SMELLIN’ SALTS / ARAF COLLECTIVE LONDON No. 10 / FEBRUARY 2014 / FREE
ARAF Collective London is a not-for-profit cultural organisation which attempts to generate awareness, publicity and solidarity for artists, musicians and writers who require a public platform. We actively opt out of any commercial interests: the interests of ARAF are social and reactionary; a creative site of resistance against ‘arts cuts’ culture. Established in 2012, we have built a network of creative individuals who have performed, written or exhibited with us and we want to add YOU to the collective. ARAF is Welsh for ‘Slow’ and to be slow in an age of fast profit is political. We are the luddites of the culture industry.
THIS MONTH: ARAF COLLECTIVE PRESENT: GIG NO. NINE:
CANTER-CULTURE IV @ THE HORSE & STABLES, WATERLOO featuring: LITTLE LIAR / HATTIE WHITEHEAD / THE DALLAS GUILD TRUE COLLECTIVES DJ SET FOR YOUR LISTENING PLEASURE!
FREE ENTRY!
And THIS, THE TENTH EDITION of our free zine, SMELLIN’ SALTS ON THE THEME of
“ THE CONSUMER”
THE BANDS, ART, OPINIONS, and more FOR PERUSAL AT YOUR LEISURE!
Cover: ‘A SPAM MARRIAGE’ by HAZEL A.
ARAF IS THE FUTURE :
CANTER CULTURE V @ HORSE & STABLES, WATERLOO LIVE MUSIC FROM : DR. PEABODY, ZIEGLER Co. & KING OF HEARTS
FRIDAY APRIL 11th:
FRIDAY MAY 23rd: CANTER CULTURE VI @ HORSE & STABLES, WATERLOO LIVE MUSIC FROM : LYRICAL CEASAR, ID PROJECT more TBC! AS ALWAYS FREE ENTRY! ARAF COLLECTIVE LONDON THANKS PROFUSELY:
THANKS AS EVER to JOSH MARIOTT THE SULTAN OF SUPERIOUR SOUNDS; ARAF Artists of the month: True Collectives, The Dallas Guild, Hattie Whitehead, Little Liar Thanks to Dean and Steve @ THE HORSE & STABLES, Waterloo. Thanks to Cerilan Rogers & The contributors to this issue of SMELLIN’ SALTS.
Thanks to the SOUTH LONDON GALLERY & Peckham’s REVIEW Bookshop for stocking our Free zine & helping us to spread the word! ... AND SUGARLUMPS to YOU, our Salt Sniffers, Show Jumpers & Stable Hands!
SUBMISSIONS WELCOME for APRIL ZINE EDITION please send to: follow us:
@ARAFCollective
arafcollective@live.co.uk
check us out : WWW.ARAFCOLLECTIVELONDON.COM
AND NOW, THE NEWS JANUARY:
CANTER-CULTURE III
ARAFFLE
ARAF celebrated its first birthday at last month’s Canter Culture with party hats and the largest crowd ever to attend one of our events. The Horse was packed to the rafters with Londoners keen to experience the most exciting new music to be heard this side of Westminster and we did not disappoint:
With perhaps one of our greatest pieces of ARAF-based word play, last month’s gig marked the introduction of the ARAFFLE - an exciting game of chance very much like the National Lottery without the technological ball-choosing apparatus and the multi-million pound jackpot. We decided to introduce a raffle as a means of generating funds which could be fed back to the bands to cover the travel costs for getting to our event. We regularly encounter fantastic bands that cannot afford to play ARAF gigs and, as such, felt that if we could generate some money ourselves it could be put towards travel expenses. Last month’s Arrafle prizes included a £15 bar tab, a customised jewellery set and various Araf Artist Albums and it raised enough cash to pay a substantial part of each act’s travel expenses. We will be running the Araffle again at February’s Counter Culture and hope to beat our previous record. Remember folks, pointz meanz prizes.
Atmospheric four-piece The Rope and The Colt brought the spirit of the Wild West to Waterloo with their unique brand of Western-Inspired Indie-Folk. With an electric cello and haunting ho-down melodies, The Rope And The Colt offered ARAF gunslingers an unforgettable musical adventure – be sure to catch these guys when they next ride into our Saloon. Jungle Brown, a hip-hop collective formed through ARAF, exploded onto the stage in a whirl of lyrics and beats that left the whole room jumping. With special guests Cease Mc and Lyrical Caesar, this dynamic set burned bright in the forests of the night and we look forward to bringing Jungle back to Waterloo. Stepping the other side of the wax, Araf favourites True Collectives offered a special birthday performance at Canter Culture with their live music project. With brass, keys, vocalists and lyricists and more, Araf was home to one of the hottest gigs of live hip-hop/trip-hop/jazz/funk/soul cross-over in the country. To conclude, Mr Slippers ( Jive Ass Slippers ) again delighted the crowd with his discerning choice of the finest footwear in funk and disco to be cut to vinyl.
ARAF PRESENTS: LITTLE LIAR
Originating from that creative greenhouse in New Cross that is Goldsmiths, Little Liar brings the best the South East has to offer to this month’s Canter Culture. Drawing on influences as far ranging as Al Green, Ella Fitzgerald and Amy Winehouse, tonight’s performance promises a captivating smorgasbord of styles, sounds and sensibilities. Having played at The Wreck (Araf ’s old haunt), The Amersham Arms and Queen Elizabeth Hall, we welcome Little Liar to the stage at the Horse, honest….
HATTIE WHITEHEAD
The second act of the night, Hattie Whitehead and her band bring mellow, soulful indie-folk to Canter Culture. Since gracing the Araf stage in July, Hattie has been on BBC Radio, played a secret gig for Yucatan Records and performed at The Notting Hill Arts Club, The Tooting Tram and Social and The Boogaloo. Daughter of a poet and jazz musician, Hattie grew up surrounded by sound and recorded her first tracks aged three accompanied by her father on guitar. We welcome a grown-up Hattie back to Araf with open arms and open ears…
THE DALLAS GUILD Who Shot JR? Not The Dallas Guild. These barons of sound were founded far from the oil fields of Texas, namely in Scuta Salamanca’s east London bedroom and have been making a splash ever since. The band’s track “Men in White Coats” has been used in a Volkswagen TV commercial and in 2009 they were flown out to Tel Aviv to play with the mighty MGMT and LCD Soundsystem. The band were subsequently commissioned by the BBC to write the soundtrack for the 2010 World Cup coverage which used a full African choir alongside synths and drum-machines to create a cross-cultural aural adventure. With great excitement, we welcome Scuta Salamanca, Chopper and Moshik Kop and their unique blend of psychodelia and synth-drenched pop to Canter Culture. Yeeha !
TRUE COLLECTIVES (DJ Set)
Back behind the wax, let the eminent True Collectives entertain you with their choice cuts of the freshest beats. See our exclusive interview with Ben and Dom inside… !
KEYWORD : ‘CONSUMER’
This month’s keyword is ‘consumer’. We are all consumers. From the most ‘super absorbent’ nappy emblazoned with Disney characters to the most ‘tasteful, commemorative white marble’ headstone, our existence is determined by our relationship to consumption. Looking to Raymond Williams’ etymological account of the word in his 1976 book, Keywords, he notes that in ‘almost all its early English uses, consume had an unfavourable sense; it meant to destroy, to use up, to waste, to exhaust’ - such a usage is still present in ‘consumed by fire’. With the development of a more organised capitalism in the mid-18th Century, came the academic notions of ‘the producer’ and ‘the consumer’. However, it was only in the mid-20th century that the term ‘consumer’ passed from specialized use in economics to more general usage. Williams notes that ‘the modern development has been primarily American’ and that consumer, as an abstract entity removed from the practical ‘customer’, is a construction of advertising and marketing. ‘The Consumer’ is tied to the industrial ‘production of want’ or where we are told what we desire through sexy advertisements and targeted branding. As Williams concludes ‘it is appropriate in terms of the history of the word that criticism of a wasteful and throw-away society was expressed, somewhat later, by the description consumer society.Yet the predominance of the capitalist model ensured its widespread and often overwhelming extension to such fields as politics, education and health’.
ARAF INTERVIEWS...
You guys started out as DJs and producers. How have you found the process of turning this into a live experience? Do you think it has had a major effect on the way your band works?
BEN & DOM of TRUE COL
It’s been incredible and very enlightening; we’ve learned so much since we started the band! Hearing our compositions develop from a production into a song that’s giggable is really exciting too! For that we must credit our band members - they are such incredible musicians whose input we value a great deal. As producers though, we tend to hear how the song should sound like live, so in rehearsals we concentrate on reaching this. The arrangements and compositions are often changed too, so by gig night, our productions have developed into ‘live’ songs. It’s always very exciting the process of creating something new together as a band! Tell us about the Collective members. They come from a variety of musical backgrounds… Yes! We were all friends first which made the process really easy. You need to be able to have a laugh when you’re crammed in a basement for four hours! No one takes themselves too seriously either which is good, well maybe Ed!!! The dream team consists of: Joe Ryan on drums, Ed Lea on keys, Nick Wemyss on guitar, Jack Davis on trumpet and Laura Barnes and Richard Etienne on vocals. And they all have they’re own projects going on too! Check out: http://theefairohs.blogspot.co.uk/ http://www.plentywild.com/
http://mydominicastory.tumblr.com/ https://soundcloud.com/jakdav http://midnightfunkorchestra.co.uk/
What have been the biggest challenges of this transition? Organisation! You have to meticulously plan every last detail. We figured that out preparing for our EP launch. Communication is the key with this, everyone has their own commitments and you have to be really respectful of that. Again, we have such a wicked group of guys it’s been a pleasure.
LLECTIVES You’ve got a wide range of styles going on: jazz, hiphop, reggae, soul. Who are the biggest influences on True Collectives? Ben: Ha, standard answer but there really is too many to mention... we’ve both grown up listening to music, and have been DJing together since we were 14. We started playing house and hip hop at house parties, but then got heavily hooked on drum and bass (you cannot deny a bad boy Amen!). Recently though, we’ve been playing more funk, soul and reggae which is awesome fun! Dom: One of the rules that we set ourselves before we started this whole project was that we wouldn’t limit ourselves to any one genre. True Collectives’ main influence is probably Hip Hop and it’s culture but I wouldn’t say we’re a Hip Hop band at all. I suppose we just love good music - that’s our main influence!!! Ben: Living in London is an amazing place to be for music, so many varied styles - you can literally stumble on anything. I only started listening to loads of reggae recently, that’s been a huge influence on me. I love the way it sounds - all about the bass and the groove. From a production perspective it’s also interesting, so many remixes and versions of tracks some of the greatest producers come from reggae. DJing has definitely honed our tastes and where we look to for inspiration.
Dom, you lived in Senegal for 6 months learning African blues guitar, how has that influenced your playing? Senegal was amazing!The experiences of learning from a local master and gigging with his band, I will never forget! But the thing I took away most about Senegal was it’s relationship with Music. Not only is music everywhere, but it is celebrated; it seemed like everyone lives to a drum beat! Talking specifically about playing though, I was lucky enough to sitin on a rehearsal with my teacher’s band, a week before they played the main stage of the St Louis Jazz festival. Emphasis was put on feel more than anything; there was no talk of countins or bpms! It was incredibly inspiring! You guys put on one hell of a live show at ARAF in January. How did you enjoy playing at Canter Culture? Ben: Firstly, thank you guys so much for having us down. It went off! The vibe is always wicked at Canter Culture. There were some amazing guys on that evening. Props to all of you lot. Dom: Canter-Culture was a dream come true! You guys have a really good thing going on! I don’t know of another night where you can see such a variety of incredible and up-coming music, and be in such a friendly and intimate atmosphere as your night! There is a true community to ARAF, and being a part of it is so great! Thank you so much.
HANDMADE TALES:
Tap Tap Theatre inspires children through storytelling By Ed Lea In the most-watched TED Talk to date, educationist Ken Robson discusses “how schools kill creativity”. He argues that children are inherently creative, with unrestrained imaginations. During their time at school, he claims, they are educated out of this creativity, as they are taught to do things by the book to meet the grade. Since working in Primary School education myself, I have seen this happen across the board. Talented teachers are held to ransom by targets that need meeting, and time for “play” - time to experiment with ideas and concepts - becomes limited. Take my first maths session, where children aged 7 were engaged in a maths investigation, finding out if statements were true or false. Tables were being thumped in frustration as they attempted to prove each other wrong, trying sums out in competitive excitement. After encouraging this for some time, the teacher came over in a panic telling me that this “wasn’t my job. “. “ I need evidence” she said, “how am I meant to show their work if they just chat?!” Silence ensued as the children settled down to write out the investigation questions and sums. Curriculum paranoia and target meeting had reigned supreme over “play”, creativity and true engagement. Anybody working in education will tell you that the most important thing is to encourage curiosity in young people; this is the starting point for real engagement. For a week in January, Tap Tap Theatre did just this, inspiring schoolchildren with their play, Handmade Tales, showing at Dalston’s Arcola Theatre last month. Addressing the audience, the talented team of actors literally unpacked their own stories from boxes, making ideas themselves seem tangible; it was delivered in a way that invited children in the audience to go home and draw inspiration and stories from everything around them. The tales themselves were wide-ranging and allowed for some fantastic character acting: argumentative siblings conquering their fear of the dark, an evil baron punishing workers for the smallest things, a kind dragon who reminds us not to judge someone before we know them... My personal favourite was one about a grandmother who “knows every word in the dictionary”, confusing her doting granddaughter as she develops what we understand to be Alzheimer’s, and forgets the simplest of these words first. Inheriting her dictionary, the granddaughter begins to rub out words and replace them with new ones… the “cool” kids who reject her become “smelly”, “minutes” in a tough exam become “hours”. Of course, it all backfires, not least when a detention ends up lasting a little too long. In these visibly “handmade” tales, Tap Tap Theatre lead by
example, showing that a lavish set is unnecessary; maximum energy and imagination is all we need. The minimal but ingenious use of props shows how much can be done with so little, and this is an important message for young minds; the play’s ultimate aim is to encourage children to create their own stories and their own plays, and the first step is to make it seem possible. The music of the play complements the minimal feel of the play; composed by Liam Taylor West, Dave Ridley and Marietta Kirkbride, it brings everything to life, with violins and drums creating sound effects that are by turn eerie and comic. Moreover, the evident talent of the players, both in terms of virtuosity and compositional talent, makes for a brilliant score with memorable set pieces. Handmade Tales is pure, untainted inspiration which is aimed at an audience that deserve more of the same. I myself was enchanted and entertained, but I enjoyed the experience even more when I imagined it through the eyes of children. While Michael Gove continues to fashion a “rigorous” education system which relishes learning by rote, more theatre like this could be a saving grace in the more rounded education of children. As Philip Pullman put it in a Guardian article some years back: The most valuable attitude we can help children adopt I can best characterize by the word playful… it is when we fool about with the stuff the world is made of that we make the most valuable discoveries, we create the most lasting beauty, we discover the most profound truths. The youngest children can do it, and the greatest artists, the greatest scientists do it all the time. Everything else is proof reading. Let’s get TapTap Theatre touring our schools as soon as possible, they encourage this and demonstrate how to do it like true professionals. -----TapTap Theatre started among Bristol University Students. They have three very different shows doing the rounds. Handmade Tales took up residency at Edinburgh Festival last year, while their other plays, Captain Morgan and the Sands of Time and Men have been hugely popular in London and Bristol. These guys are making waves, check them out: www.taptaptheatre.com While you’re at it, follow the musical ventures of its resident composer here: www.liamtaylorwest.com Catch ‘Captain Morgan and the Sands of Time’ at the nearby Waterloo VAULT FESTIVAL on March 4th/5th. www.thevaultfestival.com
RESISTANCE THROUGH RITUALS A Stuart Hall Obituary ‘People are not seen as participators in the society but consumers of what other produce. They are asked to distinguish between washing powders but not whether they prefer schools to strip clubs.Their role is passive and they play no part in the world of decision-making … Their people are masses awaiting exploitation’ Stuart Hall & P. Whannel, The Popular Arts, 1964 This month marks the passing of one of the world’s leading thinkers in the fields of multiculturalism, youth subcultures, media studies and popular culture. It would therefore be a travesty not to pause for a moment to consider the significance of Stuart Hall in this ‘Consumer’ edition of Smellin’ Salts. Hall was born in Jamaica in 1932 and undertook his childhood studies at the local colonial school where he flourished in English and History. As a consequence of his academic ability, Hall won a scholarship to read English Literature at Oxford University where he began his studies in 1951. However at as a black immigrant studying at predominately white upper-class Oxford, Hall came to feel increasingly excluded by the other students. Although a promising academic, Hall’s often uncomfortable relationship with his fellow undergraduates forced him to seek friendship further afield; namely in the City’s poor immigrant communities. Nevertheless, he successfully completed his undergraduate studies and in 1954 began a PhD on the writing of Henry James. However, and to some extent as his result of his social alienation at University, Hall moved deeper and deeper into left-wing politics. His interest in Marxism eventually led him to abandon his doctoral studies to concentrate solely on the political concerns of the day. It was during this period that Hall with other Marxist thinkers Raymond Williams and E.P. Thompson established of the hugely influential New Left Review.
where he conducted important analyses of the media, youth subculture and racial politics. The CCCS was Britain’s first centre for studying all culture, not just High Culture, and Stuart Hall, who was to become the centre’s director, was central in the academic turn towards looking seriously at issues of race, sex and class in contemporary Britain. Following his time at Birmingham, Hall moved to the Open University and continued his investigations into British society and his quest to make it fairer and more inclusive for every citizen. Martin Bean, vice-chancellor of The Open University has stated: ‘He was a committed and influential public intellectual of the new left, who embodied the spirit of what the OU has always stood for: openness, accessibility, a champion for social justice and of the power of education to bring positive change in people’s lives.’ In the 1980s, Hall was closely associated with the journal Marxism Today where he critiqued the action of Margaret Thatcher, coined the term ‘Thatcherism’ and argued for a different financial resolution to the problems faced by Britain in the period. As a consequence of this, he was increasingly asked by those on the political left to advise on political matters around race, the media and culture. Diane Abbott, Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington has been quoted as saying that for her Hall ‘was a hero. A black man who soared above and beyond the limitations imposed by racism and one of the leading cultural theorists of his generation.’ Stuart Hall has been a force for human equality since the 1950s and his death leaves marginalised individuals with one less public voice. I urge you all to watch John Akomfrah’s fantastic eulogy,The Stuart Hall Project which, with its Miles Davis soundtrack, offers a beautifully shot account of Hall’s significance within post-war Britain.
In 1964, Hall took up a position at Richard Hoggart’s newly founded Centre for Contemporary Cultural Professor Stuart Hall 1932 - 2014 Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham
FRINGE OPERA Review: Fulham Opera’s Das Rheingold Francesca Wickers
Size matters. At least it does where Wagner is concerned. The German composer aimed big, wrote for orchestras of unprecedented size and chose mammoth sagas as subjects for his musical writing. He even coined the term Gesamtkunstwerk (‘total art work’), believing that opera has the potential to encompass all art forms in one hit. So it may come as a surprise to hear that London’s self-professed smallest opera company, Fulham Opera, has taken on Wagner’s biggest work of all: The Ring Cycle. The work is an epic, four-part musical drama, which the composer completed in 1852 after a 25-year period. The narrative of each work – Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung – circles around Gods, dwarves, giants and mortals from medieval Nordic myths, and Wagner set it to music to provoke an intense emotional response in the audience. It’s the ‘maddest and most complicated theatrical production ever undertaken by a tiny fringe opera company’, admits musical director Benjamin Woodward. I’m at St John’s Church in Fulham for the first performance of Das Rheingold: the amuse-bouche of the Cycle, which sets the scene for the three dramas to follow. Wotan, chief of the Gods, and the dwarf Alberich are up against one another in a quest to rule the world. Alberich has made a ring of gold that grants total domination, and Wotan seeks possession of it (whether the Ring Cycle inspired J.R.R. Tolkien is a subject of continued debate). The production is staged, but frugally, and in many ways typical of the fringe. Scaled down, the accompaniment comes from a single piano and the performers are in modern dress. And while it has the visual charm of a school play - some rippling blue fabric implies water, while chunky shapes covered with shiny material represent gold – this is coupled with the musical talent of an opera house.
The light falls, and into the darkness come the premonitory first notes of the prelude. The sound is no match for the 100+ players Wagner originally wrote for, but there’s an intriguing insight to be had when pared to the bone. The score is full of little musical symbols, or leitmotifs, each representing a character or emotion, and it’s satisfying to pick these out. Woodward’s playing is simultaneously authoritative and soothing, stirring our emotions but leaving the spotlight to the singers. The singing is sensational, and would have captured the audience’s imagination even if this was performed simply as a concert. The performers are deeply connected with the music, and the often sharp sounds of the German language contribute hugely to the stormy atmosphere of the score. Oliver Gibbs’ impassioned performance as the brilliantly cruel Alberich is captivating. Oliver Hunt and Antoine Salmon as Fasolt and Fafner, the giants who built Wotan’s fortress, form a powerful force, both vocally and as a comic duo. Given that all the characters in Das Rheingold are superhuman, dressing them with cowboy hats, glitzy jewellery and rainbow umbrellas is disorienting. But it does create light relief from the feeling that you ‘should’ be feeling very serious and passionate for the duration. The audience is a tough one to please. Devout disciples of Wagner get shirty at the first hint of blasphemy, yet if it’s remotely unstimulating, Wagner virgins will be put off for life.Whichever category you fall into, it’s worth seeing. Go for the music. Most companies wouldn’t dare attempt the Ring Cycle on a small scale; Fulham Opera do so with conviction. For the uninitiated, it’s a modest and encouraging environment to have your first taste. And there’s no doubt that Wagner would applaud this tiny fringe company’s sizeable ambition. Francesca Wickers is editor of FringeOpera. com, the online guide to opera in alternative venues. Fulham Opera’s second full Ring Cycle begins on February 23rd. More info at fulhamopera.com.
Illustrations in this issue by LEONORE aka. POLLY McDOODLE : check out more at: ascanaday.blogspot.com NEXT ISSUE THEME: “COMMUNICATION” DEADLINE : 17TH MARCH 2014. Send submissions to arafcollective@live.co.uk
ARAF COLLECTIVE LONDON CANTER-CULTURE V - FRIDAY 11TH APRIL @ the horse & stables, waterloo
live music from:
DR PEABODY ZIEGLER Co. KING OF HEART S TRUECOLLECTIV ES DJs