High hopes: ‘When you’re doing that your brain is not worrying about anything else,’ says 25-year-old singer Jones
Jones is currently going through the rites of passage of every rising star these days. With an appearance on Jools Holland and Phil Taggart’s Radio One show under her belt, the 25-year-old singer from Haggerston is on the well-trodden path to stardom.
Her second single ‘Hoops’ came out in November and showcases her soulful vocals set over flawlessly produced synth washes and electronic sounds, laying the foundation for her debut album New Skin, due out in the spring.
It’s clear to hear echoes of Stevie Wonder and Luther Vandross in her work, artists she heard around the house in her formative years in Aldgate. But it’s the combination of soul and electronica that gives Jones her truly unique sound.
Speaking from Tileyard Studios in King’s Cross where she’s putting the final touches to the record, she tells the East End Review: “As I grew up I started to listen to more electronic music, but I’ve always had my roots based in soul music.
“I love the two worlds and it was always important for me to find my own voice in an industry that’s so populated.”
Inspiration from the East is never far from her work either. Through the Buddhist practice of mindfulness, a constant awareness of the present moment, she says she is able to find herself, and create something unique from her disparate influences.
“I’ve had less doubts so that I’m free to be Jones. Music was my initial meditation and when you’re doing that your brain is not worrying about anything else and it’s just focusing on singing or writing,” she explains.
Made with a handful of producers and recorded in studios across the country, New Skin documents her progression as an artist thus far.
“It’s an album about growing up and figuring out who you want to be,” she says, “it’s about love, life and things like that which have come into my path.”
As she sings on her latest single, Jones expects she’ll have to to “jump through hoops” on her path to becoming a household name.
But if her recent sell out gig at St Pancras Church and hauntingly beautiful TV performance is anything to go by, fame may be just around the corner.
See Jones live at the ICA on 3 February or follow her on Twitter @iseeJONES
Across North London, just outside the historic Hampstead Cemetery, an independent publishing house is breaking ground for diverse voices in publishing – and founder Valerie Brandes holds her upbringing in Hackney responsible for her motivation, and her success.
Founded three years ago, and named after a tree that grows from the Caribbean to the Himalayas, Jacaranda aims to provide a space for unheard voices “as cosmopolitan as our city” – a vision of London born out of Brandes’ own childhood.
“I grew up in Stoke Newington, among so many different cultures. The whole neighbourhood would be playing together, running in the streets: Turkish, Greek Cypriots, English, the Barbadian family over the road, the Irish families… I wouldn’t say it was perfect, but compared to what we have today, it made you aware of how other people lived – I had this understanding of cultures, and difference.”
That upbringing has guided Brandes’ life, and her career: throughout her time at the University of Exeter, two decades spent living in the USA (where, she recalls, she observed the damaging ‘cultural cul-de-sac’ that monoethnic societies can encourage) and her return to the London publishing industry with Profile Books. There is a phrase that Brandes comes back to often, which seems to ground her, and against which she measures her experiences of ethnicity across her life: “I’m a Hackney girl!”
What does being ‘a Hackney girl’ mean to her? “It brings to mind a sense of pride, and a feeling like I’ve been well brought up. Growing up at that time in Hackney was not by any stretch an ideal situation in economic terms, but we were never ignorant of other people’s lifestyles and cultures. We were united as a working class community, and that kept a sense of connection between all kinds of people.”
On her return to London, Brandes was brought back into contact with the UK publishing industry, which is still struggling to support the growth of diverse voices, in terms of both ethnicity and gender. “The lack of diversity in publishing,” Brandes suggests, “is ultimately to do with class, not race, but it has the same effect.
“All these publishing houses offer unpaid internships, which only certain people can afford to take on. Then it’s those people who are first in line when full-time positions come around.”
As we talk, it is clear there is tension in Brandes’ mission between promoting the voices that have long been sidelined in British publishing, and not being seen as a ‘niche’ publisher.
It is clear there is a need for the former. “What happens in a white-dominated industry is that black issues become a shorthand,” Brandes says. “When I set out to found Jacaranda, the role that I thought I could play, the service I could offer, was to show that outside the media-appropriated image of blackness in this country, there is a depth of talent, and interest and variety and brilliance that is completely disregarded.”
At the same time, however, Brandes hesitates to call it a ‘gap in the market’. “I don’t see it as a gap, really. We are straddling two worlds, doing the thing that we do. We’re interested in good writing – if it’s black, white, Polish, Congolese, it doesn’t matter! That’s what we’re able to offer.”
Of special satisfaction, though, is their involvement with Hackney-raised authors Stephen Thompson and Irenosen Okojie. “It’s great to be working with authors from all around the world, regardless of their background, but even more amazing to be able to say we’re working with two authors from just down the road from where I grew up.” Brandes and Thompson just spoke together on the topic of diversity in publishing at the Henley Literary Festival.
Brandes sees Jacaranda as built upon a heritage of pioneering publishers in the UK supporting diverse voices. She takes her inspiration from publishers like Bogle-L’Ouverture and Tamarind Books.
“They were founded to address the fact there were no black books for black children in the eighties in Britain,” explains Brandes. “Honestly, it’s hard now to do what we do, but to do that then? It gives me a feeling of standing on shoulders, and a lot of confidence.’ She pauses, and concludes: ‘And that’s something else I got from being a Hackney girl. I went away for 20 years, and I do believe that growing up in Hackney carried me through. ‘I’m a Hackney girl,’ I’d always say, ‘I can handle this’.”
Italian job: ‘Delica’ pumpkin and barley risotto with crispy salsiccia at Il Cudega
When in Milan, do as the Milanese do.
Well, that’s not exactly how the maxim goes – and this foodie has never been to Milan. But if you visit Il Cudega, a new Lombardy restaurant on Westgate Street, order whatever the staff recommend. You won’t be disappointed.
The Lombardy region in northern Italy takes in the southern Alps, the lakes and has Milan as its capital. To start with we were recommended a complex white wine to accompany a salad with warm goat’s cheese, which was hard, and with an intensely mature flavour.
The wine was a winner with the carpaccio too, which was served generously, with a mustard and lemon dressing and raspadura, a kind of Lombardy Parmesan.
The menu is limited but ample, and changes according to the produce available.
If you can stomach the ethical dubiousness of veal, try the restaurant’s signature dish, Vitel Toné – veal tuna. It is roasted veal served in cold strips, with an anchovy, lemon and caper sauce.
In the 18th century Italians in landlocked Milan could not source tuna from Sicily, the chef tells us. Instead, they pretended to eat the delicacy by cooking thin strips of red veal in a mildly anchovy sauce.
And thank goodness they did, because this is divine. The pairing of a strong fish with a stark meat is unusual – but it works. The veal is so tender it almost dissolves and is served cold – which gives space for the anchovy flavour to come through.
For the more ethically-conscious the vegetarian food is as robust and flavoursome as it comes. I plumped for a main course of dark and meaty wild mushrooms, with a sweet pumpkin puree that cuts through the warm, oozing Gorgonzola served on top of crispy polenta.
For dessert, the Gorgonzola sorbet sounds terrible but is quite the opposite. The cheese flavour is subtle, and it comes served with a scoop of mascarpone gelato, a pear compote and walnuts. The flavours sit somewhere between a cheeseboard served with fruit and a cheesecake. It came with a flavoursome sweet, red dessert wine.
The quality of the produce, the hospitality and the extensive knowledge of the staff are as impressive as each other. The chef and waiter visit each table to explain the provenance of ingredients and why they’ve matched them with others.
Whether it’s the name of the beef farmer on Lake Como, the time at which they harvest the pumpkins, or the type of wine to have – they know their stuff and it enhances the experience.
There’s little to fault about this eatery. It’s pricey, though so are many places in Hackney these days, and the portions are modest. But you get so much bang for your buck.
Art curator Shaun Caton in Homerton Hospital, surrounded by art made by patients with acquired and traumatic brain injuries. Photograph: Russell Parton
If you’re looking for art, a hospital is not the most obvious port of call. But along the labyrinthine corridors of the Homerton hangs a vast and diverse collection – the envy of any Shoreditch gallery.
Hawk-eyed visitors will spot works by twentieth-century masters among the paintings, drawings and photographs by established artists. But next to canvases by Henry Moore, Burt Irvin and Bruce MacClean are brilliantly original collages and stunning abstract paintings that are far less easy to identify. This is because they are created by true ‘outsider artists’ – the patients themselves.
“People often say that the work by the untrained artist is better than the one by that celebrated Royal Academician,” says the hospital’s art curator Shaun Caton.
We meet at the front of the hospital for a trip to the Regional Neurological Rehabilitation Unit (RNRU), where for over 20 years Caton has been running art workshops for those with traumatic and acquired brain injuries. Patients may have suffered a stroke, a brain aneurysm, been hit on the head or involved in a road traffic accident. Caton aims to bring them back to health through activities that inspire their creative potential.
“This is the only ward that has every single room filled with art made by patients,” says Caton as we enter the RNRU. “As you will see it’s just not possible to display it all – there are around 3000 works, and that’s only the ones on paper.”
Although there is a sizeable collection of art in the hospital by established names, Caton is more interested in works by unknown and untrained artists. We approach a door through which lies the “nerve centre” of the operation, and duly enter.
To step inside Homerton Hospital art room is a bit like entering a secret garden. Abstract paintings of swirling patterns or of strange creatures seem to cover every surface, jostling for space with painted models, knitted fish, handmade books and collages. Paints, brushes and easels fit wherever they can, the makeshift shelves visibly buckling under the weight of art – each piece with a unique story about a person with a serious head injury.
Eclectic: a selection of artworks made by Homerton patients. Photograph: Russell Parton
Caton calls the room the “power house of the creative imagination”, and the title is not misplaced. In the 20 or so years of its existence, nearly a thousand artists from Hackney and the East End of London have volunteered their services here.
“We have had sculptors, collage artists, poets, writers, artists who make inventions with machines and installation art, we’ve had sound artists, photographers, print makers, recycled book artists, artists who make art using recycled bus tickets – it’s endless the imaginative scope of things we can introduce here,” Caton enthuses.
The art room started as an experiment to engage patients with behavioural problems, but it soon evolved. Now it treats patients with speech, language and memory problems. Some are semi-paralysed, others may not know the day of the week.
“My job if you like is to find things that suit people’s potential but push them a bit further,” Caton explains, showing me a handmade book filled with patterns, text and collages.
“Let’s say we’re trying to encourage someone to concentrate better, well something like this which requires cutting and placement and judgement and colour will stimulate the brain to work with the hand and the eye to improve coordination.”
One patient, a man from Bethnal Green, had been diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome and had paralysis in his hands. He wanted to paint watercolours and spent all his time in the art room trying to get the feeling back in his fingers. Caton strapped the brushes in his hands with surgical tape and guided them over the paper.
“At first we made what some people would consider to be meaningless scribble, but as time went by he started to regain control of his movements, and was able to execute quite precise designs and illustrations which led to compositions and paintings of a very high standard,” Caton recalls.
The patient, who had no formal training, exhibited his watercolours in the hospital and went on to become an amateur artist once discharged.
Patients are referred for very different reasons: a physiotherapist may want a patient to strengthen their wrist and finger muscles, or a psychologist may refer a patient to improve their social skills.
Most hospitals practise some sort of art therapy, but this is very different: art at the Homerton is used to tackle a wider range of conditions that are not merely psychological. The success of the art room has led to the hospital piloting a similar service for patients with dementia.
Caton’s approach is less rigid than the one-to-one confines of art therapy. Workshops at the Homerton encourage collaboration and social interaction, and cater for several patients at once.
But what really makes it unique are the activities and the range of stimuli used to inspire the patients. We listen to a piece of sound art sent in out of the blue by an unknown composer called Lowell Johnson. It’s an atmospheric urban soundscape, a kaleidoscopic collection of sounds that mirrors the chaos of the mind.
“When you play something like that to a group, people respond to it in a variety of ways. It will automatically trigger conversation and remind people of things, but it’s also probably going to inspire them to make an artwork,” says Caton.
“We’re leagues ahead of other hospitals in that respect. They might just do some paintings of butterflies or some block paintings but we try to provide meaningful activities that are truly extraordinary.”
Bright future: Caton aims to inspire patients’ creative potential. Photograph: Russell Parton
Caton has refused interviews and is wary about talking to journalists. In an age of cuts, hospital art is often seen as being a waste of money.
“Those people need to come and visit this facility and meet the patients and see the evidence for themselves about how this can speed up their recovery programme by improving sense of well being,” he says.
The budget for basic art materials, as well as for framing, mounting, storage and cataloguing the art works is very small. This means Caton has had to raise funds by holding exhibitions and selling greetings cards designed by the patients.
“All these guys who come here and offer their services and time and talent are not being paid,” Caton insists. “They’re not even been paid a cup of tea, I provide that out of my own money. And I provide the biscuits as well, because that’s the way I think it should be.”
Through cuts and all kinds of adversity, the art room has kept going, which Caton puts down to having to be resourceful, and not leaving the lights on.
The situation changed in September, however, when the street artist Stik donated £50,000 by selling off 100 original prints of an NHS-themed mural entitled Sleeping Baby, which is on display in the hospital courtyard.
Members of the public camped out over night, queuing around the block to take home one of the limited edition prints, made by an artist who himself used to volunteer at the hospital.
Hospital mural: ‘Sleeping Baby’ by Stik located in the inner courtyard of the Homerton. Photograph: Stik
In a speech at the sale, Caton said: “In this hospital there are many patients who need something to focus on, so we offer them art workshops, not just as a recreation or past time, but to help them gain control of their lives again.
“The things that go on in these workshops enhance their concentration, their motor coordination and their general sense of well being. And so the money raised will enable us to buy much needed equipment, materials and really push forward with these services.”
We sit around a table on which there are at least 100 individual art works. The storage racks behind me are falling to bits, on the verge of collapsing under the weight of paper. With Stik’s donation, Caton will finally be able to invest in cataloguing and archiving the art for the benefit of future generations.
It is not an unreasonable ambition. The Bethlem Gallery in Beckenham is home to a fascinating collection of art by mentally ill patients, and in the 1920s the German psychiatrist Dr Hans Prinzhorn amassed a vast collection of his patients’ art that is famous the world over. Why not something similar at the Homerton Hospital for patients with brain injuries and dementia?
“I’d like the general public to know about this collection, what it’s about, who it’s been created by and why we are even bothering to maintain this for posterity,” Caton says. “I feel it should be maintained, because it’s an unknown universe of creative potential. A lot of people in society have an innate hidden creative talent, which can be teased out through art. This is a testament to it.”
A model for others: Caton’s workshops aim to help patients ‘gain control of their lives again’. Photograph: Russell Parton
An occupier registers disapproval at plans to relocate the Cass. Photograph: Barbara Ntumy
Opposition against a £50 million sell-off and relocation of the Cass Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design has gathered pace, with students occupying a gallery on Wednesday evening.
The students have moved into the Bank Gallery space on Whitechapel High Street to protest against London Metropolitan University’s plans to merge its departments into one campus on Holloway Road by September 2017.
The plans, approved in October, would see The Cass’s current home in Aldgate and the rest of London Met’s East London estate sold off, with the proceeds used to revamp the Holloway campus.
The occupation was sparked by the suspension of Robert Mull as Dean of Faculty, believed to be the result of Mull’s refusal to support the university’s ‘One Campus, One Community’ policy.
A group called Occupy the Cass has issued a list of demands, which include not selling the Cass’s Central House building on Whitechapel High Street, and a commitment not to cut courses, staff numbers and student places.
Courses in jewellery, silversmithing and the last musical instrument making BSc in the UK are being phased out at the Cass as part of the university’s ‘annual portfolio review’ but which the occupying students see as evidence of an “asset stripping exercise to balance the university’s books”.
The group’s actions have been endorsed by the likes of artists Jeremy Deller, a visiting professor at the school, and Bob and Roberta Smith, an associate professor and course leader there. The latter described the occupiers as “wonderful people” who are “standing up for the Cass [and for] art education at all levels.”
However, a statement released by London Metropolitan University said it is investing £125m in new workshops and studio spaces to create a new home for The Cass at the Holloway campus.
“We appreciate that some students are concerned about the move, but we’d like to reassure them that the Cass is not closing, nor will its making ethos or successful studio model of teaching be lost,” the statement read.
“By moving to Islington, the Cass will be in one location as opposed to the faculty’s current split between Central House and Commercial Road. Students have already highlighted the success of the previous merger between the School of Architecture and School of Art and Design to form the Cass three years ago, and we believe another move, with considerably more investment, can only be positive.
“We are inviting students to work with us to shape the Cass’s future together, and we’d urge those occupying today to accept that offer.”
The occupation is the latest measure in an increasingly high-profile campaign to ‘save the Cass’. A petition opposing the one campus plan has more than 2000 signatories, and last week the school’s proposed move away from East London was mentioned during a debate in the House of Lords. Bob and Roberta Smith has created a new artwork protesting the move, an open letter to chancellor George Osbourne penned on convector heaters, which is on display at William Morris Gallery.
Mayor of Tower Hamlets John Biggs has described himself as “deeply shocked” at the decision to move the Cass, whose alumni include members of the newly-crowned Turner Prize winning collective, Assemble.
Library Looting by Willem Weismann on display at Nunnery Gallery until 20 December
‘Library Looting’ by East London Painting Prize winner Willem Weismann works as an absurdist narrative that needs to be pieced together by the viewer.
The painting, on display at the Nunnery Gallery as part of the artist’s solo show Alphabet Soup, comments ironically on library closures by imagining a scenario where books are so precious that they become the subjects of a heist.
Books, in this invented cartoon world, function as a symbolic double for the work of painting. They offer intimate conversations and represent a romantic view of the world, one of the few endeavours left in which a single individual can effect change.
Worries of proportion and other obstacles are thrown aside to get straight to the fun of painting. The handling of the paint is satisfyingly impastoed, thick set like the relief of woodblock prints, or Van Gogh like. A plurality of strong bold colours is set against calm, less busy sections.
As you peer through the bookshelf you can pick out a body being dragged away, a foot can be seen on the left, next to the rock that presumably knocked them unconscious. The face is hidden (distracted by a book), to stop attention from being drawn away from the rest of the painting.
Highly finished details offer clues, such as the beer can bong, a crowbar, ski mask and take-away pizza which could suggest a young squatter hiding away or a librarian’s last stand.
Amid this, ‘Library Looting’ raises questions about the purpose and place of painting as an activity in the face of shifting technologies. ‘Obsolete’ objects such as old style cordless phones, CDs and Walkmans stand out. To what extent do these double for painting itself and reflect anxieties about its status within the arts?
Alphabet Soup is at Nunnery Gallery, 181 Bow Road, E3 2SJ until 20 December. bowarts.org
Collage by Laura Phillimore for An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in London
“Seagulls circle over the Town Hall… A man carries an umbrella, folded… A small child with a yellow balloon.” For some, these everyday observations are not worth dwelling on, but for two local authors such details are what truly makes up the life of a place.
For their new book An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in London, Sarah Lester and Nathan Penlington set themselves the task of sitting in the cafés surrounding Hackney Town Hall and creating a written record of “that which is not noticed, that which has no importance: what happens when nothing happens”.
It would call on most people’s reserves of patience and stamina to withstand 20 minutes of scribbling, but the authors kept at it for a weekend, becoming uniquely attuned to the urban environment in the process.
“Just trying to pay more attention to stuff is a hard thing,” says Penlington, a poet and performer from North Wales who has lived on and off in Hackney for 20 years. “I think the rewards are greater though. I think if you just slow down and try and pay attention, particularly if it’s an environment that you live in, you can get a real essence of what the place and people are like.”
For the duration of three days, the authors alternated between tables at Stage 3 café, Artisserie, Hackney Picturehouse and Baxter’s Court on Mare Street. They worked alone, creating separate accounts of the square and what was happening around them.
“I like how unexceptional the space is,” says Lester, an anthropologist, writer and Hackney resident. “A lot of people laughed when we told them where we were doing it, but it’s more interesting than doing it in say Leicester Square, which is a bit more homogenous in terms of the people there.”
Sarah Lester and Nathan Penlington read from the book at its launch at Stage 3 café
It was a grey weekend in October 2014 when the pair set about their experiment, a date that marked 40 years since the French writer Georges Perec embarked on a project to describe everything he saw in Place Saint-Sulpice in Paris.
“I’m really interested in experimental literature and read a lot of Perec when I was younger and liked his approach.” Penlington explains.
“Perec started in the 1970s to be interested in place and memory and set off on a number of little projects. One was to try and remember places that he’d lived in at various points and revisit them and describe them.
“But with his book An Attempt to Exhaust a Place in Paris he set out in three days to try and catalogue everything that happened pretty much in the same way we did it.
“The result is very much a document of that time and place and I thought on the 40th anniversary it’d be quite good if we could try and genuinely capture a different time and a different place and to see if that would work.”
When I heard about the project my first reaction went something along the lines of what a great idea but will it work as a book?
But it does. The observations draw on human experience, are self-aware, witty, plaintive and tender. You identify with the teenage boy in a tracksuit trying to kick a pigeon, or the girls singing out loud using McDonalds cups as microphones, because it may have been you – or perhaps it was you.
And as an object, the book includes some capital (in both senses of the word) illustrations: one collage by visual artist Laura Phillimore shows a map of constellations around old buildings and municipal squares, while the cover image, by artist Keira Rathbone, is an image of Fenchurch Street in the City, made entirely using the keys of a typewriter.
“It’s such a simple act and I did feel so much more connected to Hackney afterwards. I think that was one of the nicest outcomes of our time doing it,” Lester says.
Typewriter art: view of the City by Keira Rathbone
In another 40 years the book could serve as documentary evidence of a time and place completely lost to the march of progress and change. The authors recently went to Paris, and whilst there they couldn’t resist visiting Place Saint-Sulpice to see how it measured up with the version Perec wrote about.
“From reading Perec’s version it’s pretty much an average square and now it’s really flashy,” explains Lester. “I only say that from the experience of reading Perec’s account, but it did seem quite ordinary and it’s very opulent now. I imagine it will be very interesting in 40 years time to see if Hackney will be like that as well.”
An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in London is published by Burning Eye Books. RRP: £9.99 ISBN: 9781909136595
Hackney Council’s caped crusader. Image by Nicola Gaudenzi
An indoor garden with roof. Part of Granby Four Streets by Assemble
A group of architects based in East London has won the Turner Prize for a project that transformed a street of neglected terraced houses in Liverpool.
Assemble, a group of 18 architects and designers, collected the prize last night at a ceremony at the Tramway arts venue in Glasgow.
The group won the prize for its Granby Four Streets project, in which it spectacularly restored a cluster of terraced houses in Toxteth, Liverpool, that had been purchased by the local council after the 1981 Toxteth Riots and been allowed to fall into disrepair.
Working alongside residents, Assemble refurbished the houses in a way that celebrated the area’s architectural and cultural heritage, creating an indoor garden and establishing a monthly market.
It has also established the Granby Workshop, a social enterprise that trains and employs local people to manufacture and sell a range of handmade products, the like of which were used to refurbish the houses.
These items, which were on display in a showroom at the Turner Prize exhibition at the Tramway in Glasgow, are very unlike most of what appears in mainstream homeware shops.
The rich textures and colours of the pieces bespeak the relatively simple processes through which they have been created from raw materials. wall tiles reminiscent of Kandinsky, elegant mantlepieces formed of recycled rubble, one-off ceramic doorknobs, and pressed terracotta lampshades.
Granby Four Streets Axonometric View
Accepting the prize from Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, Assemble member Joseph Halligan said: “I think it’s safe to say this nomination was a surprise to us all. The last six months have been a super surreal experience but it has been an opportunity to start something which we really hope will be with us for a very very long time.”
During its 31-year history the Turner Prize has questioned traditional boundaries of what may be considered art, with Tracey Emin’s My Bed from 1998 a particularly notorious example.
Assemble’s entry is no less bold, as it blurs boundaries between art and architecture and has an explicit social purpose. It is also the first Turner Prize-winning entry that people actually live in.
Hazel Tilley, a resident on Cairns Street who was involved with the project, talked of how a sense of pride had been restored to the community thanks to Assemble.
She told Channel 4: “They brought art into everyday living and everyone has a right to that, because otherwise art just belongs to rich people who live in posh houses and it should belong to everybody – real art is accessible.
“It’s a story of humanity, and if art isn’t about humanity I don’t know what it’s about.”
Assemble is the first collective to win the Turner Prize.
The group was selected ahead of artists Bonnie Camplin, Janice Kerbel and Nicole Wermers for the £25,000 prize, which is awarded annually by Tate to a British artist under 50.
Kamasi Washington (centre) and band. Photograph: Emile Holba
Is jazz the single most esoteric musical form? If so, then no one told Kamasi Washington. The American bandleader, composer and saxophonist this year released not only the best jazz record, but one of the best mainstream albums of the year: the three hour, three-part tour de force The Epic.
“Don’t be afraid to stand up,” said Washington to the as-yet seated audience at the Barbican last month, the band’s first gig in London, dubbed the “hottest ticket in town” by announcer Gilles Peterson.
Arriving on stage with two drummers and three different types of keyboard (including oft-maligned ‘keytar’) it was clear that whatever we were in for, it was indeed going to be epic.
Album opener ‘Changing of the Guard’ started proceedings, saxophone and trombone pumping out a rousing jazz fanfare. The two brass instruments combined magnificently throughout, their jarring pomp undercut by solos of frightening virtuosity.
Electric double-bassist Miles Mosley seemed to being mauling his own instrument with his bear-like hands, making it sound all mangled and distorted, while twin drummers Tony Austin and Ronald Bruner provided a master class with a dueling drummers solo number – each proving with their funk and hip-hop rhythms, their subtlety and all-round ability, that two full drum kits on stage is no extravagance.
Each drummer was introduced with familial tenderness by their bandleader, who explained how important both of them have been to his life and career. Another touching moment came when Washington introduced his own father, Rickey Washington, the man who taught him everything he knows, to accompany the band on flute.
They subsequently launched into ‘Henrietta Our Hero’, about Kamasi’s grandmother and her “battles alone with love”, with Washington Junior’s sax veering from a nostalgic and laconic groove into outbursts of wild musical abandon.
It was a thrilling spectacle, and showcased the singing talents of Patrice Quinn, who coped admirably as a lone vocalist, given that the album opts for a 20-piece choir.
Perhaps to the coldest English heart there was too much sentiment on display, and a laid back version of Debussy’s ‘Clair de Lune’ after such a frenetic opening did seem the wrong choice.
But as the soulful groove of the showstopping final number ‘The Rhythm Changes’ kicked in, the audience was on its feet to salute a special performance, and a band that could one day be considered one of the greats.
Emilia Teglia, founder and artistic director of Odd Eyes Theatre, is putting on a play about cultural clashes in Hackney (dare I say ‘gentrification’).
As such, it was pertinent when we met for coffee that we were faced with two adjacent establishments: a fashionably dingy, wooden stool-ed café full of beards, and a traditional East End caff, complete with full English breakfasts and fluorescent lighting.
It was also a bit awkward, since I assumed we’d go to the flat-white-vending locale. Luckily, Teglia is a woman of principles over coffee bean snobbery, and we went for builder’s tea next door.
Teglia was inspired to write #Haters by an event last year, when a man sought help in a ‘hipster’ Hackney pub, The Bonneville, after being stabbed. “The thing that really spurred me to write this were the comments on social media,” Teglia says.
The initial tweet, by a pub employee, kicked up a storm: “#CSIClapton due to events on Lower Clapton Road this evening, we will unfortunately have to close #WelcomeToHackney”. Followed by: “Some kid got stabbed over the road and decided to run into ours. Great look for our first week.”
Teglia was shocked by the online abuse that followed, from both sides. “It’s like the mass psychology of fascism, this peer pressure on social media. It’s scary, this faceless mob mentality,” she says.
“My first instinct was to say there are no winners. The comments were blatantly aggressive and really stupid, often people saying ‘oh you can’t come here and change our community’. And I’m thinking, well, I liked the fair rents before, but I didn’t really like the knife crime.”
Teglia moved to London 16 years ago, and was initially homeless. “I can relate to both sides,” she says.
“I can see the struggle of opening up a place or putting on an event – the responsibilities and also the excitement. On the other hand, I’m a private renter and a single mother – eventually I’ll have to leave my support system here behind and move out. So I can really feel for both sides.”
In founding Odd Eyes Theatre, Teglia hoped to create “social theatre to open up conversation between people from different backgrounds,” and her latest production – #Haters – is no different.
The play follows two characters on the day that leads up to an event based on the incident at The Bonneville, and is informed by interviews with residents from Hackney – including people who live in the same building as each other, but are required to use different entrances.
“I realised only yesterday,” says Teglia, “after one and a half years working on it, that #Haters is actually Romeo and Juliet. It is about two communities imposing their values on an individual and, instead of building constructive communication to build something new and different, they bring people apart.”
Odd Eyes Theatre has a strong focus on inclusion and participation, and Teglia has aimed to make the production process and event as accessible as possible. “As well as the professional cast, there’s a participation element within the play, workshopped with people from various backgrounds.”
In the research phase though, as well as through rehearsals, what has struck her most has been the fact that – in spite of community conflict – people never fit neatly into identity categories. “I’d interview one person, and think they represent a particular group. And then, as I talked to them, I realised they didn’t fit perfectly anywhere – and that’s what this play is about.”
Teglia believes people are “absolutely ready for a more integrated community. People want their voices to be heard, and I believe London has a respect for individuality that just doesn’t exist elsewhere. It’s why people migrate here.” She believes we need to do away with the nebulous idea of ‘who was here first’, and embrace dialogue to bring people together.
#Haters is being performed at 7.30pm on Friday 11 December at Rich Mix, 35-47 Bethnal Green Road, E1 6LA richmix.org.uk
