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VENUE: STUDIO 18, Hope Mills Business Centre, Brimscombe
Harry Harrison, DiY founder and author of Dreaming In Yellow; Aaron Trinder, director of Free Party: A Folk History, and other key DiY free party people; plus Joe Muggs, author of Bass, Mids, Tops: An Oral History of Sound System Culture, in conversation with Emma Warren on the cultural and political impact of the scene in 80s/90s Britain, its influence and relevance now, and the ongoing relationship with reggae, garage, drum’n’bass, grime and other Sound System cultures + Q&A.
Participants:
Harry Harrison, author Dreaming in Yellow - Emerging in the summer of 1989, the DiY Collective were one of the first house sound systems in the UK. Merging the anarchic lineage of the free festival scene with the irresistible electronic pulse of acid house, they bridged the void left by the implosion of the commercial rave scene. From Castlemorton to the Cafe del Mar, the DiY sound became internationally renowned and, beneath their banners of liberty, collectivism and untrammelled hedonism, achieved an underground cult status that endures to this day. Dreaming in Yellow is an attempt to distil DiY's eclectic, outrageous and occasionally deranged story of them doing it themselves.
Aaron Trinder, director Free Party: A Folk History - “When independently embarking on the idea to make a feature doc about the Free Party movement I had no idea of the breadth and depth of the stories I would find when interviewing people from the scene, including Circus Warp, DiY, Spiral Tribe, Free Party People, Bedlam and many others within the travelling, sound system and rave communities. As a result, I realised that the film could only ever show so much of such a rich and interesting cultural history, so the notion of an exhibition, allowing many of the contributors to the film to tell their own stories came about."
Joe Muggs, author Bass, Mids, Tops: An Oral History of Sound System Culture - featuring interviews with Dubmaster Dennis Bovell, Norman Jay MBE, Adrian Sherwood and others. In the years following the arrival of the Windrush generation, the UK's soundsystem culture would become the most important influence on contemporary pop music since rock and roll. Pumped through towering, home-built speakers, often directly onto the thronged streets of events like the Notting Hill Carnival, the pulsating bass lines of reggae, dub, rave, jungle, trip hop, dubstep, and grime have shaped the worlds of several generations of British youth culture but have often been overlooked by historians obsessed with swinging London, punk, and Britpop.
Emma Warren (moderator) - author Dancing Your Way Home: A Journey Through the Dancefloor - Emma Warren has been documenting grassroots music and culture for decades. Her new book is landmark social history of the dancefloor that gets to the heart of what it is that makes us move. She is also author of ‘Make Some Space: Tuning Into Total Refreshment Centre’ which listed as one of the top ten books of the year by Mojo Magazine. Her pamphlet ‘Steam Down: Or How Things Begin’ was listed as an Irish Times book of the year.