WOEBOT

The End.

If you're ever in The Rough Trade shop in Portobello in London, look beneath their wall-mounted record-sleeves and you'll see the promo posters I put up there ten years ago. Weird that they're still there. I tried to sell the Documentary on Video through Rough Trade and Fat Cat. Two copies bought! It's been truly great to be able to do the project some justice, and to that end thank you to everyone for hearing me out, thank you to all the downloading crew for giving me your bandwidth and thanks for all the generous comments around the nerdospere.

Before I shed this forever (shield your eyes as this might be painful, like watching the little bloke climbing to the top board at the swimming pool before pulling a spectacular belly-flop); I just wanted to touch on the meaning of what I was trying to do. I always liked Brian Eno's maxim that pretentiousness is in fact a good thing. Seems like everywhere one looks these days there is a dearth of meaning, a terror of making grand pronouncements. The thing about "meaning" is that you don't HAVE to buy what the person is saying; you don't HAVE to agree with it. With the African trip I was trying to imagine a world in which the West wasn't a fortress, where there was no stigma attached to the colour of one's skin and where cultures were in true dialogue. Speaking personally, for a few weeks all those years ago everything felt possible.

Questions and Answers.

My esteemed colleague Paul "Parkinson" Meme, the Dick Dastardly of UK Dance, and Acid House Legend (some of these rumours!) wanted me to answer a few questions about the trip here. I was in two minds as whether this was a good idea, feeling a wee bit precious about this week, but this is a blog, and part of the fun of blogs is being in discourse with your peers, not always setting one's sights for one's naval. Gosh it's all VERY flattering! I've managed not to repeat myself too much, and in any case a bit of repetition might prove useful to ram some points home. I look lovely in blue.

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Can you clarify what must be the biggest question – DID AFRICAN PEOPLE LIKE TECHNO? Did they get down to it? Did they “get it”? Did they think you were a bunch of crazy whiteys who were there to be indulged for the entertainment value but not to be taken seriously, musically speaking?

Techno was no big deal, the Africans we met were totally unfazed by it. Had heard it before. The little kids loved it. A bit older (over 18) and people had a slightly cooler reaction. Hipsters! The only shame with the encoded film as it stands is that you can't see the INCREDIBLE dancing people were doing. That's the best case for showing how people liked it. YES, in short.

Were they hip hop fans and if so did that mean they had a good grasp of techno – or did they understand it anyway?

Definitely into Hip-Hop (you heard Trikont's Africa Raps Comp?) Hugely into Ragga. They knew Techno, but were mostly interested in beats as a setting, so we got drafted into their way of things, in effect providing the riddim.

Which records went down best where?

People liked everything, though the "harder" euro stuff, like that track Mike played on the beach didn’t really go down too well, and the Detroit and Chicago tracks were basically more popular than anything else.

Didn’t they find all this instrumental wibbling a bit austere compared to the vocal-centric warmth of much African music?

No. The more traditional African music is "emptier" and “weirder” than straight African Pop. Bouba was of the Bambara tribe who inhabit Mali, Senegal, Guinea and The Gambia and performed in a big traditional troupe. We used to listen to tapes of his outfit. I think he had the same relationship to it as we might have with going to Church at Christmas, does that takes the sex out of the "Techno-Primitive" angle?

Did any of this dance music stuff make sense without, like, the drugs?

Well we WERE smoking weed and drinking. Yeah of course it made sense! The thing is about the mass ecstacy abandon thing is that there's no real place for that in the culture. The way our crew INSISTED on running things, form a big circle and people take turns dancing in the middle, was the form. That's how things are done out there "traditionally." What was weird was how the whole cultural imperialism angle collapsed when we were out there, we were slotted into their way of doing things both in the way the dance was run and with the music, which was effectively substituted for djembe (drums) in the equation djembe+singers+crowd=party. Though of course on the other hand, Bouba and Waya were like our MC cheerleaders, opening people up to the experience. In the clubs things weren't organised "traditionally" like that, but clubbing per se was a very cosmopolitan and smart thing to do, only available to a mere fragment of the population. You'd dress up, and wouldn't get too "messy."

Did any of the locals want to have a go on the decks? (I assume Africa has DJs…) If so did you let them?

There are quite swish clubs in Dakar. El Hadji Ndiaye, who was the other superstar in Etoile de Dakar alongside Youssou N'Dour showed us his club outside the city, and it was very smart indeed. We played another very chic club in Dakar (with an AMAZING record collection!) but it was empty. They mucked about a bit on the decks though largely people were much more interested in taking the mic, singers and rappers, everyone had a bash. I think Jamaica's way with "hi-tech" is the way it will go/has gone out there. Electronic music as a backing for vocals, not necessarily as a stand-alone, though that would be thrilling.....

What was the biggest crowd you played to?

About 200-300 at the street-rave in Dakar.

Did you pull?

No. I was going out with the DJ’s sister.

Did you REALLY look like SUCH a miserable fucker all the way through the trip?

Yes. Though inside I was grinning.

The Music We Played.

We played lots of records in West Africa. We had records from Mike's collection (which was jointly owned by Mike, Lloyd and Nick Beryl), records which Mike borrowed from Keith* and Watty (who were Pure) and my own records.

We played records from Detroit (see my 29 Detroit records breakdown) not just obscure stuff but all the classics "It is what it is", "Wanderer",The Bango E.P, 4 Jazz Funk Classics, "The Sound", "Take Me Away", "The Beginning", "War of the Worlds", "Wiggin", "Beyond the Dance", "All for Lee Sah" etc. We played New York records like Beltram's "Codes", "Energy Flash" and "Major Problems", Bobby Konder's "Rydims" and "The Poem", the Gypsymen's "Bounce", and Royal Orchestra Ltd's "Get Down." We played Arty European Techno like TSFOL's early Principles of Motion EP, The Black Dog's "Apt" and "Parallel", ART 2.1 and 2.2, Orbital's "Chime" and "Belfast", amazing Eevo Lute stuff like Wladimir M's "Evil" and Florence's "Vineyard" and The Diceman's "Polygon Window." We played early DJAX beats records like Morning Glory Seeds and Like A Tim (Mike LOVED these). We played weird house like Bang The Party's "Release your Body" and, of course No Smoke's "Koro Koro." We played ALL the Murk records, bitchin' Miami house, "Together", "Reach for Me", "U Got Me" and "Release Myself". Then there were the strange tracks that didn't fit any category remixes like Moby's mix of Fortran 5's "Heart on the line", oddball Italian House like Girls on Pills "Na Copessa Nini", Sasha's "Heavenly Trance" (don't knock it till you've heard it), and Nexus 21's remix of Paris Grey's "Don't Lead Me."

What colour is Techno? What a stupid question? The whole point is that it has no colour at all, even though we were at pains to point out that, as we saw it, it was essentially an Afro-american ting. I would say that 40% of what we played was from Detroit, 20% was the stuff described above, and a very healthy 40% was music from Chicago. Dat's right deffo, Chicago!

I made a big play of poor ol' Detroit in my rampaging vinyl break-out in July. But Chicago? Short of one reissue on Rephlex, this music has been pretty much ignored. There was the ABSOLUTELY AMAZING "Influences" Compilation which came out on WARP, and which spun me round in the shop when I first picked it up; "You mean these tracks which I've only come across in a word-of-mouth fashion are actually the accepted classics of the genre?" It was a bit like the experience of picking Simon Reynolds' "Energy Flash" and finding one's 1990s laid out like it had been the place to be, like it had actually meant something, as if it wasn't a disjunctured collage of free-floating random experiences.

People talk about the suppressed-identity nature of Detroit Techno, but Chicago's musicians are swathed in mystery, and it's not some media-construction, no-one knows the slightest thing about them. Well I don't anyway! Look at all these bare utilitarian labels, they tell you what you absolutely need to know, but nothing else. I believe this era of Chi-town music, that's to say after Acid and before the glossy more knowing Prescription Underground and Relief labels, is the bollocks. One listen to Superpitcher's "Mushroom", Matthew Johnson's "Typerope" or Ricardo Villalobos's "Dexter" (the best Microhouse, in short) and if you're not firmly of the opinion that Steve Poindexter is their daddy, THE DADDY, then you need your ears cleaning out. I couldn't help but notice a Chicago remix project just got released on Kompakt in the vein of "respect the originals." And what's more Chicago Trax of this era aren't super-polite, ever so nicely compressed super-naff coffee-table muzak like Microhouse can tend to be. This stuff is the most vicious, brutal, tinittus-inducing, ugly and raw music you'll ever hear. It's monotony is thrilling, it's as if the raw essence of JACK has been discovered, all the trimmings stripped-away.

All Steve Poindexter. We CANED these tunes. All brittle micro-inflexions, drums punching too loud, his signature whistles (as if in honest reflection upon the zone of consumption, a sweaty drug-fucked dancehall, eyeballs on stalks), quasi-acid noises, rolling bleep patterns like on "Computer Madness" sucking the riddim behind them, my absolute fucking favourite the grumbling, paranoid, utterly self-absorbed bassline of "Mental Problems." This man is a god.

What do I know about Da Posse? Absolutely zilch. All these three classic tracks. My favourite being "It's my life." When I first heard this I was totally sold on the deeper vein of Chicago music. Before I turned onto these tracks I'd been into Hardcore. Things like The Criminal Minds "Baptised by Dub", Rum & Black, The Scientist/DJ Hype's "The Bee", those were tunes I had as early as 1992, but this Chicago stuff was so empty, so thoughtless, so unaffected. I switched camps. In fact "It's my life" always made me think of Nick Drake's "Pink Moon" LP, same nihilistic beauteous logic.

Lil we all know from French Kiss. "Blackout" omitted here, don't have it anymore. Lil's tracks are thoroughly odd, not remotely like anyone else's. "Frequency" almost sounds like an electro throwback, the rhythmic structure doesn't fit in with anyone else's. Indeed there's quite alot of rhythmic heterogeneity with all this music. Quite like Jungle pre-amen in that respect. With Chicago it's probably a hangover from Disco, and the DJs comfort with odyshape rhythmic patterns (a result of having the chops to mix drums played by human-beings). If you didn't know (give me a minute and I'll tell you) the Detroit "tradition" comes direct from Planet-Rock via Cybotron. Detroit Techno is in fact a mutation of Hip-Hop. Chicago House descends from Disco, specifically things like Patrick Cowley. Chicago and Detroit, totally different things. The linear thing in Chicago trax? That's a disco thing too, trance dance! "How I feel" is a beautiful tear-stained ambient track.

We did play alot of Acid! Armando's "151" and "Land of Confusion", Jamie Principle's "Baby wants to Ride", "Fantasy Girl" etc. Acid is great. The thing with it is it's so elastic, "Reck the Joint" off the Enter into Fantasy the perfect example of this. You hear things like the excerable Hardfloor "Hard Trance Acperience" record and it's so locked-down, also claustrophobic. I wish I had all the records we played in Senegal. (sighs) I do see things we had from time-to-time in second-hand shops and the feeling of connection is astonishing. My records which I took out there I inscribed with a tiny "M" on the label so as to avoid fights with Mike when I got home, and of course ten years later I still have them. Cradling them is so strange, they were there in the dust and heat. I'm sure I'm boring the tits off everyone with this African trip, but it means alot to me. It dates from a time when people REALLY thought music revolutionary. It was totally, wonderfully, bonkers but the rhetoric around Acid House was massively punky and over-optimistic. Real "we're gonna change the world" style. People don't seem to get that worked up these days, it's all style and retrenchment. Let's hope all that changes again soon...

Exquisite pre-ambient house. Virgo and ME the same outfit. I think the Basic Channel sound owes an enormous debt to Virgo. The only thing I thought cut through the bullshit in their recent Wire interview was a reflection that Acid constituted a "year-zero", everyone sold ALL their records and dug deep into piles of anonymous 12"s. Seems like everyone's forgotten, or no-one gives a toss, that Larry Heard's drumless mixes of Finger Inc. were the primary inspiration to Alex "The Orb" Patterson, and it was that wave of ambient-techno which leveraged into IDM and electronica. It was the escape-route. These two records are stunningly beautiful.

This dude seems to have got a bit slagged off. I've no IDEA why? "Ambulance" and "Circus Bells" as tracky and evil as they could be.

Weeps. Made when he was 14 I think? Felix the Housecat something like 13 when he made "Phantasy Girl." I'm only sorry I don't have this on Muzique, which if you don't know already, is one of THEE great labels ever. Period. Up there with Studio One. This 3-tracker possibly the greatest record of this era of Chicago. "Making Love" my favourite. Ron Trent went on to make soul-inflected house records. We actually played Joe Smooth's "Promised Land" alot in Senegal. That's a beautiful tune too. I have that somewhere.

While we're on the Muzique tip. Two more GREAT records. Mike Dunn had a bit of success with "God make Funky" (which I didn't like) and successfully linked up with Tresor. Instead of reissuing Lloyd Barnes why doesn't Maurizio put out a bleeding Muzique compilation. I dunno, I'm forever giving these people hot tips. Where's my commission?

And of course "The Jungle" too. One of the other auteurs.

Larry Heard. The comeback king! "Can you feel it?", yes we can! These are superb. The Jack Trax double LP "Another Side" is cool, I have that somewhere, though "Feeling Sleazy" is by far and away the best track on it.

Cajmere, who soon after these records had a big hit with "Brighter Days" and Clubhouse transformed into Relief. I have another one by Dana on this label, but that didn't come to Africa with us. These two are amazing. "Jouse" is totally weird, a bassline sampled from a double-bass, a flute loop and no drums. "I'm a dreamer" features a Charlie Parker-style saxaphone as a hook. It's all VERY Arthur Russell-ish. Quite unlike the electronic textures in evidence on all these other records. Clubhouse, shh, whisper it!

Damn I love these records! Mention must be made to other Chicago tracks that I missed here which we played particularly Armando's "100% of Dissin you" and "House music all Night Long", the latter of which is a Hip-House track with an MC who sounds like 90s British TV exercise guru Mr.Motivator!

Photos.

Here is a selection of photos from our trip. These were taken by Ed Maw aka Bismillah Raxmani Rahim of Inglistan. Above are Mike (in a choice Clubhouse T) and Bouba striding out in style. Apologies for the sheer horror induced by any photos of me.

At the time I was really wrapped up in this insane project and missed alot of Senegal itself. Ed's very patient, observant and sympathetic to boot. Also it's important to observe that we weren't staying in the Carlton Dakar. We ate and kipped with our very gracious hosts in mud-houses and communal squats.

Tomorrow to wrap things up we've a little discographical style piece, with a spotlight on Chicago.

***CLICK HERE TO START AND CLICK ON EACH IMAGE TO GO THROUGH THEM***

The Main Feature.

Watch it here.

Echo.

".....welding and regeneration will be the pattern for African art. Many of the foreign influences that have penetrated Africa will be incorporated into a new form of black African art. This form of initiation may be deplored by those with deep-seated conservative or racialist tendencies, but far from resulting in a bastardised and damaging modernism, we believe this mutation will breathe new life into African art and will demonstrate the triumph of humanism and universality over esoteric sterility." Francis Bebey.

In July 1993 I took a Techno Sound-system to West Africa and made a documentary. We weren't necessarily the first to pull off this "stunt", to this day I hear (what might be urban myths) of raves in Ethiopia, parties in smashed up Mosques, and also more "bread'n'butter" reports of Fatboy Slim touring South Africa. Not forgetting to omit stories of Africa's own Acid-house parties, mention of which we came across in Dakar. But this project was orientated by a thorough concept AND we filmed it. The trip was supposed to be a means of exploring a whole host of ideas. Was there any connection between African music and Techno? How far had the diaspora travelled from it's source? Was African music always going to be viewed in the West's eyes as traditional? Could African youth identify with the machinic alienation of Techno? How would Techno be appropriated outside of it's usual Socio-cultural structures? Would the music wither without a context? Was "electronic technology" viable in a hot and humid climate? Was there a future for a (poly-rhythmic) West African electronic music? A Would it matter that we were a bunch of white kids? Would the venture degenerate into a "Heart of Darkness" style nightmare? Of course lurking behind these questions more important ones.

The transatlantic ping-pong game is well documented. Check Paul Gilroy's hard-thought text "The Black Atlantic." From Malian Griots to Delta Bluesmen. From Blue Note Jazz to figures like 1950's Senegal's Dexter Johnson. From West African Drum patterns to James Brown's locked groove back to Fela's top-heavy horn sections. From Manu Dibango's disproportionally massive influence on Disco to Africa's own sea of Disco. From Sunny Ade's shimmering Juju to Talking Heads' echoated funk. From Bob Marley's afro-centric posturings to Sonny Okosuns. In fact, in the 80's more Reggae records were sold in West Africa than anywhere else in the world. The signal splitting and refracting each time, becoming engulfed in a noise impossible to divine. We're not even touching on the Latin-to-African continuum which was strong in Senegal with Etoile de Dakar's pioneering Mbalax, an Africanised spin-off of Cuban music. The current becoming more one-way in recent years as Africa absorbs Dancehall and Hip-Hop while less artists from the West look to it for inspiration (though Ibadan and The Masters at Work?). Not that there isn't a bounty of forms ripe for transfiguration. It was possible to view the cod-primitive posturing of Techno (see Hardfloor's "Yeke Yeke" remix), and in the case of Detroit it's rhythmic pizzazzz as having subtle echoes of African music, but was the connection tenuous?

Tenuous? Not that it mattered if it was! Part of the fun was the stark polarity of what we were suggesting and it's heretical element. How dare we sully African music? Nowadays in the West the worlds of Techno and African music are not as distant as they once were. Carl Craig is remixing all kinds of world music. Talking Loud are producing boxes of Fela Kuti. The African reissue project has been spearheaded by (er...now defunkt) labels like Nuphonic and Strut with their roots in Acid House. In fact Techno is pretty acceptable qua "music", whereas back in 1993 it was still struggling to separate itself from its hooligan brother Ardkore, still saddled with the drug-noise tag (wink). When it came to arguing for Techno's artistry (we don't consider this...once we did) with the World music community, you should have witnessed the pitched battles fought, hour long bloody phone calls with intransigent World music academics.

I'll give all credit to David Toop. His Post-Colonial Fourth-World Hybrid Techno-Pagan Global Futurist Top 20 Chart in The Wire, Issue February 1992, planted the seed. He was also incredibly generous to this deeply obnoxious 22 year-old, and opened his address book to help us getting the ball rolling. Toop had been down this road before himself, having released ethnographic music on his Quartz label and having produced with Musa Kalamulah music by "African Connexion", who dabbled with similar notions. In the very involved pre-production stage I spoke with: Sue Steward (horrified by the idea); Lucy Duran at SOAS (even MORE horrified by the idea); Ricky Steens, Fela Kuti's awesomely laid-back manager (no problem BUT don't go to Nigeria you'll wind up dead); Jumbo Vanrennan, head honcho of Earthworks, the genius behind "The Indestructible Beat of Soweto" compilations (go to Senegal they're open to outside influence there); Simon Booth, fresh from producing Baaba Maal (hey we played some musicians The Orb and they really dug it...); Journalist Richard Scott, an authority on World Music just back from a field trip in West Africa (sceptical and confused as to what I was up to, but not forbidding). Under my own steam I contacted The British Council in Senegal (cough, spies), The Prince's Trust (who gave me a hundred quid!), Real World (who told us to bugger off), and Simon Frith (who said the "traditional" construction of African pop was a straw-man which people didn't really believe in any more, fair cop guv). No-one would give us any money for the project, so I had to fund it myself.

The logistics of the documentary were incredibly involved. On top of coordinating interviews with Manu Dibango, +8, Baaba Maal and Derrick May (the first time I interviewed him, I said thanks, left and on the motorway home, decided to check the tape, "OH NO! NO SOUND!" and had to crawl back and beg for another audience which I eventually gained a week later).....on top of coordinating interviews I had to organise clearance with The Senegalese Minister of Information, find a "Fixer" in Dakar (the eminent Salif Ba), get together a Sound-system and generator (rented on false pretences from various Hire Shops) crate them up and send off. In Senegal we had to wrestle with 3rd World beauracracy, me imploring the Head Customs Officer on my knees, after three days of being turned away from our impounded system, to let us have it for (ahem) the good of mankind. I had to get us on Dakar FM too.

The crew! Think I'm nuts? You don't know this lot. The core two were Kieron Cresswell, here starring as "Dancer" (Bez-style-role) and some combination of Guru and cheerleader. Kiki had just been released from prison in Norway for importing a suitcase full of Qat into that country, a mildly intoxicating stalk you chew which my mates were all mad keen on for a while. As for Dr."Mike" Lever, who is my wife's brother-in-law, we'll have to skirt closer to a politic silence seeing as how he's now a well-respected GP. Mike is a larger-than-life character, a one-man party, stalwart of the legendary Edinburgh club "Pure" and sometime DJ at "Wave" (Pure's ambient room) and blessed with a supernatural third ear, a true feeling for sound. Mike was our DJ, I would occasionally pick up the slack. People laughed at me when I told them who was coming. Joining us mid-way through this boys-own adventure came my very close friend Ed (just in time to stop the whole thing falling apart if I remember; DJ Mike about to marry a Gambian woman), a more balanced kind of lunatic and now working to help Immigrants settle in the UK. You'd conclude that he had a serious emotional investment in seeing the project worked fairly for our African mates. An artist of the highest calibre on Wednesday you'll see Ed's beautiful photos of the trip.

We linked up with artists Bouba Diarra and Waya Badji very early on. These two mavericks came to our first club night in Dakar, and swept consecutive events behind them. Bouba was a charismatic pugnacious singer, now living in Denmark, who had looked after Vanessa Paradis on her visit to Dakar. Waya his lovely gentle side-kick. These two steered us through the whole project, took us to EXACTLY the right places. It wasn't all plain sailing, Bouba was as big a hot-head as me. When we'd reached the Casamance region, a week in, we had the most enormous falling-out, I can't even remember what it was about. We said we wanted rid of them, they demanded we destroy our footage. We ended up down the police station industrial-tribunal-stylee, swearing and cursing at eachother (me in fractured nonsensical French). The senior police-officer listened patiently to them and us. He sat back and told us in the calmest friendliest manner imaginable that we were just kids, and we should go forth and have fun. The air cleared instantly, best-of-mates!

Bouba and Waya took us to stay with their family in Ziguinchor, and there we played a youth club (under-10s go totally mad to Steve Poindexter), a marsh in the day-time (in the middle of nowhere, a crowd gathered, we're shut down by the army in a Tank, apparently in a war-zone) and best of all in the tiny village of Adeane (lit by our van's lights the whole village raving). Back in Dakar we threw a street rave which we flyered (two days spent sitting in the Police Station waiting to be granted permission, live people brought in in millet sacks). In fact we sailed fairly close to the law ourselves, endlessly puffing on African bush (struggling to get high on it ha ha!), at one Gambian border-post Bouba was arrested and mid-scuffle he slipped me the gang's weed, cue heavy breathing on my part and much ham-acting as I dumped it behind their building. At the next customs barrier Ed stole a Baaba Maal matchbox right from under the guard's noses. A night broken-up at rifle-point in a Dakar Night-club. What were we thinking! The street-rave was storming too. Nuff mind-bogglingly-great Michael Jackson dancing from the locals, who ALWAYS formed a ring and took it in turns to dance in the middle. That's African-style, none of this mob frenzy, tremendously well-organised, cleanly re-appropriating our events.

The feeling of sheer ecstacy I had when I had everything in the can, words cannot describe. The thing was I knew precious little about making a documentary. There's no lights, no set-ups, any POVs are purely fortuitous. If you knew how mannered the art of making a documentary is you'd laud anyone EVER making them seem fresh. It was shot on Hi-8 (pre DV) and edited on a linear SVHS suite (linear editing an art-form to work, you grasp the added dimensions of the genius of Lee Perry, all that punching levels in and out, twisting knobs with your teeth etc.) In short it's woefully amateur. I'm a Broadcast Graphics Professional these days (ooh!) and was toying with the idea of re-editing the source footage, putting on slick graphics, tinkering, but there's no getting away from the fact that you can't see Baaba Maal properly, or that with Manu Dibango we only had a C90 tape-recorder or that all the tripod-shots wobble etc etc etc. But I think it stands up fine (Dogme-ahoy!), and the encoded version which you'll see on Tuesday works really well, you have to imagine how poly-dimensional the dancing was, but that's no bad thing. There's SO MUCH sheer joy and youthful up-and-at-em in-your-face spirit to it. It only cost $4,000 to make. That's NOTHING in the grand scheme. And while only about 20 people have ever seen it and MTV practically laughed in my face when I showed it to them and The Wire resolutely ignored me (story of my life), it got me a job for 2 years working for Ridley Scott (Jake his son loved it), Alex Knight of Fat Cat bowed to me in a street once, and it was a total gas to do. I hope you enjoy it.

Fax.