I was at the studio of a major figure in ska/reggae history, having made an appointment to meet and interview him. Except for a brief vision-in-passing (he did stop to shake my hand), I didn't see him, and I ended up hanging around the studio for about five hours. everyone else there was pretty nice though, and all but two of them with less "man-vibes" attitude than many I met especially connected with music. Several were older men, forties or more, and we chatted about music and history. the recording engineer showed me the studio itself, and I talked about techniques and history. Earlier on in that day, I was sitting in the front room...This was in one of the 'poorer' areas of Kingston, I think. Not as rough as the roughest places I personally saw (down Orange street), but more lively than my base of Hughenden, I think. .. The studio was in a house, basically, upstairs. After the front door was a narrow front room, then a hallway with a staircase, kitchen to the left I think (I never saw it). Entry-room had a fridge, three or four chairs, a table and a TV. Now.
The son of the owner was in his late teens, I guess. he was a goodlooking kid, bristling with manvibes, which is something I'm trying to figure out how to define. I think I mean trying to impress all, by particularly macho and dangerous postures. chin-forward and eyes narrowed, I think. something about menace and power, but also the tremendous effort. even when moving slowly and expansively, i felt the energy it took to constantly emote that... have to come back to this because I'm not quite clear yet. anyway the son and one of the older men who felt shifty to me, they had more of that vibe. the son started out flirting kind of aggressively. Some compliments, but also an edge of hostility (i felt that hostility in flirtations aimed at other women in other instances. Some was probably because of who I was and where I was from, but some was maybe just gender-games, power and threat). Son and shifty-man were also vibing each other a little bit, in a negative way. Anyway some phone call came in and the son took it, and got really angry. He slammed down the phone and starts yelling to the other men, complaining, something about being accused of theft, I think, of not returning money or something.. I'm sitting in the middle chair, in this small space, trying to efface myself. Shifty guy says something dismissive. maybe insulting. which throws the son into a rage. shifty guy continues to be dismissive. Son is trembling, and near tears. I don't know where to look. I'm afraid that son will have to assert himself more fiercely because I am here, female gaze which he might have to distance himself from. I know I can't seem to look at him, especially tears. I can't look like I feel sorry or even sympathetic. I wish I could leave the room, but that would call attention to me and my gaze, my reactions. The pride is so lightly balanced, he's on the edge of violence. He shouts at shifty man, who is sitting across the room. The tension continues to rise and recede in the boy, while shifty man talks to other men about other things, slightly performatively. I can feel a watchfulness, although everyone else appears calm., nobody wants to call too much attention to anything. Son leaves, comes back with a screwdriver or knife-like something, talking angrily, then lunges at shifty-man, but is restrained by the other men. The rest of the men tell shifty to go, he doesn't want to, still trying to be older and bigger and don't-care-ish about it, but finally he grumbles away. Son is still trembling, tears full in his eyes, narrowed, with a furious scowl drawing down his brow.
I went away so deeply impressed by the tensions in masculinity here. Felt it was so clear, so many many young men were constantly on the lookout for any kind of slight, any hint of disrespect. Their egos were on such an edge, so fragile. that's what I saw and felt, this terrible fragility, like when acid rain makes birds' eggshells too thin. so many of them in the caribbean don't survive. felt it elsewhere but here it was distilled, young men were just crying out for (not to be sappy but truly) love and attention, really, you could feel it. Not directly, and not that anyone could give it to them, mostly. shells too thin, and their integrity was shored up on this treacherous machismo that set them against each other when each other is who they needed most.
I've wondered before if this is part of the impetus for the horrific homophobia i found nearly everywhere. This total fury at men-to-man connection, this rigidity about gender roles. Reminds me of studies of the homophobic frenzy some in the British government lit up during world war one, a siege mentality and a rejection of the impulses which connect people (and which cross boundaries those who profit from war would like to maintain).

July 27 00 sun has peeked out again today, as LDL reports it's gone into hiding in Boston. guess only one of us gets good weather at a time. glad it's me now (and teh rest of London).

The second thesis-thinkin-breakthrough I had last week had to do with the lack of statistics. I've done a fair bit of postmodern readings, on history, on authors, on culture, identity etc., and lots of it I find useful, especially provocative. however this year my official courses have been very anti-pomo, anti-French (philosphy), as could be expected since the institution is the belly of the beast, (the top of) the mainstream. So had been unable, so far, to integrate the pomo approaches with the work I've been doing. But thinking about the lack of numbers on the music industry, and how many profs I had talked to would wince and smile when I tell them this, and suggest another topic.. I realised that I had been constructing this absence solely as a problem. The problem of no data. On this matter (the size, economic effects of the music industry), the data is silent. BUT..(here is where it began to come together), silence is not emptiness. Silence means something. To switch metaphors, silence is noise (as opposed to signal). noise, dependent on what language you are listening. In this case, in the language of statistics, either cross-sectional or time-series data, there isn't much to be heard.
But the question of WHY there is no data is actually fascinating. There are many reasons, on many sides, why people have not kept records, or reported production, for example, plenty of good reasons. those reasons have to do with the nature of the industry, the fact that music production (specifically phonogram -music recorded on a fixed-medium production) occurs at the intersections of several different systems, formal and informal, legal and illegal, cultural and material. Music serves several functions, it exists multidimensionally, not just as a commodity. The silence, the noise, if you listen close, tells you this. It's not only a theoretical point, either. Since I am interested in how copyright law functions (or doesn't), I have to understand the nature of the material and behaviour it's supposed to regulate. Anyway, this helped me turn my problem into an answer. whee!

Also been coming across the Negativland story again in recent readings. They come the closest to expressing a lot of my ideas about copyright. Important reading for anyone interested in that whole Napster debate. Or anyone who persists in talking about music as if it's only a 'thing,' a commodity. I'll find the link later.

July 26 00 leftover lentils, fabulous cheeses from a local dairy, some fresh sourdough, an ear of fresh corn. My latest addiction (restarted) is nutella, on soft brown multigrain bread. one with breakfast, one for dessert. occasionally as a snack.

Went to an art show at the Venezuelan embassy. Didn't know that's where it was, my pal just gave me the address, a friend of his had a piece uup, they're both Venezuelan. Walking in westlondon, see a very art-opening crowd. A plaque outside informs me that it's the embassy. The building is small and lovely inside, an old old house, four floors (or five?), that a very important and famous and Historical figure who I in my near-total ignorance of Venezuelan history knew next to nothing about: Miranda. something Miranda. I know Simon Bolivar messed about in Venezuela, think they knew each other. Anyway, it's called Miranda house. And the artworks were all about the man himself, installations, my favorite had to do with smells, a closet filled with rosemary and tied shut with the leaves bursting out.. the scent of chocolate wafting from somewhere, a sunny attic room lined with lightgold wooden shelves, with rows of open jars of honey, small lines of handwritten text across the front of each. And mothballs, which soon overpowered everything. The ambience was good, the artworks were delicate, atmospheric, but my ignorance of the man they were trying to evoke made them ephemeral as well. once outside, only the sensations remained, especially the smell of mothballs. and the sound of Venezuelan spanish.

Some more writing and reading today as well. Hit the library for my school again, for their meager cultural studies section. I must try to get to Goldsmiths college, cultural studies land. A flurry of books on popular music, with a line here a line there about Jamaica. threading it together.

July 25 00more cooking, really. that's about all that's going on. a yummy red lentil salad, middle-eastern style, with cilantro and garlic and red peppers. And a little writing. and reading The Instance of the Fingerpost. wondering whether I can afford to go to Paris for a few days. and talking on the phone to LDL, where our conversations seem to get better and better, range further and deeper, until I don't want to hang up, and curl myself into bed afterwards with a smile and an ache.
saw "Moloch" lastnight, directed by a Russian (Sokurov), came out recently, about Hitler and Eva in their mountain retreat. Barring some stylistic choices which were quite interesting, the movie pretty much sucked. with such a subject matter, it would be hard to do anything worthwhile, and he didn't. Visually there were interesting moments.. it was dark and blue-tinted (strange greenyblue filter), that made everything blurry and underwatery, and straaaange sound editing that made people's feet clopclop in echoey rooms, and everyone's breathing was oddly audible, plus all their creaks and groans and belches. but no way to reconcile it with the swastika'ed scene; sure, interesting visual/aural choices, but why? what on earth do they have to do with evil, banal or otherwise? not much. not really worth the money, but there you go. repellent stuff, overall.

July 22 00 Having a quiet weekend, to make up for last week's (expensive) scenes. Good thing M*A*S*H the altman flick is on tonight, followed by Zabriskie Point. Good flims keep me in. Made vegetarian sushi, good in hot weather. It's really easy. Last week went to a big asian food market (Loon Fung) in London's chinatown near Soho, got nori (seaweed), glutinous rice, rice vinegar, plus yummy pickled ginger and wasabi. last night made a little test batch with a half-cup of rice and one sheet of nori. Went swimmingly, even without the accessories like the rolling mat or a little serving plate. Soho/Chinatown is pretty chintzy, even compared to Boston, touristy and quite expensive. You can't even buy cheap dishware (can't really buy cheap anything except avocados and artichokes in season). I'd like to pick up a little sushi set but I may have to wander to other neighborhoods to see if I can find the cheap stuff. Anyway tonight made avocado roll, next up is marinating some tofu, because I can't seem to find the nice smoky kind I can get in Boston. Feeling domestic.
only problem is, haven't written tonight. probably not going to. It's not as bad as I'm making myself feel because last week I had a real breakthrough on my thesis. Two breakthroughs, actually. The first was to do with my basic hypothesis. To write an economic history paper (say all my profs), you need to have a hypothesis, and then test it in some way, preferably (implied by most stated explicitly by some) with statistical data. So there's little statistical data on the music industry in jamaica. I've been collecting tons of other kinds of data, qualitative data in interviews, historical data of various times. I've come up with tons of interesting questions about copyright, cultural industries, development, etc., but so far none were narrow enough, or were testable given the data available. I need to be able to make some move towards answering the question, so some hypotheses, like: "the Jamaican music industry is (or has been, or can be) vital to the economy" are simply not testable (yes or no) without more information than I can get.
But then (first breakthrough): I was reading a publication by an organisation which specialises ion intellectual property, and they make this statement about how a national cultural industry cannot flourish unless there is adequate enforcement of remuneration of artists. i.e. copyright law is a prerequisite for development of a national industry. But this is simply not true. In many cases, but surely especially in Jamaica, music industry and national cultural industry (thinking of 'jamaican music' or reggae or ska or whatever as a kind of brand) flourished long before any participation (of JA) in international copyright treaties or enforcement of domestic copyright law. Actually that statement above is an ahistorical one in general, a kind of reasoning backward from the present situation --also ethnocentric, reasoning outward from the most-economically-developed nations and their institutional structure, as if that structure can be transplanted to a place in a completely different economic and legal situation. So, I have here a null hypothesis, that copyright law (enforced) is a prerequisite for development of a national industry (or possibly a national "brand"?). A case study of Jamaica disproves this. wheee! A question I can begin to answer!

July 21 00 been kindly informed by Nelson that the Rascalz are actually Canadian. interesting, because they shared an MC with UGO who I'm thought he said were from New York. Maybe he's friends with'em or something. He introduced that whole segment of the show, both acts, and stayed onstage the whole time..didn't get up in front much, but joined in on lots of group vocal things. (did I mention he was particularly handsome so I especially noticed him? stupid girly me)

July 20 00Last Sunday I went to a festival in Brighton. Although initially I was in a sort of raw, skinless, dazed state, on 4 hours of sleep and a 1.5-hour train ride, found my senses wonderfully sharpened by the fact that my friend who had assured me he could get me in for free or 5pounds (rather than the 30 on the door) was nowhere to be seen, and his mobile was turned off. And stayed turned off. Had to find my way to the pace myself. Got there, stood around for a while looking for him or his van or anyone familiar. nobody. Ended up buying a ticket myself from a scalper (who charged me the door price, no extra, whew!) and wandering in. Kind of overwhelming, really. About 10 hours of music and hardly a word spoken to anyone all day. A big hilly park with five or six tent-pavilion thingies, scads of people, especially tons of dreads, white and black and various mixes (in groups or in people). A good amount of children and families as well, wheich I wasn't quite expecting somehow, but who made sense. the outside, the unexpected sunshine, and "roots day."

So I wandered from tent to tent as the mood took me. I always managed to squeeze to the front, caught Souls of Mischief, a breakdance crew, The Rascals/UGO (from new york) and Kool Herc, in the hiphop tent. The breakers reminded me of something that I've often thought while watching most breakers these days (as opposed to my limited experiences watching them in the 80s): They lack finesse. what I mean is, even the most spectacular ones, who could do backflips and spins, and headspins and slides and all this, all these acrobatics and such, they never finished a move, they just walked out of it. They had no real endings or beginnings to their phrases of movement, moreover, they had no narrative or seeming choice of moves within it. They didn't interact with each other at all, always going one-at-a-time. It was mostly muscling about. Spectacular tricks, but not dancing, not a lot of art or craft to it. Especially as there was an overemphasis on floorwork (spins and footwork), and flips and stuff, and nobody could really pop or lock. That's the stuff that requires subtlety and copntrol, that fluid-body or robotic stuff. reminds me of watching dancers in modern dance, and you can see the ones who haven't had as much training because their hands and feet are limp or curled and forgotten about, not articulated or defined. endings especially, are important. the exception was a duo who danced with The Rascals, who did some breaking where they were totally physically intertwined and lifting each other, it was half Contact-Improvisation, only to a beat. That made me drool. I want to do that! the muscley stuff I lack some wherewithal, but I can do contact and flow til there's no tomorrow.
Kool Herc was a bit of a disappointment. He is historically one of the most important figures in hiphop, but he seemed more concerned about impressing that on us by telling us so, and by listing all these slights he's had, and troubles he's faced, and he didn't DO much with his records or on the mic. I'm sorry, but I was hoping he would care to PERFORM, and he didn't really. Even weirder, he kept talking about how he wanted it to be oldschool, with bboys and bgirls up in front of the decks dancing and on the mic, but then dancers made the records skip so he sent them off. But then this realllly skinny girl with a partially-shaven, part-dreadlocked head, tanktopped with her pants hanging off the end of her backbone, came up to him and was all chatting him up smiley-cutesy (onstage, mind, and while he was playing records) and he gives her the mic, and she just wanders round the stage adlibbing R+B "ohhhhhs and "yeaaaahs" and "wo wo woooooohs", she has a decent voice but she's completely fucking annoying. Then she adlibs some crap about all of his having to be together as one and it's so embarassingly cliched and she doesn't seem to notice. There's this crew of very stylish black brits in front of me, and this one gorgeous woman, with sleek short black hair starts shouting "get off you fucking hippy." It goes on too long and I leave, cuz herc isn't doing anything. Big him up for his work in the past, and I hope he gets paid mad money because he's had a hard life, but nothing to see here folks.

more recaps later

July 16 00 My weekend continued in the vein it had begun. Slept until about 1pm on Saturday, the spent the rest of the day moving very. very. slowly. around the edges of a headache. Pottering gingerly about the house, eating comfort food and reading on teh couch wrapped ina blanket. was kind of pleasant, but woozy. Had a gig through a friend on Saturday night, Dj-ing and a house party, on a boat. A house boat. whee! A guy I had met when I first started working at the now-evil-cafe, and hadn't seen since then (almost a year ago my god), asked me. And then at the last minute they asked if they could use my decks. Had to think about that, since it's the most expensive thing I own, and have ever owned.. But what the hell, they're there to be used, right? So my friend shows up with a cab and we load it all in. The houseboat has amp and speakers, evidently, and after half an hour we are there. The boat is charming, but to get onto it you have to go down a long narrow stairway made of metal, with a railing landside and NO RAILING At All on the sea(boat) side. PLUS no ramp or plank to the boat, you just have to hop across. heh. And I'm in a long skirt. So we get a burlier chap than me to help friend carry the decks (which, with the mixer, are in a long case that I call 'the coffin' weighing about 80 pounds) down. And I'm trying not to think about how much i will freak out if anything goes wrong. Which it does not. Set up downstairs and my friend spins first. There's more familiar people there than I expected, including one I haven't seen for a while and his friend who's really hyper and kooky but is also a total kleptomaniac, stealing things big and small from parties and events and everything. Last time i saw him was at a party and later found out a bike, a cd-player and lots of other things wree missing. So at first I was determined to keep an eye on him, no matter how jovial he was. Later had a word with the guys who brought him, who assured me that they have impressed upon him how seriously they wish him to behave. Heavy manners. under heavy manners. okay then.
So people aren't really dancing. It's an interesting crowd, mostly people in 20s and 30s, our host works in the fashion industry and there are some fashiony people about, and other hipster folks. Lots of chatting, good ethnic mix (as usual in London). Europeans, Brits, South Asian (brits) and Afro/Caribbean. Down in the room with the dj it's almost empty. People start filtering down as Prince is played, and begin to boogie. There's a tall shaven-headed man of african descent, leaning against the stairway next to the decks, whose eye I keep catching as I peek at him. cute. I'm up next. I start out with some slow hiphop, and then mix in a jungle stepper. People start dancing to the hiphop, and some are confused with the jungle filters in, confused by the speed of the high-end "don't worry" I call to a woman who's stopped, "it's not fast music, it's slow. Ignore the fast parts and listen to the bass!" she begins to dance again. then I pick up the pace a little more, throwin in some bassier bouncier beats. By the time I mix up some dancehall people are cheering and dancing, and I notice the tall guy is totally grooving to the dancehall bassline. Just as I've gotten ahead of myself enough to plan out a killer set of mixes in my head, the sound cuts out. completely. I check everything I can think of. Lights are on everywhere, so it's not a fuse issue. Turn off everything -maybe the amp has overheated? Drunken people are crowding round the deck making suggestions. periodically someone comes up to ask my why the music has stopped. I'm getting stressed and annoyed. This continues. THe amp is blown. being only a personal-stereo amp, it's not suprising. People filter upstairs, disappointed. I've had the wind taken out of my sails. Annoyed and not feeling like partying. clean up my records and wander upstairs. Socialise listlessles. THen Host bounds up to me: "A guy on the next boat down the pier has a sound systm!" sorted. As we come back from talking to guy-on-next-boat, I see drunk klepto-boy and Host's brother carrying the coffin towards the stairway to the pier. what the fuck? 'what the hell are you doing?' I ask. 'please bring that back downstairs.' they are confused and drunk. they stand there holding it. 'please bring it downstairs again. thank you. downstairs. now, please. thanks.' down it goes. that was weird. Anyway head back down, continue playing until about 4:30 am. new sound system is louder. the boat is rocking as the tide comes in (which means we don't have to carry the coffin up as many steps as we did when we came), which was disorienting at first, people are still dancing, but I'm realising I need to get home because I'm heading to the Brighton Essential Festival to hear a ton of good music and I have to catch a 10am train. Takes a while to organise a cab, and I get home at 5:20.

sleep from 5:20 - 8:45, then miraculously get to the train on time. i will describe Sunday later, but I'll leave you with a few words for a hint: James Brown. Lee Scratch Perry. Souls of Mischief. Freddie MacGregor. Mad Professor vs. Scientist. Kid Koala. Zion Train. Kool Herc.