who actually are just kind of trying to do this DJ thing and this music thing on a slightly deeper level because you don't have to do it this way this is a difficult way there's a much easier way you can do it this is much more financially rewarding I'm still sitting with that question because there's something that I feel like I hope we get at when we go home and reflect because certainly and let me just speak for black American music the line between black American music and black American suffering is very thin so how are you listening ancestrally based on where you are in that line and on that line really really matters especially the somatic response if you are listening to black folks describe what it means to live in a context of experiencing premature death what it means of experiencing like what does it mean to listen let alone profit from but what does it mean to listen to the suffering do you hate that suffering do you hate the suffering like you love the music and that's a necessary that was a very beautiful way to finish and I should have given you the last word but I'm not I'll give you the last word I'm going to take the last word on this bit and just say that you're reminding me of my experience on a dance floor with my teachers Norman Jay playing Esther Phillips home is where the hatred is and the fact that it's a dance tune I prefer her version to Gill's version because hers is a better dance tune but while you're dancing they take you through the experience of being a drug addict someone who's hated someone who's reviled and you can do both things at the same time in a way way and in fact it brings your body into the process of processing that and it is someone else's experience not your own but you know although you recognise the humanity of the suffering and you can orientate yourself to the humanity of that suffering while you are dancing and loving the music and I agree that I think that's a vital pairing listen it's not over right this is just the first set next set which is a shorter one is going to be just outside there there's a little lobby there probably isn't enough snacks for everyone to even have any snacks but that's where we will be there's enough for everyone to have a grape and if you're smart you can grab a hold of this panel and get them chatting and talking and extending and talking because I know you want to talk to them more and then we're going to go into the students union and then there's going to be more talking but there's going to be loud music, there's going to be dancing Tim here is going to be playing and I hope you join us and come and just celebrate and talk and I want you to help me thank this amazing group of people Charlie and Abihab Collins thank you everyone for coming and I'll see you in the lobby