It was pretty obvious to anyone arriving at the club who Biggaton was. Standing outside in the smoking area was a Rastafarian guy, dreadlocks tied into a massive red green and yellow hat, dressed entirely in white. Later that evening, he jumped down from the DJ booth, strode into the middle of the dancefloor and grabbed a small Chinese girl from the audience. "Baby, tell me where you're from," he said, in his thick Jamaican accent. "Hangzhou," she responded.
"I don't know Hangzhou, but me, I'm from Jamaica, and there, the galdem see me and they say, 'oh Biggaton! Why you all in white, are you an angel?' and I say 'no baby, I'm no angel, but I can take you to heaven!'"
Biggaton—a dancehall star from Mandeville, Jamaica—put on a great show, but in reality I'd come that night to see Skinny Brown, the DJ who'd brought him over from the Caribbean. For the last five years Skinny has been running a night called Popasuda. It's the kind of night where you'll hear songs made in a basement in India played back to back with tracks from Ethiopia, with afrobeats from Nigeria, Azonto from Ghana, and Brazillian baille funk all thrown into the mix.
Oh, and it takes place in a sweaty warehouse in Shanghai.
Dada, Popasuda's home, is tucked away between nondescript buildings at the intersection of Xing Fu Lu—which translates from Mandarin as the "road of happiness." Situated down an alley, Dada is a graffiti-covered space, with a small chain link fence hanging down from one wall upon which a revolving Popasuda logo is projected. It sways every time someone dances into it.
"What I love about Popasuda," said Skinny Brown when we sat down to talk a few days before his show with Biggaton, "is that I have the Cameroonians in one corner, the Senegalese and the Jamaicans in another, the South Africans, the Brazilians, the Germans and the British all scattered around. Then when you play a track and they know it they come running up to the decks."
Shanghai, despite being fundamentally international, is a city in which stratification can take place incredibly quickly. On any given night you might stumble into a club that feels wholly the preserve of French expats, or others playing Mando-pop where the only foreign faces are the Russian "models" paid 300 RMB to dance on the tables with high rollers. Popasuda, on the other hand, brings as mixed a crowd as you're likely to see anywhere in the world. I've seen the head of one of Shanghai's trendiest art spaces—Shanghainese through and through—his button-down shirt wrapped around his waist, his vest soaked through with sweat clinging to his paunch, swaying, while behind him a group of Indian exchange students lose their shit over a piece of Urdu ephemera.
Skinny Brown is the embodiment of this audience. Raised in Toronto, he speaks six languages—Japanese, Hindi, Portuguese, Mandarin, English and Urdu. He drifted through college and ended up DJing in Tokyo and living in Yokohama. Having left Japan after his visa expired, Skinny found himself soaking up the sound of baille funk in Rio. From Brazil it was on to Pakistan where he spent time with a cousin in Karachi. His excursion to Shanghai came about by accident. "I had one of those 72 hour visas, for transit," he told me "but I guess that was ten years ago..."
A decade on and he's trying something different. "I want to build a soundsystem here, with dubplates, and clashes. The real thing." When I asked him if he felt that Shanghai was a reggae city, he shook his head. "No, not really, but it's coming up." His current method is beginning with a dubplate intro to his set, and then throwing dancehall in later. "It's easy to cross over into dancehall, future dancehall and trappy stuff at 160bpm. A lot of it is driven by that, that BPM and the need to find something that is slightly different."
As a boy of a bout 9 or 10, I used to often accompany my mother to her weekday workplace of Worker's Bank (now defunct) on Tower Street, named, I'm guessing, for the towers of the infamous prison at the eastern end.
Whilst I had little interest in the intricacies of commercial banking, I cherished these trips for exposing the heart of the capital city, and in particular, the waterfront area, as fine an example of a port city as exists in this hemisphere.
Even then, 40 years ago, there was repeated talk about expansion and renewal of the city, of making it into an even greater urban centre - of rehabilitating the blighted settlements ringing the city centre to the north, east and west. Of expanding the harbour, of fostering culture an entertainment.
Four decades, and several political regimes later, there is again talk from Government about "renewal" and the usual committees have been formed, and there was news just this week of a "point man" of sorts to oversee this latest round of toing and froing.
This latest iteration of renewal has seen Cabinet approve the expansion of the downtown Kingston Urban Renewal project to boost investment in the area.
Daryl Vaz, Minister with responsibility for Investment, says the expanded development area will include sections of Kingston and Port Royal.
Yeaahhh.....right. I could do a whole other article on the many grand plans to capitalize on the undeniably rich history of the former pirate capital, but with Disney already way ahead of us on that score, and also four "Pirates of the Caribbean" already funnelling revenues from the Port Royal story into foreign hands (a fifth is reportedly due next year), I may be forgiven for not being too hopeful on that score.
What is being heavily touted on this go-round is something called the Urban Renewal Tax Incentive Programme. Under this (latest) proposal, investors will benefit from urban renewal bonds, investment tax credit, tax parental income and exemption from transferred tax and stamp duty among other things
In the official spiel, The Tax Incentive Programme for Urban Renewal was first introduced to downtown Kingston in 1995 and was subsequently extended to Port Royal in 1996, Montego Bay in 2000 and Spanish Town in 2008.
The Tax Incentive Programme is managed by the UDC, on behalf of the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service and aims to garner the support of the private sector in arresting urban decay by encouraging the redevelopment of property in blighted areas.
The programme accomplishes this by enabling persons who either own or lease property in areas defined as special development areas to access incentives to redevelop the properties under the Urban Renewal (Tax Relief) Act which was established in 1995. A special development area is one which is declared by the minister responsible for urban development for the purpose of urban renewal.
Under the Tax Incentive Programme, tax relief is offered to companies or individuals undertaking capital investments in either land or buildings. These can be residential or commercial holdings. Tax Incentives are offered to both owners and lessees of property in the Special Development Areas.
The four incentives offered are Urban Renewal Bonds, Investment Tax Credit, Tax Free Rental Income and Exemption from Transfer Tax. Organizations such as GraceKennedy Limited, Guardsman Group, NEM Insurance Company Ltd and Courts are among beneficiaries of this programme
The Government is also dreaming of a return of cruise shipping to Kingston, in the manner that presently obtains forthe ports of Montego Bay, Ocho Rios and Falmouth. This, the PM and the developmment Minister say, involves the construction of a cruise ship pier and a dramatic revitalisation and restoration of Kingston's downtown and harbour front areas, along with existing places of interest.
Well, if the kind of work that has been done, and is continuing, in Falmouth could be replicated in Kingston, then i would - notwithstanding environmental and sociological concerns, be among the first to cheer.
But much of the Jamaican Government modus operandi (both Parties) over te past 40 years or so leaves me less than optimistic.
For instance, it remains impossible to have the streets of downtown Kingston kept in any semblance of order, much less attractiveness. I'm not expecting them to be pristine, but the truly anarchic sprawl of economically desperate coupled with the outcomes of official neglect - effluent sewage, uncollected garbage, blighted landmarks - is gonna require far more than grand pronouncements.
The preservation and restoration of national heritage sites such as the Ward Theatre, for example, is urgent, more so now that the gleaming PetroCaribe-funded Bolivar Centre stands almost right nextto it in mocking splendour.
the area in front of the once great theatre is now an informal depot for route taxis and, yes, staging area for individuals selling everything from snacks to basic school supplies to bootleg DVDs to weed.
One of the great city centres and portsides arguably in the world, and certainly in this hemisphere, remains essentiall untamed.
this is partly (you might, depending on your perspective, say largely or entirely) due to the complex and even confusing divisions and overlaps that have been allowed to spring up and fester by uncaring politicians on both sides in their unbridled lust for power. Today, while those "borderlines" and greay areas are not enforced with the quasi-military intensity of the 70s and 80s, they still work against one of the key ingredients of successful urban renewal: standardization.
Each new "plan" - Former World Bank country representative, Giorgio Valentini, highlighted in July 2014 that "there are 10 or 15 different plans" which have all "been done in isolation" - arrives with its own baggage of myopia in deference to undrawn but implicit power lines. Until we decode and get past this legacy, then we'll easy slip through another 40 or 50- year time warp with nothing fundamentally changing
One of the things I'd like to see Kingston renewal plans really take into account (no patronising) is what UNESCO has recognised by designating the capital as one of 10 Creative Cities for Music. The designation, made late last year, is long over sue recognition for the symbiotic relationship between the city and its sounds - sounds which now reverberate across the globe.
When we truly give music and the creative arts - all of them - pride of place in the schematic of redevelopment, only then will Kingston truly come to life and attract global interest. This has already been proven on a smaller but no less impressive scale by the courageous work of the Kingston On the Edge (KOTE) conceptualisers. the annual festival has, against the odds, deftly showcased the nuanced riches of the city and drawn growing international attention.
if there was a KOTE every week or or even every month then, trust me, the rest of the officialand economic master plan would be a proverbial snap; visitors would flock, investors would eaglerly sniff and global media would come trotting in eager to capture, explore and share 9albeit not in equal proportion) .
This is obvious to every person who's ever gone to Rae Town, marvelled at the Roktowa and other creative stands during KOTE, or even massed at Half way Tree or Parade (downtown square) to witness our track athletes best the world during the Olympics or World Championships. Simply, Kingston is more than the waterfront and the few stratified and overrun city blocks - it is Dub Club on the precipice of Skyline Drive every bit as much as it is the National Gallery auditorium on last Sundays or the Edna Manley College Amphitheatre every last Tuesday for Poetry Jam.
These are the assets that Governments have thus far grossly undervalued. But i for one, remain stubbornly (defiantly?) optimistic that the pace of change will move from glacial to something more discernible.
i can think no more apt final point for this piece than the words of the late journalist Jane Jacobs who wrote in The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961): "Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody" Let's come together around that guidepost, can we?
When the Olympic Games begin in about 48 hours in Rio de Janeiro, billions of people are expected to watch athletes from countries around the world compete.
But also watching over the Olympic and Paralympic events will be a set of futuristic, balloon-mounted surveillance camera systems capable of monitoring a wide swath of the city in high resolution and in real-time.
Initially developed for use by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan by Fairfax, Virginia-based Logos Technologies, the technology is sold under the nameSimera, and offers live aerial views of a large area, or what the company calls "wide-area motion imagery," captured from a balloon tethered some 200 meters above the ground. The system's 13 cameras make it possible for operators to record detailed, 120-megapixel imagery of the movement of vehicles and pedestrians below in an area up to 40 square kilometers, depending on how high the balloon is deployed, and for up to three days at a time.
The Brazil sale, which includes four systems operated under an $8 million contract, marks the first export of Simera, and the first time such as system will be deployed by a non-U.S. government at a large-scale event, the company says. "Simera was built late last year and we tested it this past February and then immediately sold four of them to Brazil," says Doug Rombough, Logos’s vice president of business development.
Rombough compares Simera to a live city-wide Google Maps combined with TiVo, explaining that it lets authorities not only view ground-level activities in real time but also rewind through saved images to do things like track a suspicious vehicle—for instance, one that departs a crime scene—back to its origin.
The government has announced it will deploy 47,000 security guards, 65,000 police, and 20,000 armed service personnel to patrol the Games, which have raised security concerns amid soaring crime rates in the city and a global burst in terrorist activity. Last week, Brazilian police arrested 12 people alleged to be planning an ISIS-inspired attack on the Games, which have been said to be a target discussed in jihadist chat groups.
The system evolved from technologies Logos previously supplied to the Defense Department for use in combat zones, including the Constant Hawk aircraft-mounted surveillance camera system and Kestrel, a similar balloon-mounted sensor system that’s been used in Afghanistan to monitor activity near about a dozen U.S. bases.
There, the company says the technology helped U.S. troops monitor potentially threatening activity as it evolved over days, enabling officials, for instance, to track the movement of suspicious vehicles in the vicinity of an attack. But as Logos's technology continues to evolve and become easier and cheaper to deploy in civilian scenarios, it's likely to raise more questions about the appropriate balance between security and privacy.
Over time, the company’s sensor systems have become lighter and easier to deploy: Early Constant Hawk systems weighed about 1,500 pounds, Kestrel units weighed around 150 pounds, and Simera systems just 40 pounds, expanding the range of aircraft that can carry the devices. Including the ground-based equipment necessary to control and monitor the cameras, the Simera system—which generally costs $500,000 to $900,000 per unit, depending on features— can be transported in a single vehicle and put into an operation in under three hours, according to Logos.
And as the company's systems have gotten lighter in weight and easier to deploy, the range of potential use cases has expanded. In addition to policing large events and patrolling borders and ports, the company hopes its system could prove useful in supporting humanitarian assistance and disaster relief missions
The National Gallery of Jamaica’s Last Sundays programme for July 31, 2016, will feature the soft launch of the Kingston – Part 1: The City and Art exhibition and a musical performance by Jason Worton.
Kingston – Part 1: The City and Art is the first instalment of a two-part exhibition series that explores the role of Kingston in the development of Jamaican art and, conversely, the actual and potential role of art in the development of the city of Kingston. Inspired by Kingston’s recent UNESCO designation as a Creative City of Music, the exhibition makes the case that Kingston has been the crucible for many other aspects of Jamaican culture, such as the visual arts. Featuring works of art from the late 17th century to the present as well as documentary photographs, the exhibition looks at how Jamaica’s turbulent but culturally fertile capital city has generated circumstances and opportunities that have propelled the development of Jamaican art, from the natural resources to the economic activities and institutions. The exhibition also explores how artists have been inspired in their work by the events, personalities and tales that have defined life in the city, starting with the 1692 Port Royal earthquake. Kingston – Part 1: The City and Art is curated by National Gallery Assistant Curator Monique Barnett-Davidson and continues until October 30, 2016.
Sidney McLaren - Scene on Harbour Street (1972), Collection: NGJ
Jason Lee Worton, Jamaican songwriter and musician, spent the last few years touring with Reggae Revival Act Protoje and the Indiggnation, while making a name for himself as an eclectic member of the Reggae scene. Working as a journeyman multi-instrumentalist, he has backed many current and past reggae stars, earning the nickname the “Jamaican Jimi Hendrix.” As the leader of his own band, Worton has appeared at prestigious events such as the Jamaica Jazz and Blues Festival, and been a mainstay at small local venues such as Jamnesia and the Red Bones Blues Cafe. He also plays frequently for yoga studios and events in the growing Jamaican yoga community. He has now returned to focusing on his solo project, many of his songs centring around his “DubRock Reggae” sound. He also delves into acoustic material and eastern inspired meditational music. Worton continues to explore musical styles and instruments, and is an avid surfer, yogi, and farmer/apiarist.
Jason Lee Worton
The National Gallery of Jamaica’s doors will be open from 11 am to 4 pm on Sunday, July 31, 2016 and the programme will start at 1:30 pm, with a curatorial introduction to the exhibition and the musical performance of Jason Worton. As is customary, admission will be free and there will also be free tours of the Kingston exhibition, but contributions to the National Gallery’s donations box are always appreciated. The National Gallery gift and coffee shops will be open for business and proceeds from these ventures help to fund programmes such as Last Sundays and exhibitions such as Kingston.
At a panel late last year titled “Is London Too Rich to be Interesting?” Saatchi-approved sculpture pioneer Gavin Turk, now 48-years old, was asked a simple question by an audience member: “If you had your time again, from now, in this London—with no grant, and no time to spend swimming around for patrons—how would you do it? Would you still be here? Would you stay?” Prior to that, he’d indulged the audience with stories about how a glorious and multi-faceted London of times past had given him the opportunities, freedom and inspiration he needed to explore his art and self, and become who he is, but he can’t help stutter on this question for some time, before coming to a long winded conclusion which I’ll simplify here: No, probably not actually.
Things have never been easy for creative types in the city, that's kind of the point. But they've also never been this bad until very recently. Only in the late 90s into early 2000s, the city was fostering multiple vibrant music scenes, each one representative of the young people that fuelled it: from grime in Bow, to indie in Camden, to dubstep in Croydon, to artrock in New Cross. To have that many young people all maintaining so many seperate, vibrant and concurrent scenes in London now seems impossible.
London used to offer artists a means to flourish, which was why it would always be uttered on the same subcultural whispers as New York and Berlin. By hook or by crook, musicians could not only eat, live and work, but also make enough to record, buy equipment, tour van gas, expenses, managers, CDs, drugs, pot noodles. There was cheap housing if you had the balls to rough it out (it often came with rats, shit landlords and toilets that coughed sewage, free of charge). Recording studios could be found in the middle of town that hadn’t yet been forced to close, or pander their diaries and costings to big money block bookings—so a young band or artist could get a few hours in front of a half decent mixing desk for not an unrealistic price, without going on mythological quests to Zone 8. The city even had a visible ladder of progression, its venues would guide a rise, all the way from shithole basement to 200 cap club to decent sized concert hall. But the most important thing the city had was time. Obviously there was no eternal well of opportunity for workshyshitbags, but it wasn’t so unrealistic for an aspiring musician to work three or four days a week in a dive bar, and spend the rest on building their dream. An artistic balance could be achieved, where your work was just work and your talent was your focus, without simply consigning yourself to waste.
Is Tropical were one of many bands who took advantage of the city’s charms and loopholes, throwing their dice at London’s heaving squat scene around 2007. “When we discovered living in squats was doable, it was perfect,” explains lead singer Simon Milner. “Suddenly, everyone had the time to get on with what they loved. If you just have to work for rent then you have to work five days a week, but as an artist, you have to buy your equipment too, whether it's paints, instruments, or jewelry. It’s expensive, so an opportunity to live for free, yeah, in horrible conditions, was vital.”
Photo provided by Is Tropical.
Their now famous South London squat was called The Toilet Factory, and homed themselves, Shitdisco (together, then known as Ratty Rat Rat), and The Metros (some of whom went on to become Fat White Family). It was one of many in the city; including others like the notorious Squally Oaks, which housed early formations of Metronomy, !WowoW! squat in Peckham, and also 78 Lyndhurst Way.
“Down in South London there was a load of us. A lot of artists like Matthew Stone, the writer Karley Sciortino. So it was a really big scene. From the outside it probably looked like everyone was just wasters, but that’s where you socialized, collaborated, and made your connections.”
South London band Breton utilised a guardianship scheme for the first part of their career, where tenants are welcomed into otherwise abandoned buildings for next to nothing, to basically keep the building’s blood pumping. They landed themselves in an old bank in Elephant & Castle, which they dubbed BretonLABs. "It was like Stalingrad most of the time," they tell me, and they all slept in a wedding marquee with electric heaters in the center of the space. "When we got signed, we bought massive coats” says lead singer Roman.
Members of London band Breton, on the roof of their South London squat
Still, it was a place they could live, film, and record for next to nothing. Another girl in their building ran her theater company from home, stacking her space with props. A different tenant was the filmmaker Ian Pons Jewell, who’s now an esteemed director, he made the video for Naughty Boy's "La La La" and scooped the 2013 MOBOs and Best Director at the UK Music Video Awards as a result.
But in 2012, the Conservative government made squatting in a residential building in England and Wales a criminal offence. What was previously a civic matter, became a police matter, meaning people could be rapidly evicted. An old bank in the middle of Elephant & Castle might not sound like a residential building, but because one small room was once deemed the bank manager’s sleeping quarters (in the 80s), it was enough to get the whole building classed as "residential," and Breton, plus 15 other residents, were evicted so it could be demolished. There’s something poetically cyclical about how such a capitalist construct, as an in-office living space made for bankers to ensure they work excessive hours into the night, was still managing to do its bit for inequality, even in its dilapidated state.
Men holding stacks of cash at Breton's bank, back when it was actually a bank in the 80s.
The decimation of London’s art squats is a metaphor for the city’s recalibrated attitude towards art, and 2015 London has all the spluttering symptoms of a city hurtling towards cultural void. Investors pick up housing estates as if they’re glass ketchup bottles, turning them upside down and smacking the bottom until all the inhabitants fall out. Wages have stagnated, living costs have soared, rents have rocketed, venues are being methodically demolished, 150,000 of us are working two jobs, and everyone with a creative one is considering a move to Woodford.
Over in the fallows of central London, bankers body pump to “Everybody’s Free” at morning raves, each new bead of sweat more resinous than the previous, as last night’s cocaine residue is taxied out of their bloodstream. The same month London Mayor Boris Johnson launches his#BackBusking campaign, his police force are heavy handedly arresting musicians in broad daylight for doing just that in Leicester Square.
We’re told to tolerate this, and that it is a means to an end because—grin emoji, thumbs up emoji—London’s output growth is BETTER THAN EVER! The problem is, the burgeoning riches of a city don’t necessarily correlate with its art and creativity. Cities like Lisbon, where new strands of Afro-Portuguese electronic music seem to sprout every six months, or Atlanta, where trap has supernova’d in every direction, aren’t teeming with invention because of a influx of billionares, high density penthouse monoculture or chains of cold brewed coffee shops. Berlin's progressive arts scene is in part thanks to the progressive politics that frame it, and they've addressed their soaring costs by becoming the first German city to introduce rent capping. So, it’s no surprise that in London, the unhindered boom in the city’s wealth hasn’t exactly chimed with an explosion of subculture and youth movements. You only need to look at the cities London is now mentioned alongside: digested baked bean shells like Singapore, or sanitized 1-percenter city-state toy towns like Monaco, to get a feel for its aspirational trajectory. Tell me, who was the last shit hot beatmaker from Monaco you faved on Soundcloud? These days, for most normal musicians to survive London’s demands, their employment must become their everything, their music: a mere hobby.
“In the last few years,” explains Roman of Breton, who coped with the demolition of their bank by moving to, you guessed it, Berlin. “They have done their best to paint these pictures of crusty squatters, who go and smash up these buildings, but it’s not like that. Yeah, we were basically living like heroin addicts without the perks of heroin. But that made the band possible! All the things that a Londoner had to pay for, that could really attack our time and freedom, we felt liberated from.”
That Dickensian gem of duality, "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times" could hardly be more apt in describing the Premier League, title race, And even moreso in the particular case of the two Manchester clubs.
United, which ruled the roost with near impunity over the last decade was deposed by their cross-town rivals City in 2014 (actually City's 2nd win in 3 years) after presumptive winners Liverpool faltered.
Now, its the Citizens who are looking up towards a trophy that is fading like a speeding sports car. In fact, if the present trend continues, City could face the triple whammy of losing the Premier League, title the "subsidiary cups" (FA, Capital One League Cup) and the Champions League in one miserable, job-threatening season. Manager Pellegrini insists, as we expect him to, that he has no worries over his future, but you never really know, do you?
On the other hand, Louis van Gaal seems to have finally found the combo to get his machine humming at Old Trafford, as his charges have strung together five straight wins, including vanquishing Liverpool and more recently cellar-contenders Aston Villa. the lie in 3rd eyeing a move to depose 2nd place Arsenal, who are equally in form.
Though City defender Vincent Kompany claims this is the ideal time fora Manchester derby, one doubts the City fans venturing into Old Trafford this Sunday will share his enthusiasm or confidence. Even withthe return of the vaunted YaYa Toure, the Citizens were humbled by a spirited and compact Crystal Palace team (and a few questionable calls, but what else is new?), and the morale must be at an all-time ebb for this group of stalwarts, a veritable united Nations of top talent, but a squad which is now looking tired, rather than tried and tested.
United fans meanwhile are relishing a return to the intimidating Red Devils of recent lore, even if marquee striker Robin van persie endures his own struggles and loan import Radamel Falcao has thus far failed to catch fire.
Whose will be the fantasy and whose will be the nightmare at the theatre of Dreams come Sunday? that's the juiciest question of the week, and possibly the year
Photo via 
Photo provided by Is Tropical.
Members of London band Breton, on the roof of their South London squat
Men holding stacks of cash at Breton's bank, back when it was actually a bank in the 80s.