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.

From memories of Bowie at the Brixton Book Jam to tales of Cuba in ice-cold Clapham…a good week for literary luvvies in this part of town

Two literary events in the space of five days: what's going on? Next stop Hay-on-Wye?

Well, probably not. But what, on these dead, cold March evenings could be better than a dash to a local shop or a pub, and get a free evening's entertainment from a bunch of talented and fascinating writers?

Well, for a cheapskate old blagger like me, the answer is: not very much. Which is why on Monday evening people queuing for buses around Clapham Common and Acre Lane glimpsed a mad old scarecrow, woolly-hatted, two scarves, two pairs of everything - cycling madly towards Tulse Hill.

Going as fast as possible, against the biting wind, just trying to keep warm. And thus arriving unfashionably early at the Hootananny, Brixton, for the 13th quarterly Brixton Book Jam.

I remember writing these events up during a very short stint on doing listings for the Brixton Blog, and yet I never actually went to one - until this week. And realised immediately what a very fine thing it was that I'd been missing.

The Hootananny is one of those huge old roadhouse pubs that London used to have loads of. Now, they've fallen out of favour, and who knows how long it will be before we're signing petitions to save this one, à la Half Moon in Herne Hill?

No, perish that thought. This place is crazy but it's usually busy, there's music or comedy or something on every night,  there are pool tables, food outdoors in the summer, and it has a little hotel too. The spaces are gloriously old school. For Monday's event, which had tipped its hat to late local boy David Bowie, there were rows of school-hall style chairs arranged across the dance floor.

Some of the anecdotes were memorable, notably those from the legendary photographer of  the Manchester music scene (and Man City), Kevin Cummins.

Instead of plugging any of his books in particular, Kevin ad-libbed a bit about his times shooting David Bowie. The first time when he was still a student and devoted Bowie fan and thus too much in awe of the man to get the shot he wanted (He did get the shot a day or two later on the next stage of the tour, in Leeds).

He told the best story about Bowie I've heard since the man died. It involved Bjork. He also showed a pic taken at an early Smiths gig in Manchester, with two punkish girl fans, and then announced that both these girls were in tonight's audience. "See if you can spot them!" Cringe. But everyone could spot them (especially as he waved the mike at their table).

The second memorable Bowie anecdote came from local artist Nathalie Dubruel, who had been an extra in a shoot for one of Bowie's videos. It was in the early 1980s and the location was the famous Wag Club in Soho (a place I already knew I was too old and dull to get into in 1984 even though I was desperate to be there, having read all about it in The Face).

She told the story with all the enthusiasm of her teenage self, down to the bit where she sees the video for the first time, and see herself dancing directly in from of the (frankly, overdressed) star-man "wearing my Woolworths t-shirt".

It was again instant transportation back to those strange days, when they started making videos for MTV even though we couldn't get it here at the time.

 There were also some good poetic imaginings about, or inspired by, Bowie. Bowie on a cold night in desert in Sudan, watching the tracer shells from some rebel encampment. It was mind-blowing stuff. I think that was Richard Skinner - but there was so much good stuff. That's the thing about a jam. It's a confiture…an embarrassment, almost, of riches, richness.

Another great memory from the Jam will be seeing Marcia Robinson talking about her dad:  Sledge - The Soul of Notting Hill.

She'd written this beautifully-illustrated memoir of her father, Gladstone "Sledge" Robinson, partly to keep his name alive, and because she'd promised him she would. Sledge died back in 2008, tragically, in a house fire which also destroyed most of belongings. By then he was know well beyond his London W11 manor as London's first Rasta Man, one who put up with no end of aggravation from police and others through the 60s and 70s and 80s for the dreadlocks he grew a full decade before anyone here had heard of Bob Marley.

Sledge was one the elders of London's West Indian community, famed for his dreadlocks, and  his bongo drumming on Aswad and Bob Marley tracks.  What was less well known outside the Notting Hill black community was his generosity, his strength as a community leader, and his role as a human rights activist.

He inspired people to stand up for their rights,  Marcia said, and she conveyed very clearly that he was a great man who left an important legacy. And which other pioneer fighter for the UK's law centres and legal aid movement has also been - in his later years - a fashion model and cover star  for GQ magazine?

You could tell, he had taught his daughter well, Marcia was a kind but powerful presence in the room, with a great voice and a great laugh.

One of the writers who attracted me to this event was Martin Millar, who I always thought of as Brixton's own punk novelist, with an early novel, Lux the Poet, set at the time of the 1981 Brixton riots and squatting punks.

But of course Martin Millar is Scottish, and it may not be fanciful nonsense to imagine a bit of a link between his early writing and that of a slightly older Glaswegian surrealist writer Alasdair Gray.

These days he's a successful writer of fantasy fiction, but there's an echo of Lux in his latest  novel, Goddess of Buttercups and Daisies , which is his first historical novel. Alas, I was called away as he started to read, but the bit I picked up made me think he was in a way going back to the good old bad old surreal punk fiction of the 80s….so, he's another one to go check out again.

Debut novelist C D Ross completely changed the mood in the room with a reading from her book, Gangland, as a young mother encounters a gang fight on bonfire night in Clapton, and ends up comforting a stabbed teenager who is probably dying. Powerful, chilling stuff.

So, how do you top all that at a literary event?

Well, you don't need to, there's no topping anyone in this world. Well actually there is, as the final author made very clear. This was the poet Stefan Clark who has just written his first novel, which is "a prequel to Shakespeare's Hamlet set in modern times" called  Love and Blood and the State of Grace.

It was another firework display, a pyrotechnic reading; he put so much energy and malice into the character of the murderous Claud as he sets about humiliating and killing his brother (Harry) that at times you felt like taking cover. Great stuff in the mode of a Brendan Behan, but on who'd  swallowed plenty of Bukowski , a spot of Henry Miller even, with just a hint of an Alexi Sayle style sense of black humour.

So, that was what a book jam is like. If I'd been sceptical, I am now a complete convert. It was jam of the choicest variety, a veritable confiture, Tesco's finest. On bread. With butter.

Oh, and by the way, this being the Brixton Book Jam, in Lambeth,  meant that it also gave time and space to a librarian called Stevie ("luckily for me I work in Southwark") who explained what is happening to the 10 libraries in the borough, and encouraged everyone to sign the Don't Steal Our Libraries petition and  come along to Thursday evening's meeting at Brixton Library. She received such a warm round of applause and cheering that you imagine most of the audience had already signed - but those who hadn't, will have now.

Thank god!

(PS: next Brixton Book Jam is on June 6)

And so, wind back the clock to last Thursday…

… and a five minute walk to the bijou Clapham Books to listen to author Leila Segal reading from Breathe, her collection of nine short stories about Cuba.

She had lived there for several years, first  in Havana, then out west in what sounds like the idyllic province of Pinar del Rio.

Leila read fragments from the stories in a quiet but powerfully expressive way. You immediately got the flavour: it was careful, a tentative approach through which you got these glimpses of a vividly different world.  She really brought the words to life. The small audience - ten people at most, sipping at their free glasses of red wine in the children's books room, were rapt. We nearly all had questions for her. She answered every one, fully. She clearly loves Cuba and loves talking about it, her enthusiasm was infectious and her knowledge deep.

There's a story of a British girl experiencing the sheer sensual pleasure of being at night-club, dancing with Cubans to West Coast rap music.

Another is seen from the pod of an Italian business man.

She's got a good, tough writing style, she doesn't waste words, but she does conjure up places and people with  the flick of literary wrist…a perfect phrase here, a couple of words of dialogue there.

She made me want to go back to Cuba, though from all as he said things are actually a bit harder there now than when we went. All that expectation of the coming "thaw" in US-Cuban relations, it seems, is bringing out a different side, and maybe some of the old insects are going to be scuttling out from underneath the cupboard they've been hiding under for so long.

I bought the book, and scuttled home for more red wine.

Buy these books!

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!