FREE
ARAF COLLECTIVE LONDON is a not-for profit organisation, with an aim to unite early career musicians, artists, writers, and performers seeking a testing ground for new projects or inspiration for new collaborations with an enthusiastic, interested, critical and creative audience. You don’t need proof of a paying fanclub to perform with us! You just need a great sound, a bad attitude,or a wild idea. We actively opt out of any commercial interests: the interests of Araf Collective are personal and reactionary; a creative site of resistance against ‘arts cuts’ culture... And before you ask...
‘ARAF’ (pronounced ‘ARAV’) is Welsh for ‘SLOW’. SO TAKE YOUR TIME AND ENJOY THIS MONTH’S EVENT: NEW VENUE RE-LAUNCH : ARAF COLLECTIVE LONDON proudly present OUR 7th EVENT: CANTER-CULTURE @ THE HORSE & STABLES featuring
BAT AND BALL / CEASE MC / RACHEL LONG THE CAULFIELD BEATS/ JIVE ASS SLIPPERS DJ FOR YOUR LISTENING PLEASURE!
And THIS, the LUCKY SEVENTH Edition of Free Zine... SMELLIN’ SALTS featuring
THE BANDS, ART, OPINIONS, REVIEWS and more! FOR PERUSAL AT YOUR LEISURE! Not FOR PAPER PLANES, you ! P.S. Yes, SMELLIN’ SALTS is a nod to the mid-70s Punk Zine SNIFFIN’ GLUE: oh those heady days of tippex & xerox...
>>>>>>>FUTURE ARAF EVENTS FOR YOUR DIARY>>>>>> 30th OCTOBER: SMELLIN’ SALTS Zine NO.8 SUBMISSION DEADLINE
FRIDAY 8 NOVEMBER: CANTER CULTURE II featuring:
THE Aeddan Williams Trio (Jazz), SAMPLE ANSWER (back by popular demand!) NUBIAN TWIST (AFROBEAT), & TRUECOLLECTIVES DJs (ARAF FAVOURITES!!) ARAF COLLECTIVE LONDON THANKS PROFUSELY:
Contributers to this issue: O.P.G. H.A, ED, Rachel Long, Emma Bagley,
Leonore S. , XXXora....JOSH MARIOTT THE SULTAN OF SUPERIOUR SOUNDS; ARAF Artists of the month: Bat & Ball, CeaSe MC, Rachel Long, the Caulfield Beats, Jive Ass Slippers; Thanks to Dean and Steve @ THE HORSE & STABLES Waterloo Thanks to the SOUTH LONDON GALLERY & Peckham’s REVIEW Bookshop for continuing to stock our Free Zine & Helping us to Spread the word! ...And SUGARLUMPS to YOU, our Salt Sniffers, Show Jumpers & Stable Hands! Send submissions for NOVEMBER ZINE edition to: arafcollective@live.co.uk follow us: @ARAFCollective check us out : www.arafcollectivelondon.com
ARAF NEWSFLASH: WE WELCOME YOU to the CANTER CULTURE
A
s many of you will know ARAF has left Camberwell and moved to a more equestrian setting in SE1.
This is the result of our untimely eviction from The Wreck to make way for pâté, melba toast and gastro-pub-enteritis. However, we refused to be the band that goes down with that ship... We soon swam to shore and once we had made a friend out of a football called Wilson, we found ourselves a new bigger venue, The Horse and Stables SE1, and started a new bigger event, CANTER CULTURE. While CANTER CULTURE still retains its musical basis providing a platform for some of the most talented musical acts in London, we have expanded the creative stable to include poets, filmmakers and artists. This means that the new ARAF events will, like a findus lasagne, have more flavour with The Horse and provide a much needed injection of resistant creative culture within earshot of The Houses of Parliament.
Y
et for all you neigh-sayers, our move to central London has not altered our political and cultural objectives. We still offer a site of creative resistance to arts cults culture providing a free entry, notfor-profit collective for individuals and groups who are suffocating in the current economic atmosphere.
T
he ever-radical William Blake lived 50 yards from The Horse and Stables and we believe that had CANTER CULTURE been running in 1792, he would have popped in for a few pints, some great bands and even dropped a few lines on the mic. So, like this hypothetical William Blake stereotype, mount up and ride with us into a canter cultural sunset....
image: detail from William Blake: ‘As if an angel dropped down from the clouds’(Henry IV)
THIS MONTH, ARAFCOLLECTIVE PRESENTS... BAT AND BALL Nothing like the sound of leather on willow, Bat and Ball are the first act to grace the stage at CANTER-CULTURE. At the heart of this thoughtful powerhouse is sister and brother team, Abi and Chris, who accompanied by fellow Goldsmiths graduates Ed, Jamie and Harri produce a poignant sound floating between jazz, indie and electro. Their debut single, ‘We prefer it in the dark’ has recently achieved airplay on BBC Radio One. We warmly welcome Bat and Ball to the Horse. Polo anyone? CeaSe MC ARAF COLLECTIVE welcomes South London Rapper CeaSe MC back for an encore at our new venue! The poetic and spiritual nature of his lyrics and the soulful feel of his music are both rooted in CeaSe’s youth. The son of Jamaican immigrants, CeaSe’s first exposure to music was undoubtedly Reggae and as a teenager he was exposed to religion and spirituality first hand in the streets of Streatham. Although he admits his engagement with spirituality was perhaps suffocating, he believes it provided him with an outlook on life that goes beyond what we are taught to think and see. His relationship with Hip-Hop began in the London Battle and Open-Mic Scene, most notably in the now defunct powerhouse underground venues such as Kung-Fu and Raw Deal. It was in places such as these that the lightning and thunder of Hip-Hop’s live performance drew CeaSe to the tonight’s stage. Give your ears a spiritual experience…
RACHEL LONG A skillful wordsmith, Rachel Long first wowed us with her poetry submissions for Smellin’ Salts. A regular at Deptford’s Albany Writer’s Group, and fresh from performances with Apples & Snakes at London’s Southbank Centre, we’ve invited her to take to the mic tonight, so listen up! Read an interview with Rachel on page 8! THE CAULFIELD BEATS These Araf Collective favourites are back. Following the success of their latest EP release ‘Garage Electronics No. 1’, TCB have been a hot act on the electronic/ garage music scene playing various sold out venues throughout London. This East London garage-electronica three piece provide a total immersive environment combining live-sequenced visualisations with what have been called ‘digital electro-collages’. The result is an unforgettable mix of sight, sound and satisfaction drawing on bit-torrent, Namco and bricolage cultures; rescuing electronic music from its current polished complacency only suitable for River Island changing rooms. The Caulfield Beats are a delicious mix of danger and satisfaction; an irresistible cocktail for all the senses. Give your ears a stiff drink… JIVE ASS SLIPPERS (DJ) From the dizzying heights of the big top at Bestival, ARAF are extremely excited to present the excellently Mingusnamed ‘JIVE ASS SLIPPERS’ DJ for Canter-Culture at the Horse. His showjumping selection of Soul, Funk Disco, Boogie and Rock n’roll is sure to please: so prepare the rosettes!
BEEFSTOCK 2013
A CULINARY REVIEW
W
-O.P.G
e live in an age of convenience. When not buying ready grated cheese or boil in the bag vegetables, we spend our precious nectar points on OXO cubes. The OXO cube, that modernist cuboid of freeze-dried goodness, is the Viagra to our mastication; a mushroom cloud of synthetic flavour hanging over our post-apocalyptic bolognese. All hail the flavoursome palindrome.
B
ut have you, dear reader, sampled real stock? Real beef stock, aromatic as a Texas barbeque in The Body Shop, makes OXO cubes taste like the floor-sweepings of some bovine crematorium. That broiled consequence of simmering bones and other appendages is a revelation (unless you are vegetarian, in which case vegetable stock is eminently superior). There is, however, a Beefstock that can be enjoyed by herbivores and carnivores alike. In August, ARAF’s close friends, Dr Peabody presented a home-grown music festival to the plains of Camberwell: ‘Beefstock 2013’. This day long spectacular where the synthetic cubes of contemporary commercial music was replaced with the authentic flavour of 100% organic culture. Over the course of the day, we were entertained by such acts as the welldone Ravioli Me Away, the finest cuts of Circuit Breaker, the melt-in-themouth Doctor Dance Myth, The ‘no pun necessary’ Dairy Classics, those mad cows Jessica Leach & Richard Harding amongst many others within this talented and tasty herd. The hosts presented a gastronomic delight centred on that farmer’s favourite ‘Double Denim’. Concluding with the ceremonial destruction of an effigy of Kevin McCloud’s head loaded with Lemon Sherbets, Dr Peabody’s anarchic brand of postpunk Monty Python was worthy of a Michelin star. Even if the simmered remains of an animal’s carcass are not really your thing and lego-blocks of synthetic cow juice don’t tickle your fancy, we can assure you that there was one Beefstock this summer which was sure to please every palate – except perhaps the demure tastebuds of Mr McCloud.
This month’s keyword:
CULTURE
As many of you will know, Smellin’ Salts runs a ongoing exploration of the terms in everyone’s favourite Marxist dictionary of etymology, Raymond Williams’ ‘Keywords’. The emphasis in Keywords is on the changing meaning of words over time and in light of ARAF’s recent changes (and the artwork opposite), we felt that the world CULTURE needed exploration. Williams notes that there are fewer words in the English language whose meaning is more hotly contested than CULTURE. Appropriately for the HORSE, the etymological root of CULTURE is in animal husbandry and crop cultivation. He writes, ‘Culture in all its early uses was a noun of process: the tending of something, basically crops or animals’. Interestingly, there is an argument which suggests that the term ‘culture’ originates in the Old English word ‘coulter’ meaning the sharpened blade of a plough. This vision of an aggressive tool of separation (a plough, after all, tears furrows in the soil) becomes increasingly appropriate with the development of the word ‘culture’. The emphasis on rearing and growing in ‘culture’ was extended in the 16th Century to encompass the intellectual and spiritual cultivation of humans. In 1605, Francis Bacon wrote of the ‘the culture and manurance of minds’ and this definition of CULTURE as the fostering of mental crops (alongside the encouragement of excrement) lead to the development of high cultural activities which acted as the fertiliser to your moral, psychological and social development. The ‘social growth’ resulting from High CULTURE’s green fingers is significant as once humans could be ‘cultured’ to become more flavoursome, we could then be quickly sorted into ‘Finest’ and ‘Value’ produce. This grading through culture exists in every social supermarket in the world - are you a handpicked Asparagus or a bruised apple in a corner-shop plastic bowl? Williams proceeds to identify a later development of ‘culture’ in an anthropological sense, implying a particular way of life of a people or peoples in general. This definition is the result of the formalisation of socialscientific disciplines in the late 18th and early 19th century and is problematically bound-up with colonialist histories of ‘civilisation’. This usage of the word ‘culture’ here often implies a dominant European culture, a division of the World into us and them; a small clique
- A&O
of Western asparagus and a mass of ‘Other’ cultures. Later CULTURE emerges as its plural ‘CULTURES’ to encompass a more multiple, less hierarchical understanding of human variety and similarity. Perhaps it is at this point that a notion of ‘counter-culture’ emerges with the Romantic movement, as renewed interest in folk and traditional cultures were proposed as ‘alternatives to orthodox and dominant Civilisation.’ Today, as Williams identified in 1973, the meaning that dominates is of CULTURE as ‘ ...an abstract noun which describes the works and practices of intellectual and especially artistic activity... culture is music, literature, painting and sculpture, theatre and film. ‘ Nevertheless, as my clumsy grocery metaphor has tried to explain the word ‘culture’ always bears the mark of class distinction, opposition between ‘high’ culture and ‘popular’ culture survives in certain circles (try the dress circle at the opera), and remains a point of hostility and contention. Canter CULTURE, the horsey equivalent to ‘counter culture’, is ARAF’s attempt to ‘counter’ some of the inherent problems found in these definitions of culture. The metaphorical association with cultivation is very useful in the context of ARAF’s own breed of ‘CULTURE’ as we are keen to provide a counterpoint to the intensively farmed, battery caged production of commercial culture. Through ARAF as a collectivised group, we attempt to form our own culture, in every sense, which exists as ‘a way of life’ that uses CULTURE not for division but for unity. Keywords related to CULTURE:
AESTHETIC, ANTHROPOLOGY, ART, CIVILISATION, FOLK, DEVELOPMENT, HUMANITY, SCIENCE, WESTERN, SUBCULTURE, COUNTER-CULTURE Artist Xxxora sent us this symbolically rich composite image on the facing page, described by the artist as: ‘a surrealist depiction of class and society’. Lion of the British Empire Princess Zara is depicted sporting a cape of crisp pound notes and Nelson’s wooden leg, sails over kids lurking outside a dark council estate on her appropriately named 2012 silver-medal Olympic horse ‘High Kingdom’. High Kingdom has sprouted the mystical horn of a unicorn is apparently jet-powererd, with exploding bottles of Bollinger for legs. We think it encapsulates a lot of the things we secretly felt in 2012slight sickness at the excessive, irrelevant fanfare for ‘the british-brand’, the jubilant royals, cracking open the champagne. See more at: www.xxxora.com
ARAF INTERVIEW:
RACHEL LONG, POET & SPOKEN WORD ARTIST
discusses her involvement in ‘Architects of Our Republic’, an Apples & Snakes poetry & performance organisation event at the South Bank Centre marking the 50th Anniversary of The March on Washington and Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have A Dream’ speech. How did you get involved with the ‘Architects of Our Republic’ event? I got involved with ‘Architects of Our Republic’ project through my involvement with Apples and Snakes, the UK’s largest performance poetry organization. For the last year I have been a member of the Writing Room at the Albany in Deptford. Daisy, the Apples and Snakes Writing Room coordinator is always so good at forwarding us the best opportunities hot off the press and encouraged me to apply for Architects. I knew it was a fantastic opportunity the moment she told me about it, and I knew I wanted to part of it. The 50th anniversary of “I Have A Dream” is a greatly symbolic occasion for people, on many different levels. What does it mean to you personally? To me, the 50th anniversary of the speech is like your birthday or New Years Eve, an event that is there for celebration and evaluation. Once the party’s over and everyone’s gone home, you look back on the year/your achievements and you assess your direction, you question whether you’re happy, what you perhaps want to change, your hopes for the future. ‘I Have A Dream’ is abit like that to me. It is us all celebrating King’s triumphs as a leader, the successes of the civil rights movement, the power of people, the progress we’ve made since 1963. And not forgetting to laud the speech as a wonderful piece of literature alone. The power of his language makes the hairs on your arms stand on end. It is so clever in its inclusiveness, its accessibility, its poignancy. King was a master metaphor and imagery. It is so much more than just a speech, it is poetry. Yet the reflection and evaluation comes when one questions if its ongoing relevance is a criticism for what has still not changed in the last 50 years, what is still yet to do in terms of equality and freedom for all people, what we can do to make the dream a living reality. Tell us about the piece you performed and the process of devising something for this occasion. Was it daunting, challenging, exciting? It is daunting to write for an occasion this symbolic, yes. In our first class we watched a video of King delivering his speech to the 250,000 strong crowd. I remember thinking, “Great, that won’t be a hard act to follow.” But you have to put that to the back of your mind, otherwise you’ll never write anything. The challenge was never to right a new ‘I Have A Dream’ speech (thank God!) It was more about our personal responses to what King’s dream meant to us now. Once you’ve found a personal way in to any subject/commission/brief you’re halfway there. What will come out will be something honest, and that honesty will translate to your reader or audience. My most successful poem that I wrote for ‘Architects of Our Republic’ was ‘Mixed Other’. Namely for its honesty. We were asked to write a piece about our experiences of personal prejudice. ‘Mixed Other’ is a funny take on being mixed raced. The title is taken from my usual box on equal opportunities forms. I always thought it funny to tick a box declaring that I was a ‘Mixed Other’, it could be absolutely anything. It even sounds a little like miscellaneous. I could be a crazy alien going for the job, or a bag of marbles. So it is a poem about being all three. Playing around with people’s prejudices, ignorance innocent and dangerous, and trying to give the ‘Mixed Other’ box a voice. What was it like meeting The Last Poets? Did you have any other heroes there? Yes! The Last Poets! I was so excited to meet them, I almost forgot I was nervous. The whole day I was so hyped to meet them. They were the very last act to perform on the day, and they were definitely worth waiting for. It was amazing to think that I had just performed on the stage as these legends. Chilling with them in the Poetry Bar at the Southbank after such a crazy day was surreal. They are such cool guys aswell, they said thank you to us for ‘carrying the words on.’ The next day Apples and Snakes organized a Writing Room session with them. Their words, advice and encouragement will stay with me. Architects was an amazing project to be a part of, and I feel very privileged to have performed at an event celebrating the greatest speech of the 20th century.
HEAR RACHEL LONG PERFORMING HER POETRY LIVE AT CANTER-CULTURE, 13/09/2013! Follow Rachel: @writesRachel www.writesrachell.wordpress.com facebook.com/LiveLit
Excerpt from:
JUKEBOX WITH A CONSCIENCE: Confessions of a hotel pianist
From the Marble Arch to the Gateway of India
Read more true confessions of a hotel pianist at:
www.jukeboxwithaconscience.blogspot.com
Awaking with blurry eyes it took me a few minutes to recall where I was. The bus journey had lasted for 16 hours and the cramp had turned to numbness, allowing me to drift off as we drove through Gujarat into the state of Maharashtra. After the relative peacefulness of the nocturnal motorway, the heaving mass of bodies that surrounded our bus signalled our arrival in Mumbai, home to over 20 million people. My travel partner looked just as unprepared as I did, and with our big backpacks and stunned expressions we were left at the mercy of the taxi drivers who shamelessly bumped up the price of our onward journey. Driving through the wide streets, we passed towering and majestic colonial buildings, huge Bollywood posters, and bustling markets where Pashmina shawls and incense were sold alongside sugarcane juice and chapatti. Entering Colaba, the tourist beat, we saw for the first time the Gateway of India monument and Taj Palace hotel, looking out onto the Arabian Sea. After hundreds of hours playing the piano in Marble Arch, entertaining rich businessmen from all over the world - many of whom were Indian - I was now halfway across the world, standing by an equally regal arch and an even wealthier hotel. It would have taken me three weeks to earn enough to spend one night in this legendary building - made notorious by the terrorist attacks in 2008 - so we settled for a grotty hostel. Still, we were determined to glimpse the Taj, and to bask in its air-conditioned interior for the length of at least one drink. Leaving our cramped room with its dilapidating walls we strolled along the waterfront to the sound of waves lapping against the moored boats, while Hindi love songs blared out of radios. Passing through the tight security, we left the compelling reality of Mumbai behind and entered into another world, where immaculately dressed staff addressed us as “sir” despite our disheveled hair and flip-flops. Passing a grand staircase where a statue of the hotel’s founder surveyed his kingdom, we entered the foyer. It was here that the circle completed itself: sitting in the corner was an elderly Indian man in a suit, running his fingers up and down the keys of a dark wooden grand piano with a mixture of professionally hidden boredom and quiet enjoyment that I knew only too well. Now that I was here, in the city that used to be called Bombay, my memory was cast back to the first song I performed as a hotel pianist. The lyrics were fitting to the point of cliche:
Come fly with me, let’s fly let’s fly away If you could use some exotic booze There’s a bar in far Bombay Come fly with me, let’s fly let’s fly away Whether or not the Kingfisher lagers we had ordered could be described as exotic, it was a strange and wonderful thing to be here, watching somebody do exactly what I had done to raise money for this trip. I approached the pianist intrigued to meet him- well aware that ignoring him after months of blogging about being on the receiving end of such indifference would make me something of a hypocrite.
When I introduced myself and told him about our professional connections he smiled warmly, and we compared music tastes, attitudes to the job and treatment by clientele. At his insistence that I request a song, I told him of my love for the Beatles, leading him to launch into Norwegian Wood. Deliberate or not, this choice was poetic, being the first of the Beatles’ songs that made use of the sitar - an innovation that led to more and more Hindustani influence. Knowing that he had an attentive listener, more and more feeling was put into the playing as he entered a trancelike state, gliding up and down the keys with expertise. Growing more excited, he showed me some of his compositions - spiritual, jazzy music which showed the influence of his days as a church pianist in Mumbai. Despite our age gap of about 40 years, betrayed by his wispy white hair, I saw that we had a lot in common as we flicked through his endless sheets of music; I played many of those songs regularly. As I got up to leave, I shook his hand warmly and offered him a few rupees as a tip, which resulted in a small arm wrestle as he refused with all his might. “You need it for your holiday!” he cried. Having lost the battle, I made my way through the grand foyer, flip-flops echoing as I walked. Turning back, I saw that a slightly bonkerslooking Indian man with a huge belly and flamboyant Hawaiian shirt had approached the piano and begun to sing I’ve Got You Under My Skin at an uncomfortably loud volume. He was accompanied by his wife, who paraded a matching shirt, colourful glasses and an equally simple smile as she bobbed her head. The pianist caught my eye and we shared a knowing smile; the scene was all too familiar. While the city that lay beyond the hotel walls greeted me with something new at every turn, it was strangely comforting to see that half way across the world - in here at least - things weren’t so different to home.
“Reality of life”, a Photograph by artist Emma Bagley : emmabagley.com
ARAF COLLECTIVE LONDON CANTER-CULTURE II Friday 8/11/13
Nubian Twist
FREE ENTRY
Sample Answer
The Aeddan Williams Trio TrueCollectives DJs
@the horse & Stables Waterloo/ Lambeth north
A drawing by Leonore: ascanaday.blogspot.com