soul II soul
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Clash Music July 2010
Jazzie B on the 80s Soul & Reggae scene, warehouse parties and Nellee Hooper
In layman’s terms, Jazzie B OBE is the multi Grammy-winning pioneer of the warehouse rave who was the voice of funk and soul in the UK for the past 30 years.
His biggest hit was 'Back to Life (However Do You Want Me)' for Soul II Soul, a collective formed primarily between him and the great Nellee Hooper. As a producer and a remixer, he has worked with James Brown, Public Enemy and Isaac Hayes. As part of Soul II Soul, he pioneered the nuclear Africa Centre parties in London’s Covent Garden that united funk soul, nascent hip hop and reggae and formed the foetus of future urban music in England.
Here he joins us for a history lesson; a detailed insight on growing up in London in the soul and reggae scenes, the first UK wharehouse raves, the clothes, the divisions between the scenes
What is the concept of the Funki Dread?
The Funki Dread started with the idea of a rasta growing up in a Christian house. Basically living in a Christian house we couldn’t be rastas, so what I used to do was have my hair locksed up in the middle where you’d usually plait it – you weren’t allowed to wear your hat at home so I had it shaved at the side. For our parents rasta wasn’t a spiritual thing it was something else! Know what I mean...
Was there a lot of music in your house growing up?
My parents were into Country & Western, a bit more Calypsonian. All the Caribbean islands’ first music was Country & Western... Folk music and Country & Western – heavily influenced by R&B. Jamaica then started to make their own form of music, from Mento to Ska, Bluebeat. That’s the whole evolution.
For our parents growing up, these were country people who were always looking towards the mother country – looking to Britain. My people were a lot more agricultural than the Jamaicans were, or people from Barbados and Jamaica which are larger places – I mean we’re a tiny little dot. When I came up music wasn’t big on the agenda – religion played a big part, and naturally education.
Was it tough being a soul boy in the 80s black reggae scene?
Imagine being a funki dread in the early 80s. I had an incident on the frontline there, just before All Saints road, we were sort of pushed into a situation with a bunch of dreads, and one of them took out a knife and said, If I couldn’t make up my mind whether I was a rasta or a bal’head [baldhead] he would do it.
It’s funny cause the whole thing’s turned on its head, cause now his kids have got funki dreads. It’s all good. People would have more taken us for punk rockers. I mean even by my second or third independent trip to America, just before I got the residency out there, we were bullied quite a lot at the time in Manhattan, because they just thought we were punk rockers – being a black punk rocker at the time, in America, in New York – well that was a weird enough place as it was. The black / white thing was so divided in America, much more than we’d given it credit for.
We were confronted with a few issues out there with the race thing. It’s funny on one of my first trips to Japan I remember a photographer showing me pictures of Japanese people in the 70s, who, because their hair is really thick, had afros – full on afros, some of them who are darker could have easily passed for black people. It’s different you go to places like Italy now; I’ve been to a dance with One Love and Rodigan and that and it was weird to see how many Italians had locks. We call ‘em Pasta Rastas. It was just weird going to a Catholic place like that, where on the surface there’s quite a divide between black people and Italians. They’re very racist, but outside of Italy they’re different.
How did you end up hooking up with Nellee Hooper for Soul II Soul?
I used to play in Bristol, my cousins... ran a particular turf in St Pauls, like you run a particular street.
Like a don or something?
Yeah I suppose you could call him that; and I used to have a residency down there: I used to play in the Thekla, and I used to play at the two shebeens – everybody used to frequent those parties. That’s where I first met Nellee. We met years prior to actually working together. In the times where I met Nellee, Nellee’s partner was Milo, and the Wild Bunch. They had come to London.
On one of the times that they came to London doing a show with Newtrament - he was the first English guy that I knew that was seriously into hip hop, or electro as we called it in those days. They had come down to use our sound, the Wild Bunch, via Newtrament. They had organized a dance in Caxton House in Archway, it was a community centre where we played. Newtrament had put on a clash with the Wild Bunch and they were using our sound system. And when they were having all the fights, and chucking equipment around - those bits were always boring to me. Every dance in those days, there was a drama. It was mainly guys, at the time. So I was outside bored, skinning up and Nellee had had his fill of it, he came out and we just started to talk, and as they say the rest is history.
Was there a bit of a contradiction in the soul scene in the 80s, all these hard men dancing tothis soft music in the West End clubs?
My recollection of the soul scene definitely wasn’t in the West End, it used to be out at the outskirts. We used to follow Robbie Vincent in East London, we used to follow Froggy, Chris Hill...
George Power?
George was from my neck of the woods, Finsbury Park, Hornsey. George Power was in Granville road I was in Albany road. George used to use my records for the school disco. He was good friends with one of my sisters. My early recollection of the scene is us following the DJs, and a lot of us black guys weren’t allowed in the clubs. Which we only found out on the journeys when we were trying to go and listen to see Robbie Vincent play and often we’d turn up and they wouldn’t allow us in, and we had the same sort of discrimination in the West End.
It was obviously a hazard being a black man as it was, especially if you’re a bit avant garde. ‘Cause you take shit from your own community as well as from the outside. We held soul as our own, it was our type of music that was being played.
Growing up on the other side of the fence i.e in the whole reggae field, we would always be about reggae and what we were doing in our side of the business, and when you went to the soul scene – there was a different kind of morals, I don’t know how you put it. In the days of the 70s growing up, there was a big divide and rule – you were either a reggae boy which was deemed to be hard, or you were a soul boy which was deemed to be light weight. I can tell you now - living it, it was probably the opposite.
The soul guys, they had a lot more stamina than the reggae guys for what they were doing. In that arena, where there was a quota, where it was only three or five black guys anyway that were allowed to get into these clubs, because most of the white guys were scared of losing the women – it was a level of intimidation. That was one of the reasons I wasn’t at all interested in the northern soul scene, because there weren’t any black people in it. And if they were, 90 per cent of the black guys who were in that scene were what we used to call coconuts. So the dark on the outside, white on the inside. That was the truth. You wouldn’t find anybody righteous – I’m not going to say dishonest, but really real? Whereas there was a thriving black soul scene – always has been, and that could be deemed to more effeminate – it was known, as we know it now – metrosexual? [laughs]
You would probably have looked at anyone in that business and said, they’re a bit poofy or whatever but you would have to know it, because looks are deceiving. I can tell you, that being involved in the reggae scene, you obviously had the rootsy type of reggae guys, then you had the reggae guys who were more flamboyant...
And if you go back to the 60s and 70s and see how those guys dressed, they were far more feminine - very queeny looking – than some of the guys who were on the soul scene. Even if you look at it today, with the dancehall, you see the colours that they use, and the way they dress up, colouring their hair, with flamboyant clothes, you can look at that and see that as much more effeminate than when you looked at the guys who were on the soul scene who were always about dancing and sweating so their attire was much more leisure-orientated, whereas with reggae we were really looking to show our wealth. And I’m not dissing the scene.
There’s that funny story of the Jewish estate agent who would give you the keys to the warehouses for your Soul II Soul raves and then stand at the gates to front the police with a spliff behind his back...
Every time that we had problems he’d be at the gate. And he’d have the language, and the swagger and the body language. A very middle class bunch of guys were involved, and they would deal with the police, and it wasn’t a problem as long as you were with them. Sometimes they would give us the keys over the weekend, and we would set up, rave, clean up and they’d be showing it to clients on Monday morning.
Did your warehouse raves prepare the ground for acid house?
Not really – it was a free-for-all – we had no inhibitions in those days – then you just did your ting. The reason we moved out of the warehouse parties and moved to the Africa Centre was because of all the bullshit that was going on with acid house scene, and the drugs, and to be honest with you, the wack people who used to come to the dance – it was awful man, some of those people – you talk about wags now and nerds and stuff well in the days of when we were doing dances those people...
Was that the Wag club crew [elitist nightclub in Soho in the 1980s]?
I didn’t really rub shoulders with the Wag club lot – most of the people who would go to the Wag club had a false sense of identity and security. They thought they were leaders at the time. Believe it or not the guy who used to run the security at the Wag...
Winston? [immortalized in a Derek B rhyme “Winston at the Wag didn’t gave me any agg”]
...Yeah, was one of my cousins’ best mate and he’d always turn us away. We used to look at the people who used to go to the Wag. Now. They were effeminate. Those guys – and on a personal note, one of the things that used to mess me up about the Wag was seeing these black people there, who to me, at that time, I used to think they wanted to be white. A lot of the people there saw themselves as something that they weren’t. You had a heavy model scene.
Would they have come to the warehouse?
The majority would have probably tried, but cos it wasn’t like the Wag, it wasn’t like places like Pandies...Yeah...and I know this because I come from a big family, and some of us were involved in elements of that - Soul II Soul was a backlash to all of that scene. When we was ramming out even the wharehouse parties, it was a new breed, it was the generation post those Wag guys, and almost would have been a few years younger than Norman [Jay]’s tribe and that lot. And I know Lascelle and Barry Sharpe and those guys that used to run the Wag and we were cool though.
What would the Soul II Soul crew wear?
Our philosophy is a happy face, a funking bass for a loving race – it was people from all walks of life who were all into the same thing.
In terms of the way we would dress: it wouldn’t be like this bistrot tailored look, or something that resembled a skin head, like the teddy boys, who were the most racist people I had come across growing up. We weren’t into that. Our idea was more like how we would see people on the street – if anything it was more a fusion of us rehashing old things – we would rock donkey jackets. We would wear Dr Martens, we were the ones in the flight jackets.
Our form of fashion was a real industrial reflection of London. There was a level of practicality with the boots but worn like a b-boy. You could see us in the street dressed as we would go out. It was an identity. We were wearing torn-up jeans before they were fashionably torn up – I mean we had no option with the distressed look there!
Words by Miguel Cullen
