Encouraging signs for live music’s rebirth
Every now and then, you find a music venue that has a certain special aura and is simply unlike any other you’ve been to before. Sometimes it’s unique in its interior or location, sometimes it’s the warmth and generosity of the people running the place and other times it’s the programming of the events and the venue’s cultural or historical significance.
Jamboree in Limehouse was one of those. It was the live music venue for the Cable Street Studios complex; an 88,000-square foot former sweet factory that was built by Batgers Confectionery in the 1860s. Despite the site being worth a small fortune to potential developers, its owner was a keen believer in the power of the arts and culture and by 2011 it had become a thriving artistic community consisting of over 200 individual artists’ studios, a mosque and a transgender nightclub, happily co-existing side-by-side and the Jamboree venue.
Many of the artist studios also doubled up as residential dwellings; the workspace and the kitchenette area on the ground level and then a wooden mezzanine above housing the sleeping quarters. My old school friend Charlie spent a couple of years there and it was always fascinating to go and see him and meet the various characters who also called the studios home.
On one occasion Charlie organised for the Imam of Cable Street’s mosque to give a talk to the other residents about the customs of Islam and there would also be frequent ‘Open Studio’ days where the complex would open its doors to the public. The artists would welcome you into their studios to view their latest work and there were also many performance art spectacles. One performance that stands out in my mind was an artist dropping pieces of broken glass down a stone staircase on piece at a time. Remarkably, he had worked out that each piece had a different pitch and the result was surprisingly musical.
Clockwise (from top left); 1.) Cable Street Studios, Limehouse (photo: Ewan Munro). 2.) The old entrance to Jamboree (photo: Ewan Munro). 3.) My friends Roger and Hanna outside Jamboree, December 2013. 4.) Another view of the live room at Jamboree.
Charlie and I had become good mates around the age of 14 when we formed a four-piece guitar band called Felix Mandelson. We covered The Vines and Red Hot Chili Peppers and our own songs were a perfect blend of naivety and well-meaning pretention. “New Era” (written by moi and our rhythm guitarist Mike) paid homage to Che Guevara and contained the chorus line; “It’s the beginning of a new era for us // We’ve got to stop the pigs from exploiting what we’ve got”. On the other hand, one of Charlie’s songs “Enemies to the Peace” quoted verse from Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet. Charlie has since gone on to be a successful actor on both stage and screen and the last time I caught up with him, he had been touring Europe in Dracula playing Jonathan Harker.
Anyway, the evening I discovered Jamboree, I had taken the DLR over to Limehouse after work (I was living and working in Islington at the time) to catch up with Charlie over a couple of beers and we had decided to check out what was going on across the courtyard. We lucked out that night as it turned out that Simo Lagnawi was performing – one of the main proponents of traditional Gnawa music in London. Simo, originally of Amazigh (Berber) origin had spent several years travelling around Morocco studying Gnawa music, as well as Ahwash chanting before relocating to London. He has since set up the London School of Gnawa in the city’s East End.
It was a captivating concert with Lagnawi being joined onstage by two other Moroccan musicians whilst accompanying himself on the guimbri, a three-stringed instrument made from stretched camel skin and goat gut. The music was strangely hypnotic with complex polyrhythms and syncopated, repeating riffs and chants. Everything was kept in time by one of the musicians frantically playing the qraqeb – iron castanet-like finger cymbals. There were only around 50 people present in Jamboree that evening but everyone was silent whilst the band was playing; fully absorbed in their music.
Simo Lagnawi performing at the V&A Museum, London in 2013 – around the time we also saw him play at Jamboree.
Jamboree was a unique venue too; a cross between a bohemian café and Tony Hornecker’s pop-up restaurant-cum-art installation The Pale Blue Door. The stage and the venue’s windows were surrounded by velvet drapes, comfortable sofas and arm chairs were dotted around the room and there was art from some of Cable Street’s artists adorning every wall. The venue took a chance on booking artists not usually looked at by more mainstream music venues too – Eastern European folk, calypso and zouk performances, Celtic roots music and gypsy jazz. Charlie mentioned that Jonathan Richman of The Modern Lovers fame had even performed a secret acoustic gig there too.
Unfortunately, in 2018 just shy of its tenth anniversary Jamboree was forced to close its doors after being served notice by Cable Street Studios’ new landlord Sudbury Properties. After a temporary stay on Three Colt Street, also in Limehouse, it shut its doors at the beginning of 2020, potentially for good.
I was overjoyed, however, to receive an email last week announcing that Jamboree would be returning in 2021 with a new home in Kings Cross, North London. Kings Cross – as recently as a decade ago, one of the last undeveloped parts of Central London and a quasi-red light district – is fast becoming the destination of choice for the creative industries. As well as behemoth companies such as Google, Facebook, communications group Havas, PRS for Music and Universal Music now calling the area home, there are some much more interesting developments happening just beneath the surface.
For example, the music start-up incubator community Tileyard is home to several emerging challengers in the music and tech space and the likes of Mark Ronson and Sir Antony Gormley even have studios there. The Spiritland audiophile bar opened a few years ago on Stable Street and boasts that its huge, bespoke soundsystem is “the best in London” (I’ve been there a few times and it is pretty special – as are the huge speakers inside each individual bathroom cubicle). The team behind Omeara in Flat Iron Square (led by Mumford & Sons musician Ben Lovett) opened the 600-capacity Lafayette venue in February 2020 and although its launch has been disrupted by the pandemic, it’s set to reopen later this year. Although one night there will set you back around £200, the newly-opened Standard Hotel just off Euston Road and owned by the same group behind LA’s notorious den of iniquity the Chateau Marmont, contains its very own venue and has promised regular music events and “cultural happenings”.
Clockwise (from top left); 1.) Tileyard, Kings Cross. 2.) Inside the newly-opened Lafayette. 3.) Inside The Standard hotel. 4.) The prized sound system at Spiritland, Stable Street.
These new venues join the already well-established bastions of live music in Kings Cross such as The Scala (where the iconic cover to Iggy & The Stooges’ Raw Power album was shot), the famous grassroots venue Water Rats, arts café Drink Shop Do and electronic music club The Egg. The Guardian and The Observer newspapers have, of course also been based on York Way, Kings Cross since 2008 too.
Clockwise (from top left); 1.) The Egg, York Way. 2.) The Water Rats, Grays Inn Road (photo: Adam Bruderer). 3.) The iconic sign outside The Scala (photo: Ian Muttoo). 4.) The front cover of Iggy & The Stooges’ ‘Raw Power’ (taken at The Scala) 5.) Drink Shop Do, Caledonian Road.
Whilst there’s no denying that 2020 has been the toughest year on record for the performing arts, there are also some encouraging signs outside of the Kings Cross bubble. The Music Venue Trust confirmed at the beginning of February that 13 venues on its ‘danger list’ had already been saved from imminent closure. Only last week, the creation of the first-ever trade body for the live music industry LIVE was announced to widespread support. Many venues such as Band on The Wall in Manchester and The Wedgewood Rooms in Portsmouth have used this time to carry out essential repairs to their venues with The Wedge relaying the wooden floor in its main room.
Even closer to (my adopted) home in Bari in Puglia, there are some green shoots of recovery appearing too. The 1920s Art Deco venue Kursaal Santa Lucia on the city’s Lungomare (‘seafront’ to you and I) is set to reopen in spring this year after a lengthy refurbishment and shows are already starting to be tentatively booked again in venues such as Teatro Petruzzelli and Teatro Kismet.
The soon-to-be-reopened Kursaal Santa Lucia, Bari.
Hopefully the post-Covid age will see a Belle Époque-style resurgence for the live music sector and a surge in creative pursuits in general. Watch this space.