A brief life of Bob in seven songs: radical author stirs up some deep Wailer memories at Brixton Library Black History Month event

Another Black History Month is over,  and you have to admit that Lambeth's events department and the library services organised a really excellent programme of local events. Of dozens of talks, exhibitions,  performances and shows, the event on Wednesday 19 October at Brixton Library was always going to be a big draw: the title, Bob Marley: Roots, Reggae & Revolution - ensured that.

Sure enough by 7pm the seating had all been taken as Bob's totally familiar but always surprising songs kept everyone happy until author Brian Richardson stood up to begin his talk.

Self-effacing from the outset, he joked that he realised most of the audience would probably rather just listen to Marley's music all evening...and of course there's always going to be an element of truth in that. But we also wanted to hear what new things he had to say about such a well-documented modern hero.

Brian Richardson is a prominent activist and campaigner against racism. He's also a practising criminal barrister and - not surprisingly - a deft public speaker. He seemed so modest and self-effacing as he explained the background to his book, and he played the whole event in a very cool and open manner. He straightaway admitted he was indebted to the Booker Prize-winning novel of Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings, for the structure and approach of his book, which chronicles Bob's development against the political turmoil of Jamaica, the USA and the great East-West divide of that era.

In fact he even borrowed a bit of Marlon James' structure for his talk, covering Bob Marley's political and spiritual development in seven songs.

He pointed out how Bob became a musician, a songwriter, an artist - just at the time that the politics and history of newly-independent Jamaica became a microcosm or crucible of all the great global events at the time of decolonisation,  and of the ensuing conflicts, left versus right, rich versus poor, material versus spiritual.

But this was no dry history lecture. As soon as the first song fired up, large parts of the audience were swaying their seats, and just about everyone was smiling. The song was the Wailing Wailers' 1965 hit Simmer Down, which - even so soon after Jamaican independence - showed that the honeymoon was over and that things had got back to normal - poverty, corruption, oppression, violence in the streets.

Over the course of an hour, Brian played six more Marley songs, all of them well-known classics, each capturing a specific phase of the singer's career. We had the obviously political titles sich as Get Up Stand Up,  the reflections on Trenchtown poverty, and his celebration of late 70s London punk meets roots scene in Punky Reggae Party.

That time when The Wailers were more or less in exile in the UK proved to be a rich seam of memories for some of the audience. One guy remembered playing football with Marley in a park, which led on to discussion of the various stories of Bob's toe injury and whether or not it led to his fatal cancer. (Most likely not, is the answer, though it probably didn't help either).

Another audience member was present at the famous open-air One Love Peace concert in Kingston Jamaica, April 22 1978,  when Bob got the two opposing political leaders, Edward Seaga and Michael Manley, to shake hands on stage.

Brian asked if she remembered Peter Tosh's performance earlier at the same event, when, according to some accounts, legend, he gave the two leaders a very critical lecturing, then fired up a giant spliff as a very public display of his opinion of the government's supposed crackdown on ganja smoking. Sadly she couldn't remember - she was very young then, she said. (Other reports suggest it was Jacob Miller who did the most spliff-smoking, but Tosh certainly talked hard politics).

There were other memories of Bob in London, specifically the time when the Wailers performed at a primary school in Peckham, and also of his visits to a Rasta centre in Kennington.

It was this sort of living memory that made the whole event so different. When Brian got onto the Exodus era, with Marley both espousing but also challenging some of the Rastafarian ideas, a big debate broke out. Several very vocal audience members said that  once again - in the light of recent increase in racist attacks in the UK and USA - nothing had changed, and that the only sensible option was to get out of here, take the Black Star Liner back to Ethiopia, re-patriation, to turn their backs on rotten Babylon.

Others disagreed, saying they were here to stay, British citizens, with exactly the same rights as any other, and that this status was not up for negotiation. To an ancient and fairly dumb baldhead like me it was surprising, even sad, that this debate has resurfaced, or bubbled up, gained new heat, what 35 years after the first Brixton riots proved a wake-up call to an essentially racist establishment.

So, it is taking the establishment a veyr long time to get out of bed, and recent events suggest it's eyelids are once again drooping. But what did we see in Brixton just a month before, the Black Lives Matter movement. Have things gone right back to the 60s? Brexit and Trump suggest that's getting dangerously close to reailty.

But this was a great event, and we need more. It was packed out, lively and reasonably mixed in terms of age and ethnicity - though to be honest, seeing how Brixton is now, I'm surprised there weren't more young white hispter types there. We left soon after the speechifying finished at about 9, but according to sources it seems it went on way past official closing time, when debate gave way to music, and everyone turned to dancing. Exactly how any event in the name of Bob Marley  should end.

Bob Marley: Roots, Reggae & Revolution by Brian Richardson, published by Redwords, February 2016, available from the Bookmarks, the socialist bookshop, at £7.99 plus £2.50 postage.

Al-Jazeera on the end of SARM studios

Just in case you think I am a stupid old nutter, ranting on about the modern world and how it's ruining London…. read this article on Al-Jazeera.

Yep, the Qatari-based news channel is running this story about the rampant greed that is currently destroying the cultural fabric of this strange "city" we live in.

The studio in question, SARM,  is famous for many reasons - Queen, Bob Marley, Band Aid and many others - but the point is that there are only so many of these iconic places left in London.

And the real point, behind this point, is that the people who own these places are now under irresistible pressure to sell up and move out. It no longer makes economic sense to run a a recording studio - that is, a space equipped for the production of a highly valued global commodity, popular music - in the central zones of this city.

A music factory - one week's recording of artists such as  those named above might produce a return of a hundred million over a decade - is simply not profitable enough in a "city" where similar sums can be made in a few days or weeks by hedge funds.

About the only creative industry that can still survive in central LOndon (apart from creative accountancy) is fine art  - and that is thanks to the curious bastard child of the art-marketing revolution of the 1990s, Frieze and all that - that fine art has become a high-value commodity on a par with arms or diamonds.

Earlier today, on the excellent Robert Elms Show on Radio London,  I heard a musician lamenting  there was only one full-size recording studio left in this city, Abbey Road.

 Once they've all been turned into expensive places for expensive people to spend a few weeks of the year shopping in expensive shops or doing deals - well, the next generation will have very little reason to be interested in this brutal Thames-side mudflat settlement that was once so attractive.

It is now,  visibly,  the place to come to spend the vast amounts of money you have acquired by crushing the spirits of millions of others in other parts of the world.

We live by the river. We watch Waterloo sunsets, we know it's the Great Wen. We don't do the Lambeth Walk and we don't want to go to Chelsea.  I was there this afternoon and I tell you, it is  dull, dull, dull these days.

SO, if we manage to dodge their 4 x 4 wagons on our bikes on our way to our little part-time jobs selling things to these very rich people, or pampering them, or building the next block they can invest in - what happens next?  Is there somewhere for us to live or must we move away, back to Croydon?

No, Croydon is undergoing re-generation and re-gentrification. You will have to go elsewhere.

Jah will forgive you, Mr Independent man!

A truly weird piece in tonight's Evening Standard, so odd you wonder what the hidden agenda might be. Ostensibly it's a brief lament by Amol Rajan, the editor of The Independent (a Standard stablemate) - bemoaning the lack of decent reggae nights in London these days.

First reaction - yes, agree - you get much better reggae nights in Leeds, or Brighton, or Dusseldorf, or Osaka these days. So much as I sympathize, it just seems odd - and pretty damn obvious. Reggae as we knew and loved it , roots rock reggae -  peaked in the mid-1970s with artists like Marley, Toots, Culture, Burning Spear, and their many many friends, followers, and copiers.

Some would put the golden age even earlier, with the Studio One recordings of the late 1960s or with Joe Gibbs, King Tubby, etc, and then Lee Perry's Ark.

So the best reggae is already around 40 years old, the music of a generation who are now pensioners. Why would there be great reggae nights in London? It is a reivivalist thing, just like 60s pop and prog and punk and 80s and disco. But roots rock reggae has yet to have that sort of revival in London. "Cool" young Londoners seem to prefer cheesier stuff,  music they can get ironic about, tacky things that have kitsch value.

But, stranger still, Mr Rajan goes on to berate the new generation of London MCs for pumping  out too much rastafarian propaganda and being rather too, well, anti-establishment.

At one point at a Shoreditch nightclub he says he was almost moved to get up on stage to defend the capitalist system.

As the great Joseph Hill of Culture laugh-shouts on "Two Sevens Clash", "he said wha-a-a-at?"

If he doesn't like the rebellious bit, or the spiritual bit, what on earth is it about reggae that this fellow liked so much 15 years ago? Take way the Rastas, the roots, take away the rebellion, and you take away about three-quarters of the good stuff. You're left with a bit of dear old Greg Isaacs when he got all smoochy and sexy, the lover's rock people, and dancehall.

No doubt many of the tenets of Rastafarianism do seem a bit dotty to sophisticated north London secularists of 2013, but without it you'd not have some of the most beautiful, powerful songs of that era. The Congos, War in a Babylon, Exodus, Do you remember the Days of Slavery, Do not forget Old Marcus Garvey, the Twinkle Brothers' Since I threw the Comb Away etc etc etc etc ad infinitum, all the way to Armagiddeon Time itself!

When reggae did break away from the rastas, from its roots and its consciousness, under commercial and political pressure in the 1980s,  it went pretty bad in place. So bad it was rather good, sometimes, but also pretty horrible in others. Rasta was replaced by sex and crime and violence and boasting and  bling. Dancehall reggae, ragga, all that stuff packed with syn-drum beats and exaggerated bleeps and crude mixes, the big bad trouser mob, MC Hammer etc, the toasting duelling types, you know.

If you reckon a dub-step MC in Shoreditch is getting too rootsy, too damn righteous and religious,  what you be looking for? You want it to snuggle up to the big brands, the big money, the TV ads? Do you want UB40 or do you want reggae?

What did Mr Marley say about hitting  us with music? What was reggae  but rebel music? What did LKJ say about reggae? What did Fela Kuti say about music, being the weapon? There are "conscious" reggae artists around now, including the Marley son Damien, and lots of young people all around the world. Often they try too hard to sound like Bob, and don't really take it any further.

It's difficult to untangle such a universal sound as reggae, which is now used  for so many marketing purposes, a billion miles from the original messages, from the backstreets of Trenchtown, the police, the thieves, and the all-knowing, everlasting mercy of Jah.

Now reggae is just another beat tuned into a billion music apps, the rasta colours just another fashion statement for the likes of Adidas.  Some of the worst offenders should know better: the Marley family themselves, using Bob's inheritance to sell fizzy drinks.

Shame on them all!

Notting Hill, the Carnival, and the weird transitions between London postcodes

I spent most of last two days in London W10 and W11. Yes, am an addict, and my drug is the Notting Hill Carnival. Been there most years since 1977, sometimes just for a few snatched hours, sometimes - as this time - for the duration. Sometimes with friends or children, but more often alone.

This year was again wonderful, the weather was perfect, the crowds were huge but mainly amiable, the masqueraders seemed even more beautiful and talented than ever, the sounds were sharper, the scents sweeter, and the old medicine seemed to be as strong as ever it was.

God knows, I am 60, I could never dance in public and I am worse now than ever I was. I don't even get drunk or stoned, particularly,  but I do get very high on the atmosphere, on the sound and physical experience. Seven hours walking, two tins of Red Stripe and a pack of peanuts and ready for more.

The crowds today were by no means the biggest ever, and yet every so often you'd get into those human funnels where you realised you had no choice, you were no longer a free individual, you had to move according to the crowd, to get through to the next space.

During these progressions you make brief eye contact - and sometimes involuntary contact of large areas of other parts of the body - with dozens of strangers. Some are trying to dance, some are trying to move on, some are trying to sell you something, some are out of their heads with joy, some look frightened, some are threatening and (if you are lucky) elbowing you out of the way.

Typically, if the music's good, at the end of the tunnel I turn round and go back through it again, just for the hellish joy of it.

Try doing this in All Saint's Road at 4pm on the Monday of Carnival. Or on Ledbury Road, or around Gaz's on Talbot Road.

The route takes you back time and again to the Carnival procession, and each time you see to meet the same big Trinidadian floats with the pounding soca, the head-dresses and flour and chocolate-smearing and pigment-hurling and the ropes and the grinding of bodies against bodies and the machine-gunning electronic sounds, the MCs' endless goadings and geeings-up, their stern reproaches to a crowd which isn't responding enough, kicking up the dust.

And already it's 7.30pm and there's still a line of  six or so big floats lined up down Westbourne Grove, things seems to be cranked up beyond maximum for these last precious minutes of Carnival. We all know there's nothing to look forward to from tomorrow except nine months of winter.

Light fades, I'm off on a bike through the orderly streets of Bayswater, prim Moscow Road etc,  and through into the park, down by the Serpentine and suddenly gliding into a world which retrieves memories of Istanbul and Dubai, a Middle Eastern evening, families out wandering, threes of women in full black burka, the children let loose,  cycling, scooting, skating around their parents and big brothers and sisters, the families crowding out the café and restaurant, all moving, slowly in the same formations you might see in Beirut or Cairo or Riyadh, I suppose, I imagine.

It works tonight in that magic August twilight. The air still warm enough, and lightly scented from the rose gardens. It is still wonderfully balmy in the dark green dusk.  Next week it may well be gone, it will just be a London autumn evening. Cycling on, down across Knightsbridge, the streets choked with the huge parked Range Rovers and Bentleys and Mercs and so on of these families, often showing Gulf state number plates.

Two minutes later passing the bus queues around Sloane Square, lots of Carnival leavers finding their own routes back south of the river, the strange meetings of these different worlds within  two or three postcodes, from the Carnival heartland of W10 through the mixed ethnic flavours and dead poshness of W2,  W11, SW7,  SW3....then over the bridge into the  homeland horror of SW4.

Stranger still is the way I assume I know which person is the child of super-wealthy Gulf state family, in London for the summer, and which is the teenager trekking back home to some council flat in Streatham after another great Carnival.

On this August Bank Holiday evening, the scented groves of Hyde Park work some magic, and I am completely subject to its spell.

I know nothing but I once again feel like Jah Wobble's last lines on that Invaders of the Heart album, Take Me to God:  ".....I Love Everyone..... L-o-o-o-v-e-a-a-a-h-h-h!!!!"