Best pub in SW4: here's to The Bread and Roses and its under-appreciated music

It's a well-known and much-loved pub a few minutes walk from the mini-Babylon of Clapham High Street. It's 10.30 on a summer Friday evening, there's a great African band in full flight on stage, and there are - what - at most 25 people in the audience.

It's the http://www.breadandrosespub.com/whats-on.html, and almost every week they put on free live music, with a leaning towards soul, funk,  reggae,  jazz, and other, similarly danceable styles.

The pub - which is owned and managed by the Battersea & Wandsworth Trade Unions Council, the only trades union run pub in London  - also has a lively upstairs theatre, and runs popular comedy and open mic nights.

Last week they had a group of musicians led by a koura player from Burkina Faso, Boubacar Kafando & The Zaama Nooma Band. They played for over two hours, setting the air on fire with long, hypnotically rhythmic pieces, the deeply funky bass and drum kit section offset by this amazing koura player, who at times seems to levitate to some sort of astral plane all his own.

It reminded me of the great days of Afrobeat from the 70s, 20-minute tracks building up to multiple climaxes....and all this in a small pub next to my GP surgery. I love this place!

The pub is all embracing, all-welcoming, serving an incredibly wide demographic, the full range of ages equally represented. They do get the hordes of youngish types out for a night in Clapham, topping up on reasonable (for these areas) beer prices before they move on to the pricier bars on the high street, or whatever.

There's a constant flow of regulars through the evening, dropping in and out, many from the adjacent Clapham Manor Estate, decent low-rise social housing just across the road from hugely expensive early Victorian terraced houses. And usually a few old geezers like me nursing a pint and a half for an hour or two.
Check this place out, it's one of the best places in London to see new and up and coming bands, singers, poets, comedians; there are regular soul, blues and reggae nights. Dance, drink, eat, celebrate!

Update April 4 2020: Obviously, like every other pub, The Bread and Roses has had to shut down for the duration of the Covid-19 pandemic. I revived this post to remind myself of better times and maybe in the hope it finds its way into the minds of a few others who will make the trek to SW4 to experience this gem of a place for themselves. The original story does not mention that the B & R also does great food, and has a large conservatory area and a garden, as well as a terrace out fron which is popular with smokers etc....it really is the perfect place for socialising, any day of the week. Please god it survives!

Old Town old school big night out: Maroon Town bring classic ska back to Clapham Manor Street

Maroon Town at Bread and Roses, Clapham, 20 Novermber 2015. Come
back soon, please!

Everyone knows Bread and Roses in Clapham Manor Street is a great pub, perhaps the only pub left in SW4 you feel good going into.

Apart from being the only trade union-owned pub I know of (anywhere), this pub has always been a delight to visit, if only because of just how unlikely it even exists any more, least of all in banker-rich SW4.

But here it still is, the beer prices are still a bit less than your average Clapham boozer, and they still put on great nights of music, comedy, poetry, theatre, the lot.

Last night was a case in point. The normal irresistible urge, to head uptown on a Friday or Saturday night, was easy to resist as temperatures plunged to zero.  Somewhere I'd read that a well-known ska band was playing at Bread & Roses this weekend.

I had seen the band - Maroon Town - ages ago, maybe late 80s, and always wanted to see them again. Last night in Clapham Manor Street I realised why.

Even tuning up the band were capable of sending the electric charge down your spine, when suddenly a rocksteady guitar chop meets a bass-line on the way down, and a drum kicks in at exactly the right wrong moment.

For a while there were more musicians on stage (nine) than audience, or so it seemed - but  there was a good last-minute influx, looked like some good old original skins were there, pork-pie hat identified, buzz cut boys now in the mid to late, but still swearing well.

Clear as hell this band are going to demand a party, and there's no way they'll be playing much if people don't move. People moved all right, alright, they need not have worried.

People were there to dance. There were the loyal fans, the friends and family, all dancing beautifully. And lots of young Europeans, all dancing lustily.

Can't remember much - the music was like the blood in your veins, pulsing very healthily. There was a ska version of the Herbie Hancock standard Chameleon which had tears streaming down my face (why? cos this was the tune my daughter chose for her GCSE dance piece).

Though, to be honest, it takes very little to get my tear ducts over-producing these days.

That and four pints of London pride.

I loved their opening number, Boom! Ska! and I loved their Afro-Cuban-Latino stuff as well. And then they did one of their classics, I think it's Average Man - anyway, by then all inhibition had flown, and ill-advised feet were lifting far off the floor, knees angling away, head down, fingers pointing down, oh gawd.

Sorry, anyone I bumped into, anyone whose enjoyment of this evening was lessened by the spectacle of an aged string-driven animated skanking scarecrow.

Thanks, anyway, to Bread and Roses and the whole Maroon Town community.

And if you'd like to check out some of their music, here's a good place to start: Average Man.

And here's another one.