Did you know that Depeche Mode recorded their debut album in a Forest Gate basement? Or that a launch party at the Clays Lane housing co-op in Stratford helped bring Anokha’s Asian underground sound into the spotlight?
For decades, the East End has been at the heart of the international music scene. In the 1970s and 1980s, iconic venues such as the Lotus and Granada hosted the Kinks, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Stevie Wonder, Black Sabbath, the Temptations and many other world-famous acts.
Now a new project celebrates the incredibly rich musical heritage of local neighbourhoods where pubs, clubs, co-ops and youth centres have been hives of musical innovation.
Sound Waves: Music in Newham, which launched on 8 November, includes a website, a book, a film series and several pop-up exhibitions that together explore how music developed in the area.
The programme of activities and events, produced by Rendezvous Projects following two years of intensive research, is based around stories, and each story is rooted in a venue.
These range from shebeens in private houses to youth clubs like the Hartley, where reggae and punk collided. Reggae sound system culture laid the foundation for hardcore and jungle through De Underground Records, and later fed into grime in the 2000s, with pirate radio station Deja Vu transmitting from the roof of EQ nightclub.
There was a strong DIY spirit in many of these ventures, which were run on incredibly small budgets; they succeeded because those involved had a knack for findings ingenious ways to bring music to the people.
Newham’s venues were also sites of solidarity and resistance. The borough hosted the very first Rock Against Racism gig at the Princess Alice pub. It also played host to mass rallies organised by the Newham Monitoring Project, which drew crowds of up to 15,000 people, and later became the setting for a landmark event in UK club culture - the country’s first legal rave, organised by Raindance.
Sound Waves highlights the artists shaped by these venues and the communities around them. These include Rudy Tambala of AR Kane, pioneers of the dreampop genre; Lord Kimo of Asian Dub Foundation; singer-songwriter Carol Grimes; punk activist Zillah Minx; promoter Kenny ‘Sting’ King; hip hop DJ Pogo; and singer and activist Sonia Mehta. The project also includes the memories of Matt Johnson of The The, who grew up in the Two Puddings pub, a venue that continues to loom large in Newham’s cultural history.
You know the music, now immerse yourself in the people who made it happen by sampling some of the many fine offerings brought to us by Sound Waves.
Sound Waves: Music in Newham edited by Katherine Green is published by Rendezvous Projects and Newham Music. ISBN: 978-1919279701; RRP: £10.
Pop-up exhibitions: Beckton Library (until 13 December); Plaistow Library (10-26 November; Stratford Library (until 26 November).
