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Issue 110 / October 2022

October 2020 issue of Bido Lito! magazine. Featuring: AMINA ATIQ, JACQUES MALCHANCE, BYE LOUIS, NUTRIBE, DON MCCULLIN, LINDA MCCARTNEY, IMPORTANCE OF SMALL VENUES, QUEEN YUE, OSTRICH, LCR PRIDE FOUNDATION and much more.

October 2020 issue of Bido Lito! magazine. Featuring: AMINA ATIQ, JACQUES MALCHANCE, BYE LOUIS, NUTRIBE, DON MCCULLIN, LINDA MCCARTNEY, IMPORTANCE OF SMALL VENUES, QUEEN YUE, OSTRICH, LCR PRIDE FOUNDATION and much more.

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ISSUE <strong>110</strong> / OCTOBER 2020<br />

NEW MUSIC + CREATIVE CULTURE<br />

LIVERPOOL<br />

AMINA ATIQ / BYE LOUIS<br />

JACQUES MALCHANCE / DON MCCULLIN


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DIX<br />

GOYA<br />

BARLACH<br />

PECHSTEIN<br />

KOLLWITZ<br />

SCHIELE<br />

KOKOSCHKA<br />

FELIXMÜLLER<br />

PICASSO<br />

MUELLER<br />

DÜRER<br />

MUNCH<br />

BECKMANN<br />

GERMAN<br />

REVOLUTION<br />

Expressionist prints<br />

2 <strong>October</strong> 2020 to<br />

28 February 2021<br />

liverpoolmuseums.org.uk


40 SLATER STREET, LIVERPOOL. L1 4BX<br />

THEMERCHANTLIVERPOOL.CO.UK


In Liverpool<br />

2-year degrees<br />

and 1-year diplomas<br />

Last<br />

places<br />

available for<br />

September<br />

2020<br />

Study in January, May or September<br />

SAE Liverpool<br />

38 Pall Mall<br />

Liverpool<br />

L3 6AL<br />

03330 112 315<br />

enquiries@sae.edu<br />

sae.edu/gbr


New Music + Creative Culture<br />

Liverpool<br />

<strong>Issue</strong> <strong>110</strong> / <strong>October</strong> 2020<br />

bidolito.co.uk<br />

Second Floor<br />

The Merchant<br />

40-42 Slater Street<br />

Liverpool L1 4BX<br />

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Executive Publisher<br />

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Editor<br />

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Proofreader<br />

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Cover Photography<br />

Robin Clewley<br />

Words<br />

Elliot Ryder, Danni King, Sam Turner, Marnie Holleron-<br />

Silk, Lily Blakeney-Edwards, Laura Brown, Will Whitby,<br />

Mike Stanton, Mary Olive, Charly Reed, Paul Fitzgerald,<br />

Leah Binns, Remy Greasley, Sam Batley, Emma Murray.<br />

Photography, Illustration and Layout<br />

Mark McKellier, Robin Clewley, Esmée Finlay, Michael<br />

Driffill, Connor O’Mara, Eimear Kavanagh, Michael<br />

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Davenport, Daniel De La Bastide, Chloe Brover, nil00,<br />

Rob Battersby, Sam Batley, Sophie Green.<br />

Distribution<br />

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EDITORIAL<br />

Back in March I was starting to worry about my hearing.<br />

A couple of weeks before lockdown, following on from<br />

a Friday night watching south London post-punks<br />

Dry Cleaning at The Shipping Forecast, I was at the<br />

Invisible Wind Factory to watch emo shoegazers DIIV. From<br />

the moment the band’s two guitarists stomped down on their<br />

plethora of pedals, I knew it was going to be a tough night on<br />

my ears.<br />

It’s hard to pinpoint when I first started to suffer from<br />

tinnitus. It was perhaps watching post-hardcore outfit Title Fight<br />

at Manchester’s Star & Garter in 2011. It was there where I got<br />

my first taste of ringing ears that lasted days after the event.<br />

Since then, the level it’s affected me has fluctuated. Often,<br />

it’s dictated by where I stand on the night, the type of music,<br />

whether I remembered to wear ear plugs and also my levels of<br />

stress. These days, it continually plays as the dull soundtrack to<br />

silence – until further provoked.<br />

Of those back-to-back gigs just before lockdown, I was<br />

pretty untroubled by the angular riffs of Dry Cleaning. The ceiling<br />

in The Shipping Forecast is low. If you stand to the back, there’s<br />

a healthy meat blanket of audience packed between two pillars<br />

which help soak up the noise. For DIIV it was the polar opposite.<br />

Stood midway towards the front, wave after wave of distortion<br />

barrelled from the stage into the cavernous space, which<br />

was healthily populated, but far from tightly packed. Opener<br />

Horsehead was transfixing, with its lugubrious, clench-fisted<br />

angst lurching forward from each guitar, but I could already hear<br />

the raised tinnitus that I was going to wake up to. I watched on<br />

for the rest of the set knowing most of the damage was already<br />

done.<br />

That show was the last I went to. Perhaps out of fear over<br />

hearing damage, it may have been wise to take a break from<br />

watching live music for a little while. But there was never an<br />

intention to sit out for what has now been seven months. What’s<br />

FEATURES<br />

transpired in that time has sadly removed the option of watching<br />

live music, as we know it, from everyone’s lives. Not just those in<br />

need of a short break.<br />

The ringing in my ears is still there. It rarely subsides beyond<br />

a monotonous hum, as though my ears are clinging to memories<br />

of the drones swirling around the Invisible Wind Factory. But<br />

that memory is being stretched out far longer than was expected<br />

of it. It remains difficult to know when it’ll be replaced, which<br />

gig can then be to blame for a new incessant ringing days after.<br />

Right now, I’d take pretty much anything. That’s if it meant being<br />

able to watch live music with a healthy blanket of audience to<br />

soak up the noise, the memories. But that incarnation of live<br />

music is still some way off. I’ll take solace, for now, in resting my<br />

ears and investing in a better pair of earplugs.<br />

Now that it’s up and running, Future Yard might very well be<br />

where I can put those very earplugs through their paces. Massive<br />

congratulations to Craig, Chris, Cath and Hoggy for getting it up<br />

and off the ground in the middle of a global pandemic. Judging<br />

by the fullness of Craig’s stupendous perm currently, it hasn’t<br />

been too stressful.<br />

But with this good news comes an all too familiar tale.<br />

At the time of going to print the sad news came through that<br />

Constellations will be closing permanently. From hosting our<br />

Liverpool Music City? event to Christmas quizzes and last year’s<br />

Bido100 celebrations, the Baltic Triangle hub has been a vital<br />

venue to Bido Lito! and Liverpool’s wider creative community.<br />

Becky and the team have been passionate activists in protecting<br />

the city’s creative nightlight culture in the face of accelerating<br />

development. The venue will be a sad loss, but we wish the team<br />

all the best for future endeavours.<br />

Elliot Ryder / @elliot_ryder<br />

Editor<br />

She Drew The Gun at Future Yard / Robin Clewley<br />

Advertise<br />

If you are interested in adverting in Bido Lito!, or finding<br />

out about how we can work together, please email<br />

sam@bidolito.co.uk.<br />

Bido Lito! is a living wage employer. All our staff are<br />

paid at least the living wage.<br />

All contributions to Bido Lito! come from our city’s<br />

amazing creative community. If you would like to join<br />

the fold visit bidolito.co.uk/contribute.<br />

We are contributing one per cent of our advertising<br />

revenue to WeForest.org to fund afforestation<br />

projects around the world. This more than offsets our<br />

carbon footprint and ensures there is less CO2 in the<br />

atmosphere as a result of our existence.<br />

11 / AMINA ATIQ<br />

Through her poetry, performance and activism, Amina Atiq has<br />

emerged as one of the most essential voices in Liverpool.<br />

16 / PLAYING IN<br />

In our second report with The University of Liverpool, we look at<br />

responses relating to the alternative platforms for live music and<br />

the effects of lockdown on levels of creativity.<br />

18 / JACQUES MALCHANCE<br />

Mike Stanton goes stargazing with the producer, DJ and promoter<br />

to journey through the cosmos of his most recent release.<br />

22 / DANCING IN THE DISTANCE<br />

Mary Olive explores the essence of dancing and communality, an<br />

integral aspect of our lives which is yet to return.<br />

24 / BYE LOUIS<br />

Just before lockdown, the multi-instrumentalist relinquished<br />

control of his 2019 EP The Same Boy in order for it to take on a<br />

new life.<br />

26 / MAKING THE CASE FOR<br />

SMALL SPACES<br />

Following the recent closures of Sound and The Zanzibar, Charly<br />

Reed underscores the importance of protecting and developing<br />

more small venues.<br />

30 / DON MCCULLIN<br />

Ahead of a new retrospective at Tate Liverpool, Elliot Ryder<br />

spoke to the photojournalist about his experiences of the city, his<br />

depictions of conflict and his role as a chronicler.<br />

REGULARS<br />

The views expressed in Bido Lito! are those of the<br />

respective contributors and do not necessarily<br />

reflect the opinions of the magazine, its staff or the<br />

publishers. All rights reserved.<br />

8 / NEWS<br />

10 / HOT PINK<br />

28 / SPOTLIGHT<br />

32 / PREVIEWS<br />

34 / REVIEWS<br />

38 / ARTISTIC LICENCE<br />

39 / FINAL SAY


NEWS<br />

’Harmonic Generator<br />

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra<br />

As live music begins a slow return, Liverpool Philharmonic Hall<br />

has announced it is reopening its doors in <strong>October</strong>. The iconic<br />

venue is hosting a series of one-hour concerts by the ROYAL<br />

PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA, with smaller orchestral forces<br />

to accommodate for social distancing measures. The orchestra<br />

kick things off on 1st <strong>October</strong> with a show featuring the music of<br />

Beethoven, Arvo Pärt and Mozart. 12th <strong>October</strong> sees Roderick<br />

Williams baritone and Christopher Glynn piano take centre-stage,<br />

followed by Ensemble 10/10 on 22nd <strong>October</strong>. The Liverpool Wind<br />

Collective feature on 24th <strong>October</strong>, with Liverpool Philharmonic<br />

brass and percussion ensemble the following day, and the Royal<br />

Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra wrap things up at the end of the<br />

month. Tickets are available now with each show limited to 240<br />

seats. For those wanting to experience live classical from their living<br />

room, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic On Demand provides a package<br />

of performances with exclusive extra including behind the scenes<br />

interviews.<br />

Birkenhead of the game<br />

it’s all happening on Argyle Street. Not only has brand<br />

new music hub Future Yard announced three more<br />

socially distanced gigs in <strong>October</strong> (see Previews section)<br />

but applications are open for a special skills programme<br />

for local young people ran by the FY team. Those looking<br />

to pursue a career creating live events can gain valuable<br />

experience, skills and a qualification courtesy of the<br />

SOUND CHECK programme. It consists of workshops<br />

focusing on technical production and live music event<br />

management, alongside opportunities to gain handson<br />

experience and skills at live events, finishing with an<br />

independent group project create a live music event.<br />

Applications close on 28th September. futureyard.org/<br />

soundcheck<br />

Future Yard<br />

How Bazaar<br />

Open Door Centre charity have launched a new mental health initiative BAZAAR<br />

to help people improve their wellbeing in what are straining times for minds across<br />

the world. The CBT and mindfulness programme offers a new, dynamic approach<br />

to tackling mental health issues in the format of eight weeks of hour-long sessions.<br />

Each session looks to develop skills that disrupt negative thinking practices, which will<br />

improve symptoms of both anxiety and depression. Bazaar is open to organisations<br />

and businesses looking to support their staff and members, with tailored packages<br />

available to suit all groups. All proceeds from the Bazaar programme will be going<br />

directly to the Open Door Centre, in order to support their continuing work.<br />

Angus And Us Only<br />

Last month’s feature artist JAMIE WEBSTER is amongst<br />

the guitar slingers performing at the newest addition to<br />

Dale Street’s food and drink offer as The Angus Tap & Grind<br />

announce a growing musical menu to accompany their<br />

impressive range of beers and coffees. Webster and a host<br />

of other artists will be playing the intimate venue after a<br />

residency from Cast man JOHN POWER earlier this month<br />

sold out in twenty seconds. Fine time. theangus.co<br />

Avant Gardener<br />

Andrea Ku<br />

Bluecoat have announced L8 gardener and artist ANDREA KU as<br />

their gardener in residence for Autumn 2020. The announcement<br />

comes after Ku’s recent collaboration with Bluecoat, which saw her<br />

develop a series of nature-related blogs during lockdown against<br />

the background of Frances Disley’s Pattern Buffer exhibition. Many<br />

projects have already been announced to take place during Ku’s<br />

residency, but most notably the creation of a map of accessible<br />

and less-visited green spaces in Liverpool, which will be in print<br />

and online. Ku will also be filming online tutorials from Bluecoat<br />

garden where she’ll be based, as well as holding in-person<br />

distanced tutorials to give support and advice.<br />

Calling Future Film Makers<br />

Storyhouse in Chester have announced the details of this<br />

year’s BFI Academy course. Each year the British Film<br />

Institute lead the course, aimed at young people who are<br />

passionate about a career in the film industry. The intensive<br />

short course spans just one week and explores the entire<br />

industry, from filmmaking to the commercial and cultural<br />

knowledge of film. The BFI Academy scheme offers an<br />

opportunity to gain valuable work experience from industry<br />

leaders and professionals in a competitive field, which<br />

will enable candidates to increase their chances of being<br />

recognised in the industry. The course is open to anyone<br />

aged 16-19 who isn’t studying at university, with no<br />

immediate level of experience needed. storyhouse.com<br />

BFI Academy course<br />

8


A Keychange Is Gonna Come<br />

Bido Lito! is among a number of local organisations<br />

that have taken the KEYCHANGE PLEDGE to improve<br />

gender representation in the music industry. The latest<br />

round of inductees into the Keychange network join<br />

300 festivals and organisations around the world<br />

actively taking steps towards achieving gender balance<br />

in the sector. Bido Lito! has pledged to ring fence 50<br />

per cent of places on our Bylines writer workshops<br />

programmes for female participants, as well as other<br />

underrepresented groups. We have also vowed to<br />

maintain our efforts to platform more female artists<br />

and female-led projects in the pink pages and continue<br />

to provide more opportunities to female contributors.<br />

keychange.eu<br />

Keychange Ambassador Corinne Bailey Rae<br />

Now Open<br />

With World Museum, Museum of Liverpool and the Maritime<br />

Museum already open to the public, the remaining National<br />

Museums Liverpool venues LADY LEVER ART GALLERY,<br />

SUDLEY HOUSE and SEIZED! complete the set of galleries<br />

open to visitors. From Wednesday 30th September Port<br />

Sunlight’s gallery, Lady Lever, will display a new exhibition of<br />

German Revolution expressionist prints featuring pieces by<br />

Picasso, Kollwitz and Munch. Home and Away, a show of oil<br />

paintings from the collection of former Sudley House resident<br />

George Holt opens on the same date in the Aigburth venue.<br />

The Seized! gallery in the basement of the Maritime Museum<br />

will also be back in action telling the story of smugglers and<br />

contraband in partnership with HM Revenue & Customs.<br />

liverpoolmuseums.org.uk<br />

Edward Munch<br />

Test Your Metal<br />

Culture hub Metal, located at Edge Hill train station, has an illustrious recent<br />

history of helping develop the craft of a wide gamut of local artists as well as<br />

showcasing a fabulous array of national and international talent. As of <strong>October</strong><br />

they are focussing on developing a programme of support for early career<br />

artists. The team specifically want to help those who have deferred studying<br />

for their arts degree due to Covid or generally not looking to take a university<br />

placement. The programme will be led by professional artists who will pass<br />

on their practical skills and facilitate stimulating creative challenges along with<br />

group sharings. Find out more information on Metal’s New Artist Network<br />

online. metalculture.com<br />

Metal<br />

Market Forces<br />

Community asset GRANBY STREET MARKET is looking for<br />

donations after a fire in September destroyed nearly all of their<br />

equipment. The team are in need of £30,000 to replace the market’s<br />

infrastructure - including gazebos, tables, chairs and sound system<br />

- in order to get the initiative going again. At the time of writing, the<br />

GoFund me page had achieved almost 50% of the goal but need<br />

help to hit the total before an early <strong>October</strong> deadline. Since growing<br />

from a handful of tables in 2010 to a multifaceted community<br />

enterprise, the market has become an important fixture to the L8<br />

community and beyond. gofundme.com/f/granbymarket<br />

Granby Street Market<br />

Music Community Consultation<br />

Event<br />

Following a survey of Merseyside’s musician community<br />

in August, Bido Lito! and University of Liverpool’s<br />

PLAYING IN research project will continue with an online<br />

consultation on Tuesday 27th <strong>October</strong>. Representatives<br />

from all areas of Liverpool City Region’s music industry<br />

are invited to the Zoom event which aims to take a health<br />

check of the sector. Focus group conversations looking at<br />

how areas such as live music, education, tourism and artist<br />

development will produce qualitative data to contribute<br />

to a report which will inform LCR Music Board’s path to<br />

recovery. Interested parties can register for the event at<br />

bidolito.co.uk/consultation.<br />

Music Consulatation<br />

NEWS 9


HOT PINK!<br />

Our Hot Pink! playlist is your one-stop shop to find the newest, brightest and piping hot music pushing up<br />

the mercury on Merseyside. Featuring the latest drops from artists in the region, the mix is regularly updated<br />

with a smorgasbord of bangers from a plethora of genres reflecting the plurality of sounds emanating from<br />

the recording studios across the area. Here’s a selection of this month’s additions to give you a taste.<br />

Hannah’s Little Sister<br />

Bin Mouth<br />

Heist Or Hit<br />

Nearly two years after the release of their debut 20, it’s a pleasure to welcome back raucous indie<br />

poppers HANNAH’S LITTLE SISTER with this short stab of puerile exhortation. This wonky poppunk<br />

riot features a cathartic crash of brash vocals that bring to mind early-00s chart botherers<br />

The Ting Tings, but with much more to delve into and enjoy. Don’t leave it so long next time,<br />

please. (MHS)<br />

Crapsons<br />

Clotheslined by A Nun<br />

Society Of Losers<br />

With a genuine claim to most peculiar track of the month, Wirral punks CRAPSONS bring a real<br />

adrenaline shot in this ecumenical hammer. The track stands up to flavours of the month Shame<br />

and Life, but comes peppered with Leisure Peninsula humour and aided and abetted by The<br />

Wildcard of labelmates Salt The Snail. This one will be a real crowd-pleaser when the duo (plus<br />

one) get to perform live once again. (MHS)<br />

Sara Wolff<br />

Cotton Socks<br />

Is SARA WOLFF carving out her own niche of ‘knit-pop’? This moody and melancholy indie-folk<br />

track follows her equally lovely ode Scarf Song in using woollen wear to derive love life analogies<br />

with surrealism, poetic lyrics and dulcet tones. The sparing and simplistic instrumentation combine<br />

to make this track a listening experience to keep you as warm as luxuriant autumnal undergarms.<br />

(ST)<br />

Novelty Island<br />

Suddenly On Sea<br />

Abbey House<br />

This is an EP that doesn’t concern itself with reality. Bouncing between influences from The Beach<br />

Boys and Frank Sinatra ballads, the collection of tracks paints a picture of a surreal English seaside<br />

town. Through absurd synth melodies and creator Tom McConnell’s hypnotic vocals Suddenly On<br />

Sea invites the listener to escape to a summer holiday that never was. Definitely one to check out.<br />

(LBE)<br />

François<br />

Young N Dumb<br />

Big beats and Auto-Tune aplenty with pop auteur Francois’ latest offering. Young N Dumb is a<br />

bedroom composition which deceptively meanders via lyrics lamenting lost youth while an arsenal<br />

of processed beats keeps up the energy and has us yearning for ill-conceived nights on sticky<br />

dancefloors. (ST)<br />

Pixey<br />

Just Move<br />

Chess Club<br />

One-woman pop hurricane Pixey continues her triumphant return with an expertly executed<br />

exercise in synthesizing the best indie hooks of the last 30 years into a three-minute baggy banger.<br />

Just Move could have had the Haçienda dancefloor bouncing in 1991 as it no doubt will for a<br />

muddy Somerset field crowd in the not-to-distant future. (ST)<br />

Yammerer<br />

Boa Constrictor<br />

Restless Bear<br />

Those who are looking for Leonard Cohen-esque revelatory lyrics about life, love and the universe<br />

should not look to this serpentine post-punk slab from the ever-electric YAMMERER. However,<br />

those wanting a cathartic tonic of rollicking feedback squalls and wirey guitar licks building over a<br />

pummelling rhythm section and JC’s skeletal howls will be more than satisfied. (ST)<br />

Terry Venomous<br />

Sentient<br />

Eggy Records<br />

Slurring a croon like a lobotomised Mark E Smith over de rigueur lounge guitar lines, this debut<br />

from the newest Eggy Records signee is a fine tone-setter for EP Video Game Dog Barking. 8 Bit<br />

flourishes surface above a laid-back bedroom beat which will reanimate disenchanted fans of Mac<br />

DeMarco. (ST)<br />

Red Rum Club<br />

Ballerino<br />

Modern Sky UK<br />

“It’s time to move your feet,” according to Red Rum Club in their newest catchy, feel-good single.<br />

Complete with trademark trumpet flourishes and ear-worm chorus, Ballerino implores hands to<br />

hold proseccos in the air and forget about any Covid cares. Let’s hope it’s prophetic. (ST)<br />

Words: Marnie Holleron-Silk, Lily Blakeney-Edwards, Sam Turner<br />

Follow Hot Pink! on Spotify: bit.ly/bidohotpink<br />

Photography (from left to right): HLS (Beebo Boobin), Crapsons, Sara Wolff, Pixey (Zac Mahrouche)<br />

10


ARE YOU<br />

LISTENING?<br />

Through her poetry, performance and activism, Amina Atiq has emerged as one of<br />

the most essential voices in Liverpool. With a stature continuing to grow through a<br />

range of ongoing commissions and projects, Laura Brown speaks to the artist/activist<br />

about the expectations of identity and the radicalness of using your own voice.<br />

FEATURE<br />

11


AMINA<br />

ATI Q<br />

“I’m writing for<br />

myself, for my<br />

ancestors, my<br />

sisters and my<br />

children to say<br />

‘We do exist’”<br />

AMINA ATIQ is in a reflective mood. On a Friday<br />

morning, in this strange waiting room between life<br />

being open and closed, she pauses and takes a<br />

moment before she speaks.<br />

“This is the battle,” she says, her voice calm, measured, the lilt<br />

of Scouse in her glottal stop.<br />

“We are a generation born or emigrated to the UK with a<br />

strong attachment to our home countries,” she explains. “I’m<br />

writing for myself, for my ancestors, my sisters and my children to<br />

say, ‘We do exist’.”<br />

To be Arab in Britain in 2020 is complicated. Loving Mohamed<br />

Salah doesn’t prove anyone knows a lot about modern Arab<br />

culture as much as assuming every woman in the Middle East is<br />

oppressed. As a female, Muslim, Yemeni Scouse poet, Amina is an<br />

artist, but we also ask her to be a trailblazer. It’s a lot to expect a<br />

25-year-old to be.<br />

As well as being a writer and performance artist, Amina is<br />

also a facilitator and an activist. Award-winning for her work<br />

on community engagement, she has featured on BBC Radio 5<br />

Live, BBC Radio 6 Music, BBC Radio 4, Bitesize, Arab News, The<br />

Independent and many more. She has campaigned with Change.<br />

org, the Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) and Oxfam<br />

since the war began in Yemen when she was 19. Over the past<br />

six years, she has collaborated with artists and writers to connect<br />

directly with Yemeni youth creatives to build a global community<br />

outside Yemen and on the ground. In 2018 she was involved in<br />

a project curated by local Yemeni American social entrepreneur<br />

Hanan Ali Yahya in partnership with Arab American National<br />

Museum. The project, Stories Never Told was of 24 Yemeni artists<br />

across the world sharing their work as part of Yemen’s crises and<br />

renaissance.<br />

Her recent work involves a poem commissioned for the<br />

Yemen in Conflict project, part of a multimedia exhibition at the<br />

Liverpool Arab Arts Festival, and a series of newly commissioned<br />

‘poemfilms’ connecting Yemeni poets with filmmakers exploring<br />

how the country’s rich tradition of poetry and language can<br />

be preserved and passed onto younger generations. Amina is<br />

currently developing a spoken word monologue with DadaFest,<br />

inviting the audience to a 1970s Yemeni-British household,<br />

untangling what it means to belong.<br />

If you have never heard Amina perform, she has the power<br />

to spellbind an audience. Personal, honest, unapologetic, she can<br />

connect with those listening to her like few can. She is unafraid<br />

of speaking her truth. A poem, Shamin’ on the Train, comes from<br />

the incident on a train between Liverpool and London when she<br />

was abused for speaking Arabic. The video she shared on social<br />

media had thousands of likes and made national headlines, but it is<br />

through her own poetry that she regains control of the story.<br />

“You will hear a voice right behind you and it is muttering<br />

hate/…when she practices her freedom of speech she is told to<br />

leave this country/…why choose hate if you are unsure/ And if you<br />

are unsure why don’t you ask?” the poem recalls.<br />

There is a responsibility that comes with being a trailblazer of<br />

using one’s voice and it can be challenging, she says.<br />

“You’re trying to tell the community, ‘It’s OK, I’ll be the first to<br />

do it’, while [asking] the other side, ‘Are you OK to accept me?’<br />

12


FEATURE<br />

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14


It’s a lot, and I think it’s not just as Arab women, but as Arab artists and creatives,” says Amina. We<br />

don’t want to have conversations about identity any more. It’s so apparent that we have very clear<br />

identities, we don’t blend in with the crowd, we stick out. Our identity walks with us. We don’t have<br />

to claim it, we don’t have to state it, it’s there. Those who are very, very exposed or it’s very apparent<br />

where they come from, they’re the ones who have to convince people they belong and that they’re<br />

British enough.”<br />

It’s strange, Amina thinks, that, as an Arab woman wearing a hijab, for some audiences it was<br />

putting on the Scouse accent in her performances that made her acceptable.<br />

“How much do we have to integrate until we’re accepted?” she replies. “Acceptance isn’t an issue.<br />

In human life you don’t have to accept everything, but it’s the idea of trying to convince people that<br />

you exist, that your country exists.”<br />

Her accent itself has been shifted in her performance and work. Amina was through to the final<br />

of the BBC Words First development scheme and she describes how, during a workshop, she began<br />

to perform how she usually did, with an American accent. “What are you doing?” the facilitator asked,<br />

“what’s that voice?” When you search for spoken word poetry you’ll often hear this mid-Atlantic,<br />

slightly American style performance (let us not forget, plenty of bands have done the same thing,<br />

singing in an American accent because they think that’s what the audience wants). Why, he asked,<br />

was she writing about Liverpool but not speaking in her own voice? Who was she trying to convince?<br />

She was, as you’d imagine, mortified. But it was a turning point. In came her own voice, complete with<br />

Scouse accent. Using your own voice can feel like a radical act.<br />

There is a long line and tradition of radical female Arab poets and writers; from Iraq’s Nazik<br />

al-Malaika to Egypt’s Nawal El Saadawi, women have a unique role in using their voices to articulate<br />

societal change, whether it is happening or whether it is needed. When Amina meets other modern<br />

Arab women poets, there is something that binds them to each other and their heritage. “We are<br />

constantly convincing our readers that we exist,” she outlines.<br />

Poetry is well placed to do this. It conveys the language of protest, activism, emotion, charting<br />

change as easily as the artist steps up to speak to a crowd. It demands a vulnerability that has to be<br />

embedded with honesty. And proving that you exist, that you have to be seen, means you have to, at<br />

some stage, recognise the way you’re seen by others.<br />

Let’s not pretend honesty is anything other than hard. The perception loop of being an Arab in the<br />

21st century is that you can find yourself fulfilling an outside expectation, of being the construct that<br />

people expect you to be before you even show up, before you open your<br />

mouth, and then that construct begins to inform how you see yourself.<br />

Lockdown has had another huge impact on Amina for how she<br />

sees herself and reflecting on her work. Explore the pictures of her<br />

Culture Liverpool project, Lockdown, where she takes a series of pictures<br />

capturing different aspects of her life during lockdown. She talks about<br />

how it made her reconnect with her faith, her wellbeing and her health.<br />

Like those of us who celebrated a birthday in the months of semiisolation,<br />

she captures the sweet melancholy of being apart from people<br />

you love – knowing that not marking the occasion feels like surrender. “I<br />

wore my birthday outfit and painted my face,” she tells me. “We danced,<br />

FaceTiming my mother who is currently stuck in Yemen. A birthday I will<br />

not forget.”<br />

Development is all part of being an artist as much as our identity. In<br />

Amina’s one woman show, Broken Biscuits, she talks about how, as an<br />

immigrant writer, the words themselves that she is using are changing.<br />

“It’s interesting how subconsciously you come to believe the image<br />

or perspective of those who tell you who you are, who you look like and<br />

where you come from,” she begins. “In my old work there’s so many western clichés in there: ‘I carry<br />

my suitcase on my back’. I didn’t carry my suitcase on my back, I came [to Britain] on a first-class<br />

plane ticket.”<br />

The title, Broken Biscuits, comes from how she talks about her grandad who came to the UK in<br />

the 1960s and set up his corner shop “selling broken biscuits, meat and bread” in the post-war era.<br />

“When my grandad came, people were travelling from the UK to other places, especially after<br />

the war, to grow their businesses. That’s celebrated and seen as a good move. When I speak about<br />

my grandad,” she continues, “I’ve started to say I’m the granddaughter of an economic migrant and<br />

businessman. My grandad was an economic immigrant, he wanted to make more money. If I were to<br />

travel to France, to study French to start a business, I’m making certain choices to be successful. But<br />

yet, if you’re brown or black, or don’t fit into the white majority, you’re seen as…”<br />

She tails off. Many see the Middle East from the outside. They see it as a red apple, but it isn’t a<br />

red apple, Amina says, it’s an onion. It has layers and layers to be unpicked. So many of us are here<br />

because of something violent, something unexplainable, something out of our hands that happened in<br />

our homelands. Our Arab heritage, our communities are as layered as how we see ourselves.<br />

“What confuses people of Arab identity is very, very complex. I don’t even think the Arab<br />

community even knows it yet. I don’t think the Arab community has yet understood the confusion, the<br />

trauma, in the 80s, things were transitioning in the Middle East,” says Amina.<br />

The history of Yemen, like the history of many countries, is complicated. It changes generation<br />

by generation, so in a single household you can have three generations who were born at a time of<br />

revolution. From a Yemen Arab Republic in the 60s, the Yemenite War in the 70s, and unification talks,<br />

civil war in the 90s and revolution in the 00s. Even this removes depth, discussion, reflection. History<br />

is never a single timeline. In Amina’s family, her mum encountered one political upheaval, different<br />

from that of her own mother, Amina’s grandmother. Her father was born in Britain.<br />

“My teenage life was born in the Arab spring and my sisters don’t speak Arabic. Then you’ve got<br />

Scouseness. It’s this bowl of Scouse,” she illustrates.<br />

When she recognised those different generations in her British Yemeni household it became<br />

a significant shift in the way she writes. Amina writes a lot about her mother and grandmother.<br />

She sees herself documenting the small conversations at home that are then reflected in her work.<br />

Amina’s A Letter to my Mother encapsulates both the tension of the mother daughter relationship.<br />

“For I do not want to live in regret<br />

and when a thousand voices cheer me on<br />

from the audience, perhaps the only<br />

Voice<br />

I really want to hear, is always you.<br />

‘You’ll never understand me,’ I slam the door<br />

breaking your heart over and over again,<br />

but my mother, she waits up all night waiting for the key to turn through the door<br />

for our bones are made from Yemeni mould and when we fight, I sneak back into her chest<br />

when she is not looking”<br />

“What does home look like in a Yemeni household in Britain?” Amina asks. “I’m trying to<br />

acknowledge that in different layers. My dad being born here provides a different layer with a strong<br />

British identity, but I always look at him and think how surprising it is, how connected he is to Arab<br />

culture. It’s taught me about the strength of Yemen and Arab identity. My sisters, I recognise they<br />

should speak Arabic so they can connect. I teach them out of love for Yemeni culture, in case they<br />

forget it. That’s why we should celebrate it. I strongly believe in Arab culture, with its different dialects,<br />

different types of history, whether you speak French, broken Arabic.”<br />

Arab communities, the one I am in, the one Amina is in, struggle frequently to talk about their<br />

British identities. I have never described myself as Arab British. My father, who was born in Palestine<br />

and came to Britain in 1956, certainly didn’t. Yet our identities were a blend. And in denying this<br />

“My poetry should do<br />

something, it should<br />

move something,<br />

it should change<br />

minds, it should<br />

challenge people”<br />

aspect of ourselves, our British side, have we allowed others to step in and define what Britishness is?<br />

Crucially, what our Britishness is?<br />

“If you ask Yemeni people, ‘How do you identify?’ they say Yemeni. If you’re Palestinian, it’s<br />

Palestinian. Would you ever say Yemeni British? No. But you live here, and you pay taxes here. The<br />

Asian Britains I know are much more connected with their British identity. What does your Britishness<br />

mean?”<br />

We have a right to talk about our own identities and heritage, allowing them to be fluid and<br />

figuring out how we want to talk about them. It is something that many on the left struggle with,<br />

especially in Liverpool. How many of us say Scouse not English, for example? We are determined to<br />

have the right to define what our identity is, perhaps rejecting one side of it because we don’t like it,<br />

or we don’t feel it’s ours. The risk there is that leaves our other identity, the one we don’t like, getting<br />

further and further away from us. Our identities are pulled into two different directions. Why can’t we<br />

be patriotic too, in our own complicated, mixed heritage, broken Arabic ways?<br />

There’s a poem of Amina’s called Backbencher that was commissioned by Speaking Volumes.<br />

“I saw my father cry for the first time<br />

he cradled this city<br />

in his arms<br />

waiting to be loved<br />

but all he knew this glory<br />

does not belong<br />

to people like him.”<br />

Patriotism is complicated when you feel like you might not be allowed to belong. And yet it feels<br />

as though, if not everything is changing, then the grounds are shifting significantly. And with that it<br />

feels like things might be up for grabs. Sometimes, it feels like everything we said 20 years ago has<br />

been thrown in the air and we’re waiting for it to fall to the ground. Amina herself is like someone who<br />

is plucking those words out of the atmosphere around her and fitting them in a new shape, and a new<br />

place. It’s a process and it’s having a profound impact on the work she is writing.<br />

“I am the first person to put my hand up and say the work I used to write in the first five years<br />

[were] the most clichéd things,” she admits. “My western perspective sometimes hijacks my identity<br />

and the one I want to connect with. I think it’s a process of healing, of<br />

getting to know yourself a little bit better every single day.”<br />

This is, she believes, part of the artistic process.<br />

“You need to be reflective in poetry,” she adds, “you need to be<br />

in transition all the time. I see poetry as a moment, it’s like taking a<br />

photograph. It’s very, very rare you’ll ever get the same photograph. It’s<br />

got a different mood, tone, it’s a moment. Tomorrow it’ll be something<br />

different. I’ve changed, it’s not drastic but from that poem I wrote<br />

yesterday my mood is different today. Writers and artists should do that.<br />

Contradicting yourself is about the writer in you, there’s some change<br />

going on in your work. Any type of transition can sometimes overwhelm<br />

you, you start to ask questions you’ve never asked before and you start to<br />

answer them in a way you’ve never done before, so what you try to do is<br />

put yourself all together. We’re constantly renewing those questions.”<br />

And we return to activism and identity, of the expectation that we<br />

have to be something, representing something, somewhere, someone.<br />

“I used to separate Amina the activist and Amina the poet. What’s<br />

happening now is they’re becoming intact. I thought poetry should heal,<br />

sing a song, but I’m recognising my poetry should do something, it should move something, it should<br />

change minds, it should challenge people,” she asserts. “To do that I should bring topics to people and<br />

shouldn’t lie.”<br />

There is a phrase Amina uses frequently: “You can’t separate the writer from the writing”. Writing<br />

about your heritage and exploring this battle of who you and where you come from is imperative and<br />

there is more interest in it. Yet no battle comes without risk.<br />

“A lot of brown/black activists talk about this, you’re always going to be paranoid, you’re thinking<br />

I want to live as a normal human being, but when you confront a situation because you want it to be<br />

better and they treat you differently you don’t know whether it’s because they don’t like you or is it<br />

because I challenged something? It’s daunting.”<br />

The balance is always how you see yourself, how others perceive you, and in the arts this comes<br />

with an added frisson. You want to control how you’re seen, but any whiff of marketing or – shock!<br />

– a business plan comes with it the question of authenticity. Artists have to make a living, have to<br />

balance the books as much as the next self-employed creative. Artists always used to hide this side<br />

of their work – better to be seen as the struggling artist than be accused of being a Tory – but no<br />

more, says Amina.<br />

“You are the business, you’re self-employed,” she explains. “I don’t understand why someone<br />

who has a shop can call themselves a business, but an artist can’t see themselves as a business.<br />

I think people are scared to start seeing themselves as a business because they think it will take<br />

away from their authenticity. That work will take over your life. You can still create and do the admin<br />

work.”<br />

Enthusiastically, as an 18-year-old, Amina would go to business networking meetings, figuring<br />

out how she would have to make being an artist pay. Once, she sat in a workshop listening to a<br />

writer who kept apologising for her writing. Why, she asked herself, do we keep apologising for<br />

not just what we write, but the fact that we can? It needs to stop, she thought. We can’t keep<br />

constantly justifying this. Any artform, writing included, has its part in the world and art seeps into<br />

commercial corners all the time. Why should it only be the artist that’s apologising for that?<br />

As a Young Associate for Curious Minds, taking a 12-month intensive training programme,<br />

specialising in delivering Arts Awards, strategic development and supporting young artists find<br />

their voice has deepened her interest. We need to inspire young people and young artists to think<br />

that a career in the arts doesn’t mean apologising for making money or, crucially, asking for it.<br />

“It’s allowed me to think more logically about my two-year goal, five-year goal. The idea is<br />

not about giving up on your art, I’ve understood what I want to do with my art and what I want<br />

to head towards,” she replies. “The business mind has given me the freedom to do that. I always<br />

championed this idea of leadership. The goal is to be an advocate for the creative world, but to do<br />

that I have to have experienced the creative world in all formats, why people need it and what its<br />

effective to build social cohesion.”<br />

Change is a constant. Amina sees herself as a changemaker. Probably the first Yemeni Muslim<br />

woman in the city’s art scene, she knows that many relate to her as a Scouser first and are<br />

increasingly curious about her Yemeni heritage. She’s forcing change and a shift. It takes courage<br />

to both embrace change and to write about it. It is perhaps easy in the West to look to the East and<br />

question how and why things are done from a perceived lofty position, but perhaps it is those who<br />

have a foot in both camps to be able to plot a course to the future. Amina Atiq isn’t waiting for you<br />

to liberate her; she’s already done it herself. !<br />

Words: Laura Brown / @MsLaura_Brown<br />

Photography: Robin Clewley / robinclewley.co.uk – shot at @vesselstudios<br />

@AminaAtiqpoetry<br />

Amina Atiq is a young associate at Curious Minds and currently a resident artist at Metal Culture<br />

UK. Amina continues to work with activists and organisations calling for an end to the war in Yemen<br />

and further global conflicts.<br />

FEATURE<br />

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PLAYING IN


In this second report, detailing the findings of our musicians’ survey carried out in partnership with The<br />

University of Liverpool, we look at responses relating to the alternative platforms for live music and the<br />

effects of lockdown on levels of creativity. The findings illustrate a willingness to adapt to new digitised<br />

parameters, but a landscape where streaming is a financially viable rival to live shows is yet to materialise.<br />

As lockdown shut the doors of music venues across<br />

the city region, musicians turned to online streaming<br />

as the new way of broadcasting their gigs to<br />

audiences also confined to their homes. What<br />

used to be packed out rooms cathartically singing along, with<br />

crowdsurfers and pints of beer flying overhead, turned into<br />

sitting at home watching all the action on a screen in the hope of<br />

replicating some of the former experiences.<br />

Bands and artists setting up intimately in their own homes<br />

became the norm. Virtual promoters pushed the boundaries of<br />

live possibilities with digital events to help curb the impact of a<br />

festival summer that never happened.<br />

As always, musicians soldiered on learning new skills and<br />

innovating themselves to stream their artistic visions online.<br />

Of the 175 respondents to this study’s survey, 48 per cent of<br />

those were involved in some type of live-streamed performance<br />

during lockdown. The reaction from those involved was widely<br />

positive, with 68 per cent of them seeing lockdown live streams<br />

as beneficial to their development as a musician both creatively<br />

and connecting to fans.<br />

From our results (of which data ends at the start of August),<br />

the artists asked took part in 506 virtual shows involving 402<br />

performers and reached a collective 203,445 people online.<br />

One major positive we saw was that the potential reach of an<br />

online performance can often go far beyond the capacities of<br />

conventional venues.<br />

With the majority stuck at home, millions of people turned<br />

to music to reconnect with the life they had before. Streaming<br />

became a positive means for artists to build up fan numbers and<br />

increase awareness of their music. Where once bands could<br />

gain new fans from enthusiastic live slots and playlists to attach<br />

themselves to keen ears, now the great wall of noise on social<br />

media was a further incentivised platform.<br />

The temporary transition to streaming gigs split opinion, as<br />

some saw it as a crucial medium of connection with fans and<br />

increasing listeners. One responded saying: “While not being<br />

able to play in real life, it still gives people who are interested in<br />

my music a chance to hear it in a live format. The internet offers<br />

a much larger audience than a venue, so it’s an opportunity for<br />

more people to discover you.”<br />

For many, lockdown will have been characterised by learning<br />

new skills in between Zoom pub quizzes, banana bread baking<br />

and daily binges of Tiger King. For others, lockdown forced<br />

people into being creative. Yet this wasn’t a consistent feeling;<br />

as always, the creative block can be hard to beat with around<br />

a third (34 per cent) of respondents feeling uninspired during<br />

lockdown. Alternatively, nearly half (46 per cent) of musicians<br />

surveyed felt an increased inspiration as there was more time to<br />

spend being creative.<br />

These bursts and drives of motivation were seen to<br />

fluctuate across the lockdown period. Some musicians were<br />

initially impacted negatively as the sudden change to lifestyle<br />

halted creativity with around 12 per cent finding the setback<br />

hard to deal with. “I need a positive headspace to write, and<br />

with so much negativity in the world right now, it damaged<br />

my motivation to write new songs,” one respondent said, with<br />

another more optimistically adding: “I went out of my way to find<br />

ways to be creative and to encourage those around me to do the<br />

same.”<br />

The closure of practice spaces affected the ability for<br />

musicians to work together as over half (53 per cent) were<br />

completely locked out of practicing with their bandmates during<br />

lockdown with an unfortunate sense of regression apparent in<br />

those asked.<br />

For musicians, live streaming offered a unique opportunity<br />

to develop digital skills as 36 per cent of our respondents<br />

learnt how to stream a live show, 12 per cent gained new<br />

understanding of video production and, finally, 10 per cent went<br />

deeper into their creativity focusing on painting and creative<br />

writing.<br />

To delve into the methods and digital platforms used, 76<br />

per cent of respondents used Facebook, 40 per cent broadcast<br />

on YouTube and 36 per cent streamed over Instagram Live.<br />

The popularity and ease of working with these platforms was<br />

highlighted by the musicians. Endlessly scrolling through memes<br />

and corona hot takes from your uncles could be interrupted by a<br />

band eager to connect with fans again.<br />

With disruption comes innovation, but also collaboration.<br />

With musicians having more free time due to furlough and<br />

lack of real-life gig opportunities, 61 per cent of those asked<br />

worked and collaborated with other musicians during lockdown.<br />

But these collaborations didn’t come without their drawbacks<br />

as many preferred working in person. Large portions of the<br />

musicians (88 per cent) preferred face to face discussions as it<br />

was easier to gain instant feedback and bounce ideas between<br />

people. They found a certain disconnectedness and loss from the<br />

shared experience of practicing that isn’t obtained with people<br />

working online; 20 per cent described that the lack of direct reallife<br />

collaboration completely inhibited their activities.<br />

Ben Roberts was an organiser of Liverpool Digital Music<br />

Festival which saw two live-stream events take place in<br />

recent months. The first event took place in May and saw 100<br />

Merseyside based artists performing from home. The second<br />

took place over the August bank holiday weekend and saw<br />

venues like the M&S Bank Arena open their doors to host artists<br />

like Zuzu in a cavernous, empty auditorium to an audience in its<br />

thousands watching from home.<br />

“It’s a pale stop-gap for<br />

live performance which<br />

is socially and culturally<br />

important and cannot be<br />

replicated online”<br />

The project was born out of the lack of gigs taking place,<br />

says Roberts, and an appetite from both fans and performers for<br />

the return of live music in some capacity. Creating the second<br />

event saw the production take place in venues across the city<br />

which brought in new health and safety concerns as around<br />

50 people working across four venues required its own robust<br />

Covid-19 measures. Venue mapping, one-way systems, cleaning<br />

down areas in between sets, PPE for staff and a track and trace<br />

system were all in place – even without any fans in the building.<br />

This level of organisation stresses the logistical difficulties that<br />

Covid-19 has brought to the live music industry. “Live streaming<br />

is so new and not a lot people were doing it last year,” says<br />

Roberts, “but people and venues are now seeing the value in<br />

streaming. There is tremendous potential.”<br />

But as the sun came out, lockdown loosened and society<br />

wanted to get back to the beer garden, the live streaming<br />

revolution gained renewed competition from people wanting to<br />

go outdoors.<br />

For some fans, however, a live stream, although is nice to<br />

watch and support, does not equate to the live experience. The<br />

collective unison of a packed room brought together by a love<br />

of music struggles to be replicated sitting on your sofa with<br />

some cans looking at a screen. Although the innovation and new<br />

fanbase gains were a positive, the overriding feeling from artists<br />

towards online gigs was one of frustration. Performing in front of<br />

people and playing live was seen as a fundamental need for both<br />

fans and performers.<br />

“It’s a pale stop-gap for live performance which is socially<br />

and culturally important and cannot be replicated online,” one<br />

respondent put simply. Another added: “While they can be OK<br />

to watch, they don’t have the atmosphere and magic of real live<br />

performances.” Another responded outlined how it felt like they<br />

were just “providing content rather than me giving people an<br />

experience”.<br />

More damningly, the financial viability of live streaming<br />

becoming the new normal, for touring bands especially, is more<br />

doubtful. Of all the live-streamed shows that the musicians in<br />

the survey were involved in, only 16 of these musicians actually<br />

got paid and they contributed to 118 of the 506 shows recorded.<br />

Of these 16 musicians, only five of them got paid over £100 for<br />

their performance as they took part in 24 shows. This means<br />

that 81 per cent of musicians did not get paid for performing<br />

a streamed set. These statistics reflect that only select and<br />

established musicians have been benefitting from live streaming<br />

shows, suggesting that the emerging acts are not getting paid<br />

enough and are being left behind.<br />

Drawing on findings from the last article in the series, we<br />

saw that £1.75million was lost in performance revenue for<br />

cancelled shows up to the beginning of August amongst the<br />

artists asked. With very few gigs to the end of September and<br />

onwards looking to go ahead, we estimate that figure to grow to<br />

with a further £700,000 potentially being lost.<br />

The live streams that our respondents were involved in as a<br />

replacement for the lost shows brought total projected earnings<br />

of only £68,000. The figure has potential to drop to a grim<br />

£21,000 if you remove free gigs from the calculations and just<br />

focus on the performers who actually got paid. This remains a<br />

drop in the ocean compared to the money lost due to lack of live<br />

opportunities with streaming shows only recouping 1.2-3.6 per<br />

cent of the money lost.<br />

“They are great for pushing monetised things like merch,<br />

accepting donations in lieu of gig performance fees,” one<br />

respondent shared, “however there is no way to directly<br />

monetise the live streams within the platforms themselves,<br />

making income very uncertain.”<br />

Where the processes of a band or artist getting paid for<br />

a live show vary from via agents or direct from promoters, the<br />

payment systems for online performances are yet to be ironed<br />

out and proven. Where the purchase of a gig ticket grants you<br />

access into the room and a knowledge that the artists you’re<br />

seeing will be getting a portion of that fee, there is no one<br />

“watching the door” for most live streams.<br />

Pay-for-view live streams are a much harder sell in an age<br />

of getting media online for free; the concept of paying to watch<br />

a performance on a screen without leaving your house is a<br />

tough sell. Even well-established artists are already proving<br />

the hardship. Mercury Prize-nominated Laura Marling saw her<br />

professionally produced live stream show at London’s Union<br />

Chapel garner 4,000 viewers from across the globe at £12 a<br />

ticket. However, the show still failed to make financial returns<br />

that would make this type of performance a viable solution going<br />

forward.<br />

There isn’t one rule that fits all in the industry as with<br />

different demographics and audiences comes different attitudes<br />

to. Some smaller artists may see the greater potential reach of<br />

streaming as enough to warrant not getting paid as much. In the<br />

long run, however, that could have negative effects as it grants<br />

the audience an expectation to get live music for free and for<br />

artists to lose out.<br />

As the lockdown hit, Sound City set up Guest House Live<br />

which saw emerging and established artists perform streamed<br />

gigs on a pay-for-view platform. Fans were able to buy tickets,<br />

donate money to the artists directly, engage in a Q&A and<br />

purchase unique merchandise created specifically for that show.<br />

“We saw that streaming was going to be integral for artists,<br />

but there had to be a way to monetise it. We felt it was really<br />

important to us as a festival and an organisation that works<br />

with so many artists that we address that,” said Sound City MD,<br />

Becky Ayres.<br />

“The emerging artists who don’t have a big profile but do<br />

interact and have some dedicated fans have done really well<br />

from it. We’re trying to learn from those emerging artists that<br />

have done well on the platform to see where and how we can<br />

make that a level playing field for other artists,” she added.<br />

“We do believe that streaming performances are something<br />

that fans should be paying for, whatever that amount might be.<br />

Streamed gigs will never be the same as a real show, but it’s<br />

about giving the fan an experience that will engage them with<br />

artists and ultimately create more of a relationship with them<br />

which in turn will generate more income.”<br />

As the industry continues to adapt, the structuring and<br />

potential of live stream events will no doubt flourish in the<br />

coming months. Musicians will further evolve with limitations<br />

leading to new, beneficial opportunities. For now, though,<br />

Liverpool and the international music communities have to wait<br />

for a potential vaccine to be created and distributed before the<br />

doors of venues can reopen. It sadly remains a continually bleak<br />

outlook for the future of live music, but it is reassuring to find<br />

that the city region and its musicians are evolving and finding<br />

ways to adapt to these enforced changes. !<br />

Words: Will Whitby / @WillyWhitby<br />

Lead researchers and data analysis: Richard Anderson and Dr<br />

Mathew Flynn, University of Liverpool<br />

Illustration: Esmée Finlay / @efinlayillustration<br />

The next stage of this research will take place via a consultation<br />

event led by Bido Lito!, University of Liverpool and other<br />

musician support organisations on Tuesday 27th <strong>October</strong> via<br />

Zoom. The event will consider the wider impacts across the<br />

sector with venues, promoters, educators and other industry<br />

professionals encouraged to take part.<br />

To register head to bidolito.co.uk/consultation<br />

FEATURE<br />

17


18


JACQUES<br />

MALCHANCE<br />

Mike Stanton goes stargazing with the producer, DJ and promoter to journey through the cosmos of his<br />

most recent release, joining the dots between constellations of influences along the way.<br />

I’ve been aware of JACQUES MALCHANCE and Upitup<br />

Records for a few years now. It’s nearly impossible to be<br />

part of the fabric of the electronic music scene in Liverpool<br />

without crossing paths with the Upitup boys, Jacques and<br />

Paolo Elmo. I, like many others, have enjoyed nights as guests of<br />

these chaps and their merry band.<br />

Jacques Malchance is a musical polymath; adept in so many<br />

different disciplines it seems almost unfair. He is a classically<br />

trained pianist, an electronic producer, a DJ, a radio show host,<br />

label owner, promoter. He’s an all-round lovely guy, too.<br />

Having relocated from his home city of Rome to a pre-capital<br />

of culture Liverpool in 2005, the intention was to stay a year and<br />

take a music diploma at the Liverpool Institute for Performing<br />

Arts. Fifteen years later and he is still here, has settled down and<br />

is the proud father of two children<br />

In that time Jacques’ musical pedigree has risen, having<br />

performed with amazing artists such as Broadcast, James Taylor<br />

Quartet, Manu Delago, Luke Vibert and Mark Pritchard. Having<br />

co-founded Upitup back in Italy in 2003 with fellow electronic<br />

producer Isocore (Paolo), he has been recording and releasing<br />

music steadily while hosting events, DJing and broadcasting on<br />

Liverpool’s independent radio station, Melodic Distraction.<br />

As the current environment dictates, we meet virtually<br />

through Zoom to talk about his latest haul of creative projects.<br />

After a brief round of hellos, how you doings and messing with<br />

settings, we’re ready.<br />

Jacques is very demonstrative, he talks quickly and<br />

enthusiastically, gesticulating and punctuating his answers with<br />

airy flourishes. His huge mane of hair has been chopped back,<br />

but the beard and his twinkling eyes are still in evidence. There<br />

are tangents and asides throughout the interview punctuated by<br />

Jacques’ infectious laugh and hugely<br />

engaging character. It is impossible<br />

not to be charmed by this most<br />

companionable of men. The hour we<br />

chat for flies by.<br />

Jacques has fully integrated into<br />

the Liverpool culture and is now a bone<br />

fide adopted Scouser, very much one<br />

of our own; transitioning from the man<br />

who arrived on these shores as a green<br />

20-year-old looking for adventure.<br />

“My mum actually encouraged me [to<br />

come to Liverpool],” he says, thinking<br />

back to his days in Italy over 15 years<br />

ago. “She found this course [at LIPA]. I<br />

didn’t know anything about Liverpool,<br />

you know, like no contact whatsoever<br />

and my mum thought this might be an exciting thing.”<br />

Jacques is honest in outlining that he didn’t see himself<br />

sticking around on the Mersey shores for the length of time he<br />

has. But there was a subtle magnetism that drew him and so<br />

many adopted Scousers to the city: “It’s one of those places,”<br />

he points out, “I’m not the only one because I’ve met so many<br />

people that come for what they think is a short amount of time. I<br />

don’t know,” he pauses and ponders with an abstract expression,<br />

“It has got that weird time bubble, kind of warp thing. [Time]<br />

flies. It doesn’t stop. That’s the thing, it actually speeds up.”<br />

In Liverpool, the majority of Jacques’ projects gravitate<br />

towards the electronic, club scene. But there is a subtle<br />

underlayer of classical composition that forms the basis of his<br />

musical exploration. Growing up, Jacques absorbed the music<br />

his parents listened to. “Erik Satie, for sure, was one of the best<br />

ones because I remember hearing Trois Gymnopédies like, really<br />

young,” he recalls. “Still today, it’s an incredible piece of music,<br />

pioneering in so many ways. I went on to do recitals of Satie and<br />

similar stuff.”<br />

Along with a solid basis of passion and poise delivered<br />

“Hearing Squarepusher<br />

changed everything.<br />

It was an instant<br />

moment of ‘whoa’”<br />

by Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon,<br />

it was as a teenager where the most discernible influences of<br />

Jacques productions took root. It was hearing Squarepusher<br />

that flicked on a light in Jacques’ head. “A brother of a friend of<br />

mine played us it,” he explains. “Before I even heard Come To<br />

Daddy by Aphex Twin, I heard Tundra on Feed Me Weird Things<br />

by Squarepusher. This changed everything. It was an instant<br />

[moment] of ‘whoa’.”<br />

As Jacques eludes to, Aphex Twin’s Come To Daddy was an<br />

essential record and made a strong impression. “I saw the video<br />

late at night on MTV. Again, massively mind blown, like instantly.”<br />

Expanding his horizons followed. Having been grounded<br />

in rock it was only natural he would seek out harder and<br />

harder music, getting into bands like Korn and Slipknot and<br />

exploring the early 2000s phenomenon nu metal. However,<br />

through Squarepusher and Aphex Twin, beats held a particular<br />

fascination, something Jacques would carry with him throughout<br />

his musical career. “[On Come To Daddy] the beats were just<br />

more than a nu metal band could do. It felt like the sound was<br />

massive,” Jacques recounts. “I’ve always been in bands, I’ve<br />

always liked bands, you know, but there was definitely this kind<br />

of love for electronic music that was so different. That was my<br />

first introduction to it.”<br />

His musical tastes took time to flourish, firstly absorbing,<br />

as Jacques puts it, “golden-era” (mid 90s) Warp Records and<br />

Rephlex Records, discovering Autechre, Boards of Canada, Cylob<br />

and Bogdan Raczynski. “I wasn’t into house and techno at all<br />

growing up, so yeah, that type of electronic music,” he adds.<br />

The urge to move beyond standard 120 bpm-like rhythms was<br />

obviously strong. “It kind of felt like four-four at the time to me<br />

was cheating,” he considers. “Now, I tend to do mostly, well not<br />

four-four, but you know, straight<br />

beat kind of stuff.” As time went<br />

on, he discovered the joys of late<br />

80s techno, electro and acid house.<br />

“It still blows my mind,” he says<br />

passionately. “Most acid stuff I like is<br />

from around 1988. It still seems like I<br />

can’t really beat that kind of rawness<br />

and mad riffs.”<br />

As a DJ Jacques, is a true musical<br />

democrat, playing a wide range of<br />

genres including techno, electro,<br />

acid, disco, funk, jungle and music<br />

from beyond westernised genres; he<br />

recently performed a set for Liverpool<br />

Arab Arts Festival. Experience of<br />

putting on the now famous Upitup<br />

nights around the city has honed Jacques’ instincts for what<br />

works, which combinations engage and how artists and DJs can<br />

create a night. “Upitup nights, you know, have always been quite<br />

varied, I think in terms of line-up, there’s always been room for<br />

quite experimental, kind of odd, really non-danceable stuff,” he<br />

explains. “But that’s also part of what we’ve always really loved. If<br />

I have a really long DJ set it will never be the same type of music,”<br />

he continues “My favourite type of night will start with ambient<br />

and downtempo chill and then it picks up a bit and becomes<br />

banging electro, techno and acid working its way up to jungle<br />

and then end with a bang, sort of really heavy like gabber and<br />

breakcore. I mean that, for me, is the ideal club night. That’s what<br />

keeps me interested and on the dancefloor all the time.”<br />

His latest release is Arpeologie, a beautiful and melodic trip<br />

through ambient techno. Think Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient<br />

Works 85-92 and you get the idea. The music spirals throughout<br />

cascading waves of deep-groove-filled journeys. I had a brilliant<br />

theory that it was titled Arpeologie because ARP synths were<br />

used throughout, but it turns out I was wrong. “It was mainly<br />

because there are a lot of arpeggiators in it, no ARPs were used,”<br />

he says, bringing an end to my assumptions. “All of the sounds<br />

are hardware with sequencers, but kind of limited in a way, that’s<br />

the thing with hardware, it’s like a limitation that you set yourself<br />

[to work with].”<br />

Recorded and mastered in his home studio, Arpeologie<br />

sounds lush with enough movement, patterns, textures and<br />

depth to fill your head with all those lovely endorphin-lit pulses.<br />

However, despite its release in May, the recordings are as much<br />

as 10 years old. So how has it only just been released? Jacques<br />

takes up the story.<br />

“I was supporting Legowelt and he came up after me<br />

afterwards to say how much he liked the set,” he outlines.<br />

Legowelt asked Jacques to record an album for his label at the<br />

time, Strange Life Records, a small independent. “It was cool, he<br />

was putting out amazing stuff, especially at that time. There was<br />

Polysick, and DMX Krew. It was a really nice label.”<br />

After being set the task and deadline, the label then sadly<br />

folded. “That was obviously a bit of a blow,” Jacques concedes.<br />

“He was cool about it, saying, ‘I’m really sorry. I really love the<br />

album. I really like it. Please send it to other labels and, you know,<br />

good luck.’ And that’s how it became this wait.”<br />

Labels were showing the love but nothing came of it. “They<br />

were always like, ‘I really like it, but I’m not sure if it fits the<br />

label’, so that’s been the story of it for years. It became this long<br />

journey. Finally, I was like, ‘No, fuck it’, I’m going to put it out on<br />

vinyl under Upitup later in the autumn.”<br />

The advent of Bandcamp Friday in May prompted Jacques to<br />

release Arpeologie as a digital-only download with the intention<br />

of a proper vinyl release later in the year. The reaction so far<br />

has taken him by surprise, both in its number of plays and the<br />

generosity of those purchasing it for higher than normal fees via<br />

pay-what-you-feel. It’s well worth the adulation it’s receiving in<br />

pockets of the internet.<br />

Along with the release of the record, things remain busy<br />

and exciting for Jacques. Juggling so many different projects and<br />

interests must be exhausting but he seems happy and focused.<br />

His and Paolo’s Melodic Distraction show broadcasts every<br />

month featuring Upitup acts plus a selection of the best music<br />

in the area. These guys really know their stuff and the love just<br />

pours out of the speakers.<br />

Once the current crisis has passed and we all return to<br />

some form of normality, live performance can return and these<br />

nights can once again grace Liverpool. It’s with great hope that<br />

I’ll bump into Jacques or Paolo and experience another one of<br />

their magical nights. Maybe, somewhere down the line he’ll even<br />

achieve his dream of bringing Aphex Twin to Liverpool to play<br />

at Upitup. It’s a dream he views as “complicated”, not to mention<br />

finically challenging. “But you never know,” he teasingly adds,<br />

leaving us with a slither of hope – the kind that would pull us<br />

through the long months ahead with no events on the horizon.<br />

Yet, even without the events, Jacques and his productions<br />

continue to embody the spirit and drive of Liverpool, contributing<br />

to the rich cultural heritage of this great city. It’s fair to say<br />

Jacques Malchance and Upitup will be remembered for years to<br />

come. And those nights with him behind the decks will resonate<br />

with ageing ravers and keep us all warm in our twilight years. !<br />

Words: Mike Stanton / @DepartmentEss<br />

Photography: Michael Driffill / @Driffysphotos<br />

Arpeologie is available now via Upitup records.<br />

Special thanks to Bidston Observatory Artistic<br />

Research Centre for providing access for photography.<br />

For information on the centre’s work and rates for<br />

day visits and overnight stays for artistic projects<br />

and development please visit bidstonobservatory.<br />

org or email enquiries@bidstonobservatory.org<br />

FEATURE<br />

19


LIVERPOOL’S MOST FABULOUS LGBTQIA FESTIVAL RETURNS,<br />

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FEATURING:<br />

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ART . ACTIVISM . ALLYSHIP<br />

29 <strong>October</strong> - 15 November 2020<br />

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Box office:<br />

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Lord Street<br />

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PR8 1DB<br />

Cats on<br />

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Free<br />

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12 September — 9 January 2021<br />

Reacquaint yourself with the captivating<br />

cats who come to life in books, manuscripts<br />

and artworks. Featuring music by The Stray<br />

Cats, The Cure and deadmau5.<br />

Exhibition partner:


This year’s August bank holiday carnival weekend was stripped of its usual freedom, colour and movement.<br />

With a handful of live events filling the void in Liverpool, Mary Olive explores the essence of dancing and<br />

communality, an integral aspect of our lives which is yet to return.<br />

Fairy lights dance along wooden beams hanging<br />

overhead. Green plants and hand gel fill tables as<br />

bar staff begin to vogue while they serve drinks.<br />

Laughter bubbles as friends rekindle, catching up after<br />

quarantine in the fading summer sun. On the decks, current<br />

selector PapuRaf plays a euphoric mix of afrobeat and dancehall<br />

for the early birds bouncing steadily to the beat. All sat socially<br />

distanced and six to a table, we are all so close yet so far from<br />

the separation that’s punctuated much of 2020.<br />

24 Kitchen Street has changed since I was last here back<br />

in February. The days of strangers’ sweaty bodies dancing<br />

together, packed beneath an enormous disco ball, feel a lifetime<br />

ago. And yet, the sparkling excitement of a Kitchen Street gig<br />

feels as bright as ever. Maybe even more so now, given the long<br />

separation between live audience and live music. Anticipation<br />

crackles in the spaces between separated people and bottles of<br />

anti-bac. Tonight, the outdoor garden terrace at the Baltic Tringle<br />

venue is hosting dancehall and hip-hop collective Nutribe, back<br />

for their first live performance since March.<br />

The love and joy within the audience is palpable. It feels like<br />

remembering something I’d forgotten to miss. The feeling is not<br />

easily defined. It lies somewhere between grounding and flying.<br />

Strangers smiling, sharing singing, slightly swaying. Live music<br />

feels sacred. The performance from Nutribe is rooted in collective<br />

harmony. It is a work of art; an explosion of energy and light.<br />

Speaking to one third of Nutribe, Sticky Dub, just after he steps<br />

off stage, he reflects on the humbling satisfaction of performing<br />

again. “The view from up [on stage],” he says, beaming with<br />

happiness, “it was beautiful, man.”<br />

A room filled with people dancing together is a special<br />

thing to be a part of. Impossible to replicate, each music event<br />

is distinctly unique. It is a collision of causes and effects which<br />

lead every single person to that exact moment. Decisions both<br />

unconscious and conscious bring a collection of strangers<br />

together to share in the healing that is experiencing live music<br />

together. Tonight may have seen more controlled loss of<br />

inhibitions, people keeping their distance and retaining space,<br />

but it was an alluring refraction of<br />

spirit raising compulsion we’re drawn<br />

to. But what exactly is it about music,<br />

particularly sharing music with people,<br />

that makes us crave shared movement<br />

so intensely? Is it simply the social<br />

pleasure of seeing friends and moving<br />

to melodies, or do we share a deeper<br />

connection to it?<br />

Music and dance is embedded<br />

within us, laced within our DNA,<br />

no less than breathing or smiling.<br />

We just feel music, and there is no<br />

training or education needed to simply<br />

understand it. People have been<br />

dancing in groups since humanity<br />

began, and still to this day music and<br />

dance remain spiritually healing. Perhaps this is why we have<br />

been missing it so intensely, and why we will continue to crave it<br />

until it is safe once again to freely dance together.<br />

Live music crystallises so much of this feeling for people.<br />

It’s the instigator, the dynamic force. The energy that exists<br />

between performer and audience makes the music shared attain<br />

“We are universally<br />

bonded through<br />

our need to love,<br />

to be free and to<br />

connect. Music<br />

and dance is our<br />

vehicle to do this”<br />

a new level of power. It’s living. Tonight’s performers are well<br />

versed in both roles as dancer and orchestrators of the dance.<br />

“Whatever you’re feeling, whatever you’re thinking, you just<br />

have to surrender to it in that moment in time,” Nutribe’s Onyx<br />

shares. “I feel like freestyling [rapping] is very healing because<br />

of that.” When freestyling, all three members are at one with<br />

the music, allowing lyrics and movement to flow out of them<br />

as they perform. This is a spiritually<br />

healing process for not only them<br />

performing, but for the audience,<br />

too, who are sharing this moment<br />

of vulnerability and openness with<br />

them.<br />

While in conversation with the<br />

trio, they bounce off one another yet<br />

remain grounded in their originality<br />

as individuals. “What we are in<br />

the moment is what we reflect<br />

in our music,” Doopsman shares.<br />

Remaining in constant motion means<br />

that Nutribe are ever-changing,<br />

flowing and growing as musicians<br />

and as people. As a result, every<br />

performance is a new experience for<br />

both performer and audience member.<br />

Influenced by Caribbean dancehall, throughout their<br />

performance Nutribe celebrate sharing culture, music and art<br />

with an entire room, something their manager Tekla tells me<br />

about. “The interactions [they] have on stage, and the content of<br />

the music, is all Caribbean.”<br />

22


Dancehall was born in Jamaica during the late 70s, famous<br />

for its reggae influence, the genre is built upon fast rhythms and<br />

regarded as one of the most versatile genres today. “You can’t<br />

understand [dancehall] just through observation. You have to<br />

engage in it and feel the energy of it,” says Tekla. Dance is an<br />

incredibly important aspect of dancehall, and it is through the<br />

celebration of dance where this music comes to life.<br />

Nutribe not only have a flow to their words, but also their<br />

bodies. Movement and dance is threaded within their music. All<br />

three members of Nutribe, are trained contemporary and ballet<br />

dancers and use dance as a means to express themselves. “It’s<br />

a slice of freedom,” Stickydub says talking about performing<br />

on stage. “You share that with the crowd. All the experiences<br />

are just slices of freedom that you all feel together.” Onyx adds:<br />

“When you’re in that dance with just those people, you’re locked<br />

in. You’re not thinking about anything else.”<br />

Sharing music and dancing with others helps us to understand<br />

ourselves deeply, passionately and openly. Music physically<br />

stimulates our brain’s reward centres creating a euphoric feeling.<br />

Dance improves our intuition with our bodies, it reduces our<br />

dementia risk and improves self-esteem and sexual health.<br />

The relationship between bodily understanding and music is<br />

shared by Go Off, Sis podcast host and model, Rachel Duncan.<br />

She explains her relationship between the self and dancing,<br />

specifically celebrating dancehall music. “Because I grew up in<br />

Trinidad, dancehall and owning your sexuality has always been<br />

something quite close to my heart,” she tells me. “But beyond<br />

sexuality and feeling sexual, listening to music makes me feel<br />

in charge and empowered. Especially when I’m listening to a<br />

woman playing dancehall.”<br />

Duncan is an ambassador for self-love, self-care and<br />

self-expression. She lifts others through her example of lifting<br />

herself. “It’s like being in a euphoric state,” she illustrates.<br />

Duncan outlines how so much of her confidence stems from her<br />

experiences with Caribbean carnival. “I feel like I’m in an out of<br />

body experience. The music makes me feel like I can do whatever<br />

I want. I just don’t care. Everybody is just having so much fun<br />

dancing together,” she says. Dancing places us in a state of<br />

transcendence, as we let go of control and let our bodies just<br />

flow with a rhythm.<br />

There is no such thing as a bad dancer, only people too<br />

in control to let go. Dancing is for us all, it is pure, and it is<br />

instinctual. “I love dancing in front of the mirror,” Duncan laughs<br />

freely, “that is my vibe!” Duncan shares how self-loving dancing<br />

can be, as well as a shared experience, something we can<br />

practice as a means to care for ourselves. Although we crave<br />

collectively sharing music, perhaps there are other ways we can<br />

access this feeling of euphoria. Perhaps dancing on our own, for<br />

ourselves, for the enjoyment, is the balm for this itch.<br />

A few days prior to Nutribe’s performance, a slice of Carnival<br />

arrived in Liverpool over August bank holiday weekend in a sea of<br />

colours and music with LIME scheduling two consecutive parties<br />

in two local venues. The promoters and party starters of LIME<br />

collective bring dancehall and afrobeat to the city, quite literally<br />

handing out fresh limes and tropical rhythms in unison. Although<br />

the crowd are wrapped in jackets and hoodies, LIME brings the<br />

Caribbean sunshine to the north. Here, a celebration of music,<br />

dance and people takes place. A place where all bodies and<br />

beings are accepted and welcomed.<br />

Catching up with radio host and co-founder of LIME, Babylon<br />

Fox, she reinforces the value of dance and self-expression through<br />

the carnival and dancehall events. “[Lime] is about sharing a part<br />

of me with other people,” she explains. “I like to give a bit of myself<br />

to the space.” There is a specific beauty in creating a space where<br />

in which people come together and dance. “Dancehall is never<br />

aggressive,” Babylon tells me. “[LIME] brings in such a nice mix of<br />

people. It takes us back to that primal movement and rhythm; it<br />

engages all of your senses.”<br />

LIME empowers, celebrating sexuality, self-expression and<br />

connection to others. It is a space where in which everyone has<br />

room to move freely, with respect and community woven into its<br />

foundations. “I like looking after people,” Babylon smiles, “I like<br />

making sure everyone has a good time when they come to our<br />

events.”<br />

As people, we are universally bonded through our need<br />

to love, to be free and to connect. Music and dance is our<br />

vehicle to do this. Whether it’s accessed through organising<br />

events, performing or simply just being a part of the dance,<br />

music is a magic within humanity. Dancing reminds us we’re<br />

here to enjoy life, reconnecting us to our inner child and living<br />

presently. We are born understanding music, and when we<br />

dance, our bodies, spirit and self align in a way which can<br />

never be exactly replicated. It is a fleeting, swelling moment of<br />

complete joy to fully allow us to let go of ego and surrender to<br />

the music.<br />

The craving for live music and dancing is understandably<br />

deep in the current moment. We have a primal need to share<br />

music and to physically express our relationship with it. It is<br />

written within us. The impact on our mental health can be<br />

detrimental without it. Currently, we are living during a time<br />

where we are told to fear strangers, to keep distance and<br />

reduce human connection as much as possible. Ironically,<br />

now is when we emotionally need each other the most. How<br />

do we ensure we are connecting as people, sharing love and<br />

engaging in a shared understanding of one existence, while<br />

simultaneously abiding by strict social distancing regulations?<br />

Perhaps music is the answer. We must embrace our<br />

instinctual want for music, whether that be supporting local<br />

artists at socially distanced events, dancing in our bedrooms<br />

or filling our days with uplifting, euphoric symphonies.<br />

Tonight’s performance at Kitchen Street, as well as LIME’s<br />

colourful festival of rhythms and dancehall, gives us hope. It<br />

gives us something to hold on to, while we continue to reach<br />

out for one another. Hope that we will dance together again<br />

one day. That we will experience those “slices of freedom”<br />

again. And in the meantime, although the world may feel<br />

unfair, unstable and even painful some days, we still have so<br />

much to smile about. Listen to the musicians. Listen to the<br />

events organisers, the radio hosts, and live-streaming DJs. Let<br />

their music soothe you. Let it uplift you. For now, just let the<br />

music play. !<br />

Words: Mary Olive / @maryolivepoet<br />

Photography: (Nutribe) Michael Kirkham / @MrKirks<br />

FEATURE 23


24


BYE<br />

LOUIS<br />

Just before the months of lockdown, the multi-instrumentalist relinquished control of his 2019 EP The Same<br />

Boy for it to take on a new life through a series of open source remixes. With the remix EP now released, Kieran<br />

Callaghan considers the importance of ownership and the unique characteristics of every piece of music.<br />

The Same Boy started its life as an idea straight after<br />

my first gig, back in early 2018. I had sent Neil Grant<br />

(Lo Five) some songs a few months earlier, and he<br />

kindly gave me my first opportunity to perform them<br />

at a really welcoming and friendly Emotion Wave night at 81<br />

Renshaw Street.<br />

Some of the songs I played that night were really old, as<br />

was some of the equipment I was using. One song in particular<br />

I wrote when I first got my sampler<br />

in about 2006. It’s developed a little<br />

over time, but that song is basically<br />

just a looped piano phrase with me<br />

chanting about friendship over the top.<br />

I still triggered that same loop I made<br />

12 years before, and still chanted the<br />

same words I came up with all those<br />

years ago.<br />

After the show, a then very new<br />

friend, Sean Fearon (Foxen Cyn), asked<br />

if I’d like to record some songs and<br />

release them on what would become<br />

the Emotion Wave label. Eighteen<br />

months later, The Same Boy came out.<br />

The record reflects the story of<br />

that aforementioned old song. Regardless of which song I’m<br />

thinking about, it’s the journey that song has taken that feels<br />

consistent. The songs more or less just appeared in my head at<br />

some point in time, and if they made it to the record it means<br />

that they didn’t disappear. They transitioned into the physical<br />

world through the recording process, I guess.<br />

The Same Boy is personal on as many levels as I could make<br />

it. I played every recorded part you can hear (except for one bit<br />

on a balalaika that Sean insisted he had to play). I was there a<br />

lot when Sean was mixing the record and then another friend,<br />

Charlie Foy (produces as Lack – Cong Burn, Blank Mind, Livity<br />

Sound), mastered it all.<br />

I burned all 50 of the CDs in my then living room. My rabbit<br />

friend ate one of the disc burners I used. I wrote on all of the<br />

CD cases. Each CD case had a photo print and a negative of me<br />

inside. I cut and pasted all the little bits you can find inside the<br />

CD packs. I hand painted the posters for the launch event at the<br />

Kazimier Stockroom with my partner Natalie.<br />

The promotional work for the The Same Boy was like a form<br />

of self-parody – I usually hate drawing attention to myself or<br />

sharing pictures. I guess the whole thing is supposed to be a<br />

piece of or a reflection of me – that was the only way any of this<br />

could feel normal. I felt I should have the music wear its deep<br />

personal feelings on its sleeve. To me, back then, it would feel<br />

inauthentic any other way.<br />

A year on from its release, The Same Boy took on a new,<br />

“The remixes<br />

represent a<br />

comfortable loss<br />

of ownership”<br />

open source form, allowing producers to remould and remix the<br />

recordings in whatever way they wanted to. The idea actually<br />

came about through a discussion with Chris (of Bido Lito!<br />

superfame). He mentioned a collection of remixes of Goat songs<br />

(Run To Your Mama Remixes), and I started thinking about what<br />

having my music remixed would feel like. Would I hate hearing<br />

my music repurposed and mixed up and moved around? What<br />

would it all mean to me?<br />

I think, in a lot of ways, all songs<br />

never really exist in their truest form<br />

in the physical world, or beyond<br />

the confines of the songwriter’s (or<br />

songwriters’) head(s). All songs exist<br />

as an idea that will never actually<br />

come into physical existence. This<br />

perfect rendition of the song is never<br />

attainable. Whenever a song is<br />

performed or recorded, it’s always<br />

just a version.<br />

This idea really clicked in my<br />

head a few years ago. The language<br />

I find that I use to describe it kind of<br />

comes from dub music, where there<br />

are lots of different versions of songs<br />

that are mixed by different producers. The songs are titled that<br />

way. So you have stuff like ‘King Tubby & Prince Jammy – Living<br />

Version’ and things like that. And so basically, to me, every song<br />

you’ve ever heard is a version.<br />

I also latched onto the idea of trying to let the songs go<br />

completely, as an attempt to let the feelings that I have whenever<br />

I perform them or think about them change into something else.<br />

It’s a strange experience revisiting the emotions that you attach to<br />

a certain song every time you perform it, because you might have<br />

moved away from that part of your life or whatever it was that<br />

you were trying to better understand through writing the song.<br />

With all of this in mind, I made it all as open as possible and<br />

decided to put every part of every song from The Same Boy<br />

into a publicly accessible Google Drive, and posted a link to it in<br />

messages to friends, and my Instagram and Twitter feeds. I really<br />

liked the idea that you could have a chain of reinterpretations<br />

as well, so you could get more distance between the original<br />

idea and a new piece of work. To get further than one stage<br />

removed from my idea as part of this project, I asked my friend<br />

Alice Lapworth (Wives’ Tales) if she’d be interested in creating<br />

something in response to one of the remixes.<br />

When I asked her the question for the first time, I actually<br />

didn’t know what any of the remixes were going to sound like.<br />

In the end, Alice was really into Steve Amadeo’s strings-heavy<br />

re-imagining of Between The Hedges and she came up with<br />

this really singular, beautiful piece of visual work, Between<br />

The Walls. I stayed away from every element of it as it came<br />

together. It’s wholly the work of Alice, Jack Ehlen (filming and<br />

editing) and all of the performers on the day.<br />

In many ways the remixes represent a comfortable loss of<br />

ownership. I think the most important idea sparks either come<br />

fully formed in one’s own head, or fully unexpectedly as part of<br />

a communal experience. I don’t think music should be ‘owned’ in<br />

a lot of ways, although I recognise the importance of ownership<br />

when it comes to trying to make a living from music. But really,<br />

these concepts aren’t where the beauty of and interest in music<br />

lie for me. I think it’s all about the joy of the idea, and then where<br />

that initial idea goes and how it changes and impacts differently<br />

on different people. In quite a literal way, the same song sounds<br />

different to different people. The idea of ownership seems so far<br />

from what makes all of this so special.<br />

The strangest thing about this process was hearing Steve<br />

Amadeo’s remix of Between The Hedges, which ended up being<br />

the piece that was responded to by Alice. Every remix was<br />

totally unguided, and beyond asking people if they would like<br />

to be a part of this, I have had no hand in any of the production.<br />

But Steve’s version of Between The Hedges sounds closer to<br />

the idea of this song that I have in my head than the version<br />

that ended up on The Same Boy. It was initially written while<br />

on a very long cycle through the countryside. I realised I was<br />

surrounded by fields full of animals whose existence was<br />

predicated on their slaughter for meat. Almost as a way of<br />

working through how I felt about this fact that should be obvious<br />

to me more often, I started repeating phrases and thoughts in<br />

my head.<br />

I heard very organic sounds in my head as well, and the words<br />

and tune felt like they should be bellowed out, in a very raw way.<br />

I kind of heard this idea as if it were in the style of The Incredible<br />

String Band. And so Steve’s reworking of the song for strings<br />

– even though it isn’t in the style of The Incredible String Band –<br />

gets much closer to this original idea than my own version.<br />

The whole project, truly, is not my work. And that’s the point<br />

of it, really. It’s about what new things can be made from the old.<br />

Personally, I can’t imagine making work that isn’t personal. But<br />

this project has taught me a lot about the possibilities of new<br />

things appearing in unexpected ways. With the current situation<br />

where we can’t be physically present together in most settings,<br />

this way of working could become a lot more important. !<br />

Words: Kieran Callaghan / @bye_louis<br />

Photography: Connor O’Mara (left) & Natalie Lissenden (right)<br />

Illustration: Eimear Kavanagh / eimear-art.co.uk<br />

The Same Boy and A Different Boy are available now via<br />

Emotion Wave<br />

FEATURE<br />

25


MAKING THE CASE<br />

Following the recent closures of Sound, The Zanzibar, and now<br />

Constelations, Charly Reed underscores the importance of protecting<br />

and developing more small venues and their artistic communities.<br />

Small venues across the UK have been struggling for many years. With the effects of the<br />

current pandemic, this has become a crisis. In Liverpool alone, The Zanzibar, Sound and<br />

Studio 2 have all closed in recent months, with Constelations recently added to the list.<br />

Many others nationally, and locally, are in need of saving.<br />

These venues were essential to my personal development as an artist, promoter and creative.<br />

I played my first ever gig at The Zanzibar and regularly played Eggy Records’ events at Sound<br />

and promoted my own gigs there with Samurai Kip. What ties these venues together are the<br />

communities that surround them and the social function these spaces provide. This can be<br />

recognised by anyone entering a well-run small space; the palpable energy, the near tangible<br />

creativity being manifested.<br />

Small music venues form a sometimes forgotten section of our music ecosystem, yet they’re<br />

arguably the most important aspect. Without these spaces there would be no major acts to<br />

headline large venues and festivals. Too often it’s only the main stages and legendary venues that<br />

seem to be highlighted in an artist’s journey, but their first is just as important as their biggest.<br />

Small venues are vital for new and upcoming acts to cut their teeth and organically build their<br />

audience. They are the lifeblood of most music scenes and act as social spaces for the development<br />

of artists, fellow creatives, events and communities. This social and cultural importance can often be<br />

overlooked, but in the long term it is vital for a healthy and creative UK music industry.<br />

Many people who use these spaces do value their social power and sense of community.<br />

However, in the wider context of the UK music industry, local governance and financial issues<br />

cannot be ignored. Venues such as 24 Kitchen Street remain under threat from overzealous<br />

development. In many cases, such development has been approved by Liverpool City Council. But<br />

it’s not just the small venues feeling the strain. Even well-established venues are struggling for<br />

money as funding for the arts is funnelled off and the economic climate worsens.<br />

According to the Music Venue Trust, even though 140 grassroots music venues have been<br />

taken off their critical list, over 400 are still at imminent risk of being closed permanently. The<br />

government support package during the pandemic has proven insufficient to stop a number of<br />

small venues going out of business. Manchester’s Gorilla and Deaf Institute were saved when on<br />

the brink, but the fate isn’t the same for The Welly and Polar Bear in Hull. The pandemic was the<br />

writing on the wall for the integral hub that Sound had become here in Liverpool.<br />

Although Liverpool’s music tourism industry brings in millions of pounds every year, very little<br />

comes into grass roots music venues. In ‘Developing a Liverpool City of Music Stratergy’, Culture<br />

Liverpool estimated that £200 million is gained by the Liverpool economy each year from music<br />

related spending. However, only £3 million actually relates to grassroots shows. This squeeze<br />

points to the vital issue of how our society is structured and how it views the arts. Monetary value is<br />

promoted over social cohesion, community and creative output. Even though organisations like the<br />

Music Venue Trust and Liverpool City Region Music Board are doing good work for small venues,<br />

major players in the music industry often give too little support. The millions of pounds at the top<br />

end of the industry remains with the biggest companies with little reinvestment in grassroots<br />

venues.<br />

Small venues are the foundation of UK music, and they’re also integral to local scenes. Eggy<br />

Records fostered a new phase of DIY music community from the tight confines of Sound Basement,<br />

with the label’s artists and extended bands playing their regular showcases – including an event<br />

for the BBC Radio 6 Music Festival fringe. Sam Warren, co-founder of Eggy Records, says that<br />

“without small music venues, the wider music industry as a whole would be in danger of collapsing.<br />

Artists do not start off playing shows in larger venues, with larger bands, this just does not<br />

happen”.<br />

Small venues provide performance and social spaces for acts to develop and are important<br />

in defining the local cultural character. Liverpool is perhaps stuck in its 60s cultural character, not<br />

appreciating the musical progression the city has made and the current scenes and movements that<br />

are happening. This is hindering positive progression in the present and future for Liverpool and the<br />

wider UK.<br />

The performers and the audience are obviously the lifeblood of any venue. For a venue to work<br />

these two groups have to be attracted to a venue and invest in it over time. This is what builds a<br />

community around these spaces. It is not just the band up on stage or the sounds that come out of<br />

the speakers that is important, it is everyone involved – from the audience to the photographers,<br />

writers, bar staff, promoters and the cleaners afterwards. In small venues the performers enter and<br />

leave through the same doors as everyone else and there is often no backstage. This makes the<br />

performer feel part of the audience and vice versa. It also means the performers can be found in<br />

the crowd watching other bands and sticking around after the show, leading to a greater sense of<br />

connection and community.<br />

In a previous article in Bido Lito!, Rebecca Frankland talked about the community that has<br />

been created around the Wavertree Worldwide events held at Smithdown Social Club. This DIY<br />

community brings lots of different people together to enjoy themselves and dance. Inspired by other<br />

communities and spaces, such as London’s Total Refreshment Centre, they have sought to create<br />

their own south Liverpool version of a democratised party community. Audiences and performers<br />

connect with the authenticity that they see in promoters and venues that care about what they’re<br />

doing, that care about the community they are creating. International DJs who have played at the<br />

26


Wavertree Worldwide events have praised the no frills space and how they feel connected to the<br />

audience. Even small things like security can make a difference to how people feel and perceive the<br />

venue. At venues such as Sound and Smithdown Social Club, there was little security other than<br />

the venue staff. These spaces are safe and open places to visit, which enhances their community<br />

vibe.<br />

Sound Basement was a good example of a venue which hosted a community of people who<br />

came together to create something that people really cared about. This was a community of people<br />

who hadn’t come to listen to any one genre; there was an emphasis on creativity, good times and<br />

dancing. Music genres are a hard thing to define and can mean different things to different people.<br />

More important are the social groups that we create along with our listening. This means that the<br />

social and community spaces these venues provide are invaluable. It is not just about what music<br />

we like; it’s the associated groups that can define us as people.<br />

Emma Warren, music journalist and DJ, notes in her book Make Some<br />

Space that “nightclubs are vastly underestimated as motors of social<br />

change because of the social mixing that happens within them… we<br />

underestimate them as places of personal transformation or even as a<br />

coping mechanism to deal with the struggles of life. Dancing in the dark<br />

is a human need”. So much is covered in these three sentences. These<br />

places give such a strong social connection between people that they<br />

can affect social change. The power of being in a room and listening and<br />

moving to music with others can change society and yourself. It breeds<br />

tolerance, openness and communal values. This personal development<br />

is also important as in these spaces people can gain comfort within their<br />

identities. The last line of Warren’s quote is a powerful statement. This<br />

need and desire to listen to music, socialise and dance is an innate human<br />

characteristic.<br />

Some people feel the need to take matters into their own hands.<br />

The promoters at Sound and Smithdown Social Club have often been<br />

musicians and DJs who started off promoting to get the music they wanted to hear played, but<br />

have progressed to running regular nights. This unseen hand guiding an event is underappreciated.<br />

Without this planning, problem-solving and pushing, nights would be shaky, error prone, and<br />

never even get off the ground. Promoters can have a big part in shaping what a venue is about.<br />

Sound was known as the home of Eggy Records, and the Eggy showcase nights were often sold<br />

out and filled with local and touring talent. Smithdown Social Club and Wavertree Worldwide have<br />

become so synonymous that some people refer to them interchangeably. This power to craft the<br />

creative image of the venue is a powerful tool and a role that needs more acknowledgment at the<br />

grassroots level.<br />

Another group of people who are important to venues but who rarely get mentioned are<br />

wider creatives, those not in the binary on stage and audience roles. Lee Fleming, co-founder<br />

“What is important<br />

is not the physical<br />

space itself, but<br />

the people and<br />

culture that are<br />

occupying it”<br />

of Wavertree Worldwide and Anti Social Jazz Club says that “small music venues are often<br />

underestimated in their contribution to the community. Whether it’s a purpose-built space or a back<br />

room of the local pub, hosting underground and emerging popular culture is both necessary and<br />

influential. Beyond the musicians who play there, these small venues also play host to communities<br />

of fans, employees, volunteers, promoters and other enthusiasts”.<br />

These other creatives can play important functions in venues and scenes, and Liverpool’s small<br />

venues give as much support to these creatives as to the musicians and promoters. Photographers,<br />

who are often at the heart of developing scenes, can hone their talents in these often challenging<br />

spaces. Other artists will also be involved in designing posters, decorations, artwork and<br />

merchandise, linking the music more closely with the wider arts. Without this wider community,<br />

these very pages of Bido Lito! would not exist.<br />

While Liverpool is home to so many interesting musicians,<br />

creatives, promoters and audiences, there are lots of performance<br />

spaces in bars, clubs and pubs which are not promoting original<br />

music or trying to develop a sense of community. This weakness of<br />

programming can be infuriating to musicians looking to develop their<br />

own original sound, stifling creativity and damaging the progression<br />

of the wider music scene. However, there are also venues positively<br />

pushing music forward, with owners seeing the social and cultural<br />

importance of their venue. These spaces are important for audiences<br />

to come and have new cultural experiences and to nurture first time<br />

performers and up and coming talent. The idea that putting on music is<br />

an important public service can be overlooked by local government and<br />

developers. Bringing people together and having the funding to do so<br />

and engage local communities is vital for the health of our society.<br />

As we lose more and more small venues, the damage to the<br />

musical ecosystem is evident. Small venues provide a space for young,<br />

new and leftfield artists to grow, express themselves and build their<br />

musical culture. They provide safe spaces for audiences to experience new culture and connect<br />

with like-minded fellow audience members and performers. These social spaces create something<br />

unique and important. The venues are more than just the performers and audience; they are a<br />

network of groups and individuals, who work together both in the limelight and behind the scenes<br />

to make space for people to be themselves. We can make this community and social interaction<br />

happen anywhere. What is important is not the physical space itself, but the people and culture<br />

that are occupying it. This is where the future of Liverpool’s musical heritage lies and it needs<br />

protecting. !<br />

Words: Charly Reed<br />

Photography: Billy Vitch / @billy_vitch_rock_photography<br />

FOR SMALL SPACES<br />

FEATURE<br />

27


SPOTLIGHT<br />

“I’m challenging<br />

gender equality<br />

in today’s music<br />

industry by<br />

entering into a<br />

male-dominated<br />

genre of drill”<br />

QUEEN YUE<br />

Embodying an historical Chinese<br />

empress and recontextualising the<br />

Silk Road, Queen Yue is here to<br />

turn heads in UK drill.<br />

QUEEN YUE has a clear goal: to make her mark on the UK<br />

drill scene, and be the first scouse female to do so.<br />

Yue’s inspirations lean heavily on Chinese history and<br />

philosophy, referencing an age and dynasty where equality was<br />

at the forefront of culture. “Through my music I’m going back<br />

in time to explore the characters on the Silk Roads during the<br />

reign of the Wu Zetian, China’s first female ruler and empress in<br />

700AD,” she explains. “Wu Zetian [presided over] a time in China<br />

where females were equal to men,” she adds. Drawing on this<br />

inspiration, Yue is attempting to embody this historical context in<br />

her own journey into drill, challenging the societal norms of the<br />

male-dominated genre.<br />

Extending these themes further in her music, an upcoming<br />

EP centres on the Silk Road initiative from China and Europe,<br />

and how the historical circumstances remain relevant today. Her<br />

debut single, Silky Robes, explores how it would feel to be a<br />

merchant on the Silk Road “and how this is alludes to the selling<br />

of drugs and tales of violence that we experience through drill<br />

personas in today’s music”. Silky Robes zeros in on those working<br />

as contemporary ‘merchants’, while still remaining focused on<br />

her fight for gender equality. The single mixes drill sensibilities<br />

with Sino instrumentation, topped with a defining Scouse vocal<br />

delivery.<br />

While the influences of Chinese history and culture play a<br />

pivotal role in her music, Queen Yue’s influences don’t stop there.<br />

She cites Sean Paul and Talk Talk as early influences, being<br />

some of the first singles and albums she ever owned. However,<br />

Gwen Stefani is marked out as the significant driving force in<br />

her early years. While Stefani remained a musical influence, she<br />

also influenced Yue in terms of visual identity. Gwen Stefani’s<br />

Love. Angel. Music. Baby. was named after her Japanese back-up<br />

dancers, chosen due to her own love of Harajuku and fashion.<br />

Yue recognises the influence this had on her own identity, now<br />

reflected in her chosen stage persona – an ode to her love of<br />

Chinese culture and fashion. It’s an alluring combination, both<br />

in the historical context that props up the persona and how Yue<br />

executes it as an artist.<br />

Her love of music was apparent from an early age, and her<br />

determination to succeed in the industry remains paramount. She<br />

acknowledges how creating music enables her to further explore<br />

identity. “It allows you to access experiences to act out your<br />

desired identity and it’s a great cathartic release when you’re<br />

actively creating music,” she notes. Yue’s admiration for music<br />

looks past the usual reasonings, however, explaining how it<br />

enables her to practice self-love, while enhancing confidence and<br />

self-esteem, allowing us to see how music isn’t just a getaway to<br />

success and attention. Yet, just like every other artist she has her<br />

individual dreams for her career. She notes desires to eventually<br />

support local hip-hop artists such as Lee Scott or Tony Broke, but<br />

“on a worldwide scale I’d just love to support Slime Dollaz, Yung<br />

Nudy or Young Thug”, she adds.<br />

As she continues to make waves in the drill scene, unfazed<br />

by any mainstream expectations, Queen Yue has her eyes set on<br />

making it big, all the while knocking down any gender barriers<br />

that stand in her way. With her unique identity, determined<br />

attitude and signature sound – “a slimey mix of UK drill, trap,<br />

trillwave and cloud rap” – it appears Queen Yue’s found her forte.<br />

Words: Danni King / @dannikingg<br />

Photography: Jacob Davenport / @jacobdavs<br />

Artwork design: Elliott Harosh / @leftyvisuals<br />

@queenyue_<br />

Silky Robes and Dojo are available now.<br />

28


OSTRICH<br />

Dipping into wonky, head nodding<br />

pop, the five-piece strut out ready<br />

to test neck muscles with their<br />

charming groove.<br />

“Music gives us a<br />

creative outlet and<br />

gets us away from<br />

the day to day grind”<br />

If you had to describe your music/style in a sentence, what<br />

would you say?<br />

Will M (vocals): ‘Synth-easy speak-pop’, but obviously that’s<br />

ludicrous. So it’ll have to be a Pulp/Nick Cave/B-52’s love child.<br />

Have you always wanted to create music? How did you get into it?<br />

Will M: I was a bit of a late bloomer. I only started writing music<br />

from about 20. Before that I was quite happy being the rhythm<br />

guitar man creeping about at the back of the stage<br />

Leo (guitar): I used to make little demos and recordings in my<br />

bedroom as a teenager, which taught me about production and<br />

overall sound. I had a performance lecturer at uni who told me to<br />

write parts to serve the song rather than to serve yourself.<br />

Can you pinpoint a live gig or a piece of music that initially<br />

inspired you?<br />

Stuart (drums): Seeing Metronomy in 2015 set a high benchmark<br />

for how tight and energetic a band can be live. It was a special<br />

gig and they’re a big influence on our music.<br />

Do you have a favourite song or piece of music to perform?<br />

What does it say about you?<br />

Leo: I love playing Perfect Family. That was our first tune to come<br />

out of nothing in a practice, almost by accident. It was amazing to<br />

be in that room where a single note developed into a whole song.<br />

What do you think is the overriding influence on your<br />

songwriting: other art, emotions, current affairs – or a mixture<br />

of all of these?<br />

Will M: A lot of the songs have a sentimental quality about them,<br />

I like to write about things that we all experience. They can be<br />

quite abstract, though, and sometimes I don’t really know what<br />

the song’s about until it’s finished.<br />

If you could support any artist in the future, who would it be?<br />

Will B (bass): Yoko Ono. We’d probably get a decent crowd.<br />

Lydia (sax/keys): Big Thief would be amazing. Adrianne Lenker’s<br />

voice does things to me.<br />

Do you have a favourite venue you’ve performed in? If so, what<br />

makes it special?<br />

Stuart: Our last gig before lockdown was at Quarry. Great space,<br />

amazing sound and really nice people running it.<br />

Lydia: We went to Germany last year to play at a beer festival.<br />

Not our best performance, but probably the coolest venue.<br />

Will M: A special mention to The Zanzibar, too. We were<br />

saddened to hear the news that it’s closing down. It was vital for<br />

new artists in the city.<br />

Why is music important to you?<br />

Will M: Music brought us all together as a group – we’ve been to<br />

some lovely places and met lovely people. It gives us a creative<br />

outlet and gets us away from the day to day grind, especially<br />

when we gig. It gives you that freedom to express yourself and<br />

let loose a little, and that’s pretty special.<br />

Photography: Danny De La Bastide / @danieldelabastide<br />

facebook.com/ostrichband<br />

Inside Out (Got No Doubt) and One Man Band are available now.<br />

TORTURE AND THE<br />

DESERT SPIDERS<br />

Shaped by the sounds emitting from the Big Apple, Anna Kunz’s<br />

creative vessel is carving a fresh edge into Liverpool’s DIY punk scene.<br />

If you had to describe your music/style in a sentence, what<br />

would you say?<br />

Punk/garage rock ’n’ roll deeply rooted in traditional melodic<br />

songwriting.<br />

Have you always wanted to create music? How did you get<br />

into it?<br />

I grew up surrounded by the New York rock scene, my mom<br />

being one of the fundamental characters there in the 80s/90s<br />

as a talent buyer/venue booker. Making music came out of a<br />

necessity to express myself and then grew into something more<br />

identifiable (by art/sound, etc) as I worked on different mediums<br />

of art (be it graphic design, live performance, theatre, etc).<br />

Can you pinpoint a live gig or a piece of music that initially<br />

inspired you?<br />

Paolo Nutini at the Troc in Philly – somewhere falling on the edge<br />

of soul and gritty rock ’n’ roll with a pop melodic twist, all while<br />

holding the audience hostage in a ‘moment’. It was something to<br />

aspire to with certainty.<br />

Do you have a favourite song or piece of music to perform?<br />

What does it say about you?<br />

When The Horse Will Run. The track was one of the first I wrote<br />

without a band in mind, so it really can be played with just me<br />

and a kick drum and people will still dance, which I like. The track<br />

is derived from a poem I wrote about some past trauma and I<br />

think it is really incredible to see people dance/fight in a mosh pit/<br />

sing along to words that kinda haunted me for a while. It is a bit<br />

beyond catharsis – I’d say it’s some weird artistic release that I<br />

can’t quite describe.<br />

What do you think is the overriding influence on your<br />

songwriting: other art, emotions, current affairs – or a mixture<br />

of all of these?<br />

I just pull from whatever is around me. I like to spin stories<br />

based on titbits of information or things I’ve heard. I think if I try<br />

to write a song about what is happening in the world it will be<br />

disingenuous, so instead I try to speak my own truth and write<br />

using other peoples’ words when necessary. I don’t really write<br />

to perform, or perform at all really; I just get onstage and am a<br />

bit more present than usual. Stylistically, I am really influenced by<br />

blues musicians because I’ve always had a fondness for honest<br />

poetry and a good hook.<br />

Do you have a favourite venue you’ve performed in? If so, what<br />

makes it special?<br />

Probably 24 Kitchen Street. Playing there was kinda my first<br />

experience with something that felt like a DIY community in<br />

Liverpool, but it was still really well put together. Great sound,<br />

amazing space and it is so conducive to having a boogie or<br />

throwing yer mates to the ground.<br />

Why is music important to you?<br />

For me, music has always been more of a necessity. I need it to<br />

function. I used to say that some people feel natural speaking<br />

and I felt natural singing – it is my first language. I consider<br />

music to be the common ground between most people and<br />

to be a fundamental medium for expression. With it, I can be<br />

articulate and multi-dimensional in my responses. Without<br />

it, I feel disadvantaged in conversation. I consider the writing<br />

process to be somewhere between sacred and communal; it is<br />

the point between sublime art-making and absolutely ridiculous<br />

collaborative work.<br />

Photography: Chloe Brover<br />

tortureandthedesertspiders.bandcamp.com<br />

Money is available from 26th September with the band’s debut<br />

EP, Field Recordings Of A Social Athlete, released in November.<br />

SPOTLIGHT<br />

29


PREVIEWS<br />

Liverpool © Don McCullin<br />

EXHIBITION<br />

DON McCULLIN<br />

Tate Liverpool – until 09/05<br />

The North West of England has long been a point<br />

of fascination. This isn’t solely the case for its own<br />

inhabitants, stirred in the dense melting pot of<br />

cultures stretching across an Orion’s belt of Liverpool,<br />

Manchester and, eventually, Leeds. Many eyes looking in have<br />

been equally attracted to its charming realism.<br />

Of these outsiders, it’s perhaps George Orwell’s The Road<br />

To Wigan Pier that pressed its nose closest to the glass in an<br />

attempt to underpin a sense of ‘northernness’. His account does<br />

its best to paint a fair picture, with the Etonian slumming his<br />

way from mill town to mill town in the mid 30s. But it’s difficult<br />

not feel a cold, thick layer of dirt on your hands as you turn<br />

through pages punctuated by sooty skylines and slag heaps.<br />

The landscape would appear uninhabitable if it wasn’t for the<br />

warmth of the people depicted.<br />

30 years on from Orwell’s account, the scene had begun<br />

to change. It’s one captured and displayed in acclaimed<br />

photojournalist DON MCCULLIN’s new retrospective showing at<br />

Tate Liverpool.<br />

In frequent trips up north, McCullin turned his camera<br />

on a landscape no longer bearing a thick layer of soot, but<br />

one covered ever more so in the darker colours of poverty. A<br />

landscape where industry departed but its people remained. In a<br />

career defined by pictures of war, his attention to social conflict<br />

is no less compelling.<br />

With the retrospective featuring a newly added collection<br />

of images taken in Liverpool in the 60s and 70s, Elliot Ryder<br />

spoke to the photojournalist about his experiences of the city, his<br />

depictions of conflicts and his role as a chronicler.<br />

As your retrospective heads north, there’ll be specially<br />

added section of photographs depicting industrial northern<br />

locations, such as Liverpool and surrounding mill towns and<br />

cities. A lot of your career has been a built on war reportage,<br />

but what was your initial draw to documenting this side of<br />

Britain in the 60s and 70s?<br />

I’ve always had an interest in Liverpool. I went there many<br />

years ago with Jonathan Miller, the playwright, and met the poet<br />

Adrian Henri who was the key to so much of what we’d see<br />

across the city. But I’d been coming to Liverpool long before the<br />

60s and 70s.<br />

When I was a 15-year-old boy<br />

I worked on a train that would set<br />

off from Euston Station and head to<br />

Liverpool. I worked in the dining car,<br />

washing up dishes. I’d sleep in Edge<br />

Hill, where they had a dormitory. I’d<br />

do the journey three or four times a<br />

week.<br />

The city has therefore always<br />

been familiar to me. I felt I knew it.<br />

I loved it there, really. Then, when I<br />

returned in the 1960s with Jonathan<br />

Miller, I never stopped coming back.<br />

I met Adrian and he became a friend.<br />

I really loved Adrian. He was the life<br />

and soul of Huskisson Street, and<br />

around that area, the Ye Cracke Pub and the Philharmonic. I was<br />

amazed by the culture, so I returned frequently.<br />

What were your first impressions of the city in an era<br />

when the industry had declined and its former shipping wealth<br />

had departed to the south? What was the main draw for what<br />

you were wanting to capture?<br />

I wanted to show Liverpool that it was once a great city. It<br />

still is, of course, but it was once a great city based on its docks;<br />

“I’ve learnt my way<br />

through this life by<br />

walking amongst the<br />

truth of things, the<br />

poverty, the pain of<br />

people’s unhappiness”<br />

the liners that took people across the Atlantic. It was a very<br />

important place. I wanted to show in a way, without disrespect,<br />

the slight decline when those ships stopped departing from<br />

Liverpool.<br />

It was a very proud city, Liverpool. I found Liverpool people<br />

to be challenging and uplifting, full of laughter and wit. It was<br />

a city that was compelling, really. What drew me to it most of<br />

all was how little it had changed.<br />

You expect cities to grow, but there’s<br />

always been a divide between the<br />

north and the south of England. The<br />

lion’s share of wealth and growth is<br />

in the south. Liverpool in a way was a<br />

backwater place, yet it had all of these<br />

amazing people that were trying to<br />

make the city go in a future direction. It<br />

wasn’t totally working, I don’t think.<br />

The thing that interested me was<br />

the slum clearance programme, which<br />

was a huge mistake. They flattened<br />

them all, when they could have served<br />

as the first houses young people<br />

bought. It created a wilderness in the<br />

Toxteth area, which looked more like I<br />

was in Berlin after the war. It was a compelling image to see this<br />

tragic landscape. And it wasn’t helping Liverpool, because that<br />

landscape stayed there for quite a while until it was redeveloped.<br />

I haven’t even seen that part of Liverpool ever since I took those<br />

pictures.<br />

Much of Liverpool’s centre has had a capitalist makeover,<br />

but in many ways Liverpool back then characterised the social<br />

aspect of the conflicts you’ve become renowned for. A lot of<br />

30


the poverty you captured in the north will have been echoed<br />

in your own upbringing in Finsbury Park in north London, a<br />

part of your life you regarded as an embarrassment given the<br />

nature of your situation. When training your lens on scenes<br />

further up north, was it somewhat easier to pick out these<br />

subjects as you had a sense of solidarity with their situation?<br />

I think what you’re saying is quite interesting, really,<br />

because when you come from a poorer background it doesn’t<br />

take you five seconds to recognise a group of people who<br />

are living in that background. Even though I was learning my<br />

photojournalistic photography, I didn’t have to learn about life<br />

and poverty – I grew up in it. In a way, I wasn’t one of those<br />

snotty-nosed southerners looking into the birdcage; I was fully<br />

aware of the social differences in the country, and the class<br />

levels which I detest. As I walked amongst Liverpool and felt<br />

the warmth and the friendliness of the people, I slightly took<br />

advantage of it, really. As a photographer, not everybody likes<br />

you photographing them.<br />

Do you think it’s important for the documenter and social<br />

narrator to have a sense of solidarity and shared experience<br />

with their subject? Does it affect the authenticity of the<br />

photograph in any way? For instance, The Last Resort, shot<br />

in Merseyside by Martin Parr in the early 90s, was accused by<br />

some of fetishization of the working class. Do you think the<br />

level of agency is important for a photojournalist?<br />

I’m very honest in what I do. I wouldn’t want to do anything<br />

dishonest that I would have to account for later on in life. My<br />

work is in black and white. Martin does colour, which can take<br />

away poverty in some respects. I don’t want to cover anything<br />

up. I work in black and white and I’m there to tell the truth.<br />

There are no lies involved in the things I’ve shown, not only in<br />

Liverpool. Some of the most wicked pictures in my exhibition<br />

are pictures I’ve taken in Bradford, which [was] one of the most<br />

impoverished cities in England. I don’t pull my punches when I<br />

photograph poverty. Mainly because I understand it.<br />

To what extent do you think the photojournalist plays a<br />

part in the shaping of a narrative? Would you regard yourself<br />

as a mirror, or more of a narrator when shooting?<br />

I saw myself as a chronicler. I chronicle the injustice of what<br />

I see through my eyes and what I know through my personal<br />

experience. I’ve learnt my way through this life by walking<br />

amongst the truth of things, the poverty, the pain of people’s<br />

unhappiness. I see it and I recognise it. Not everybody does. A<br />

lot of people would close their eyes to it and want to walk past<br />

it. I will press the button on my camera and say, “This is not<br />

right. This is not the way people should be living their lives, in<br />

this squalor and poverty.” I am no Sir Galahad, by the way. I’m no<br />

knight in shining armour speaking up for the people, I’m not that<br />

kind of person. I’m a person who journeys through life and sees<br />

with his eyes and presses the button on the camera. That’s what<br />

I do. I’m not a hero.<br />

It’s important, nonetheless, to capture and show these<br />

moments?<br />

I’ve been doing it for years, and I’ll tell you something, I’ve<br />

only made the slightest bit of difference. I could probably come<br />

up to the north and you will still find millions of people living<br />

in unfair, unjust, deep and dark poverty. All those pictures I’ve<br />

taken in the past haven’t made much of a difference, if any at all.<br />

Much of your iconic work focuses on military conflicts<br />

and intra-state wars, and you’ve stated you’re still affected by<br />

some of the images you captured. How do the scenes of social<br />

conflict compare to the stark realities of militarised violence in,<br />

say, Vietnam?<br />

In Vietnam and Cambodia, many were<br />

farming people. People who had part of the<br />

Cold War dumped on them. One million North<br />

Vietnamese soldiers paid with their lives, and<br />

another one million down in the South. War<br />

had nothing to do with their culture. It was<br />

dumped on them by the Americans, Russians<br />

and Chinese. Sometimes, if you live a simple<br />

life in the country, with a thatched house,<br />

in the darkness of night and brightness<br />

of dawn and you go out and exercise<br />

your rice growing, it’s a lot purer and a<br />

simpler life than somebody trapped in a<br />

city with thousands of other people, and<br />

the squalor that goes with it. The two<br />

cultures don’t match up. At one moment<br />

you have this paradise situation in<br />

Vietnam and Cambodia, next thing<br />

they know they’ve got people bombing<br />

them, killing them, burning them and<br />

their children. There’s no comparison.<br />

It’s totally different environment. And<br />

yet, as a photographer, I managed to<br />

harness both of those situations and<br />

funnel them through the lens of my<br />

camera. And it can only be done<br />

with a person behind that camera<br />

who is emotionally tuned in to<br />

these two wrongs.<br />

Looking towards the<br />

retrospective moving up north,<br />

is it strange to see your work<br />

in a gallery rather than in a<br />

newspaper? Is it stranger to think of yourself as an artist, too?<br />

It’s always at the back of my mind: is it right to have these<br />

photographs in an art gallery? Who are you, a photographer<br />

or are you an artist? I totally disclaim myself as an artist. I am a<br />

photographer and very happy with that title. But at the same<br />

time, since I cannot get my work published to the degree it used<br />

to be in The Sunday Times, there’s no outlet for people like me<br />

anymore. I’d put the pictures on the underground subways in<br />

London if I had to, rather than let them rot away in their boxes<br />

in my house. It’s better to get the voice out there, even if it<br />

means intruding into an art gallery.<br />

How does the context of the photographs change<br />

once on gallery walls? Is there then a greater emphasis<br />

on aesthetic rather their socio-political content?<br />

At Tate Britain, they had 180,000 people go through<br />

my exhibition. Some of my friends went to see it and<br />

they said you could have heard a pin drop in the most<br />

crowded of spaces [pre-Covid]. One noted how the<br />

silence in there said a lot about the exhibition and its<br />

power; people were so moved by the awful things<br />

they were seeing that they shouldn’t be seeing. It’s a<br />

strange place to have that feeling, in famous gallery<br />

like Tate Britain. I must have done something right.<br />

As for more contemporary photojournalism,<br />

what are your hopes for the medium? Is it able to<br />

compete with the instantaneous live feeds and<br />

videos on social media? For example, after the<br />

explosion in Beirut, many people across the<br />

world had already seen a multitude of images.<br />

The word photojournalism is dead in a way.<br />

Newspapers don’t want that kind of image<br />

in their newspapers anymore. Newspapers<br />

aren’t interested in the photographs that I did,<br />

and other photographers like me. It’s about<br />

celebrity, it’s about footballers. When [Harry<br />

Maguire] did something wrong in Greece, it<br />

got total saturation, because here’s a guy<br />

who earns £190,000 a week. [Apparently],<br />

he’s much more important than the poor<br />

starving on the other side of the world,<br />

being bombed at the same time.<br />

Finally, Don, do you have any<br />

concerns about the truth and<br />

authenticity of photojournalism as<br />

we move deeper into a digital era?<br />

As media becomes less institutional<br />

and more open source, does it open<br />

the door to a world of post-truth<br />

imagery?<br />

I’ve done my best to tell the<br />

truth and to go to places which<br />

I know not many people want<br />

to look at. But now ‘fake news’<br />

has upset the balance. It’s made<br />

people reconsider what they’re<br />

looking at, what they’re reading in a newspaper. Is it true or<br />

false? There are people who would say they believe nothing<br />

they read in newspapers, and it would be wise to not believe<br />

everything in newspapers, but a lot of it will be quite truthful.<br />

It’s a personal choice. It’s a personal responsibility. It’s up to you<br />

to make that decision. I’m a photographer and not an orator. My<br />

opinions don’t count for much. My photography is my voice.<br />

Words: Elliot Ryder / @elliot_ryder<br />

Photography: © Don McCullin<br />

Liverpool in the seventies © Don McCullin<br />

Don McCullin retrospective is showing at Tate Liverpool until<br />

21st May 2021. Visit tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool for<br />

tickets.<br />

Liverpool 8, 1961 © Don McCullin<br />

PREVIEWS<br />

31


PREVIEWS<br />

FESTIVAL<br />

LIVERPOOL<br />

IRISH FESTIVAL<br />

Various venues + online – 15/10-25/10<br />

Patrick Kielty<br />

<strong>October</strong> sees the return of the annual LIVERPOOL IRISH FESTIVAL,<br />

celebrating the connections between Liverpool and Ireland<br />

through art, conversation, music, and history. This year the 10-day<br />

festival will run a virtual programme headlined by Irish comedian<br />

and TV presenter PATRICK KIELTY, who kicks things off by hosting the<br />

discursive event Hard Histories, Positive Futures, in which he will interview<br />

representatives from Northern Ireland’s Commission for Victims and<br />

Survivors.<br />

Following on from this, award-winning CNN correspondent MIKE CHINOY<br />

is discussing his new biography Are You With Me? Kevin Boyle and the Rise of<br />

the Human Rights Movement. Focused upon co-founder of the Northern Ireland<br />

Civil Rights Association Kevin Boyle, the biography explores Kevin’s role in the<br />

curation of the Good Friday Agreement, while delving into Northern Ireland’s<br />

Troubles and the legacies.<br />

As always, music plays a large role in the make-up of the festival, and this<br />

year sees independent Cork-based label Unemployable Promotions present a<br />

showcase of their roster of artists. The event will provide a taster of the music<br />

scene over in the Munster city and instigate a future exchange for talent in the<br />

respective ports.<br />

Despite the novel delivery of the majority of this years’s festival programme,<br />

exploring the city’s Irish heritage continues to be a key aspect of the event, and<br />

this year is no different. A walking tour of Scotland Road will take place, as well<br />

as the South Liverpool Walk. A third tour, City of Hunger, City of Gold marks the<br />

Irish Famine and will lead from the Irish Famine memorial at St Luke’s Gardens<br />

and finish at Central Library. These tour routes see walkers learn about Irish<br />

history through churches, pubs, statues and architecture across the city.<br />

Also original for the festival’s 2020 edition, the Meet the Maker series seeks<br />

to introduce online audiences to artists, creators and crafters of both Liverpool<br />

and Irish heritage. The one-off online events are set to explore and celebrate<br />

their art, through knowledge exchanges and Q&A sessions. The series will<br />

feature the likes of biographer CARMEN CULLEN, musician TERRY CLARKE-<br />

COYNE and historian GREG QUIERY, among others. liverpoolirishfestival.com<br />

Unemployable Records<br />

32


FESTIVAL<br />

Homotopia<br />

Various – 29/10-15/11<br />

FILM<br />

<strong>October</strong> Cinema Events<br />

Picturehouse at FACT<br />

Fox Fisher<br />

The UK’s longest running LGBTQIA arts and culture fest returns<br />

at the end of <strong>October</strong> with a typically vibrant programme of<br />

activity. Homotopia’s artist in residence for the 2020 event is<br />

polymath FOX FISHER. Fisher rose to fame via the C4 series My<br />

Transexual Summer and played a huge role in making the trans<br />

conversation mainstream. A key part of this year’s Homotopia<br />

will be assessing how that conversation is playing out and<br />

progressing. Fisher will be coordinating and hosting a range of<br />

activity throughout the two-week festival, including discursive<br />

events, screen printing get togethers and more. There will also<br />

be cabaret and much more to be announced.<br />

Riz Ahmed’s Mogul Mowgli is among the top choices for cinemagoers<br />

this month now we’re re-accustomed to attending the<br />

big screen. The film, hailed by critics, tells the story of a British-<br />

Pakistani rapper struck down by disease and is directed by the<br />

highly-regarded Bassam Tariq. Also coming to Picturehouse<br />

in <strong>October</strong> is the Jordan Peele-penned ‘spiritual sequel’ to the<br />

original, Candyman, based on Liverpool author Clive Barker’s<br />

chilling novel. And if that’s not enough to tickle your popcorn, the<br />

studio responsible for fright fests Midsommar and Hereditary are<br />

back for Halloween with St Maude.<br />

GIG<br />

A Lovely Word<br />

Online – 01/10<br />

The Singh Twins (2008)<br />

Everyman Theatre are kicking off <strong>October</strong> with the return<br />

of their monthly instalments of A Lovely Word, this time<br />

showcased online. The poetry night will be presented in the<br />

same format as the usual in-person version, but available to<br />

stream via Zoom, Facebook Live and YouTube. This month sees<br />

poet DEAN ATTA take the headline slot, alongside 20 open mic<br />

performers. Atta is known for his prose on race, gender and<br />

sexuality, alongside his regular column in Attitude magazine.<br />

Open mic performers are allocated four-minute performance<br />

slots, and sign-ups are available from 21st-25th September.<br />

Dean Atta<br />

EXHIBITION<br />

The Making Of Liverpool<br />

OUTPUT Gallery – 1/10-25/10<br />

EXHIBITION<br />

The Triumph of Art<br />

The Atkinson, Southport – 09/10-12/12<br />

OUTPUT Gallery is welcoming the work of local legends THE SINGH TWINS this <strong>October</strong>. The artists<br />

are well-known for their extremely detailed work, centred around political and cultural issues in the<br />

format of paintings, illustration and film. Their exhibition The Making Of Liverpool (2008) explores<br />

800 years of the city’s achievements and history. The 13-minute animation also explores one of<br />

the duo’s paintings, Liverpool 800: The Changing Face of Liverpool, which was originally unveiled<br />

for Liverpool’s 800th anniversary in 2007. The works feature narration by Mark McGann, animation<br />

by Andy Cooper and track written and performed by Wirral artist Steve Mason. The exhibit can be<br />

enjoyed during the gallery’s new post-lockdown opening hours of Thurs-Sun 11-5pm.<br />

New exhibition THE TRIUMPH OF ART is coming to The Atkinson in <strong>October</strong>. The showcase<br />

celebrates the restoration of the painting The Triumph Of Art, which hasn’t been exhibited<br />

in over a century due to its poor condition. Artist Nicolas Pierre Loir painted the piece in the<br />

1600s, which features classical figures of the visual arts paying homage to Jean-Baptiste<br />

Colbert, a major patron of the arts. Highlights from The Atkinson’s collection are also featured<br />

throughout the exhibition, such as portraiture, sculpture, music and paintings which all reflect<br />

the art forms presented in The Triumph of Art. The painting was able to be restored through<br />

funding from the Chateau de Sceaux and The Art Society Southport.<br />

GIGS<br />

Near Normal<br />

Future Yard, Birkenhead – 15-17/10<br />

After raising the curtain with She Drew The Gun in September, the team at Future Yard have announced a run of<br />

three more socially distanced live shows for <strong>October</strong>. Piping hot locals SEATBELTS (15th <strong>October</strong>), and EYESORE &<br />

THE JINX (16th <strong>October</strong>) get things started at the Argyle Street venue before BY THE SEA make their triumphant<br />

return on 17th <strong>October</strong> to give more cause for optimism amongst music fans either side of the water. With a<br />

thoroughly specced out safe space, complete with 20 changes of clean air per hour and distanced pods for bubbled<br />

groups and individuals, as well as host of other special measures, the shows are designed for the gig goer to relax in<br />

the knowledge that the utmost is being done for their safety. So all that’s left is to enjoy some of the cream of local<br />

crop doing what they do best.<br />

Seatbelts (@MrKirks)<br />

GIG<br />

Liverpool Disco Festival 8<br />

Camp and Furnace – 31/10<br />

FESTIVAL<br />

Southport Comedy Festival<br />

Victoria Park – 08/10-18/10<br />

Liverpool Disco Festival are doing all in their funky powers to ensure the show<br />

goes on having rescheduled and repurposed their Easter weekend event to this, a<br />

huge Halloween jamboree featuring NYC disco deliverers ODYSSEY. With Covid<br />

measures in place, a 3000 cap room is taking 1000 people and outdoor contingency<br />

plans are ready to go. Odyssey will be playing a one hour set with a seven piece<br />

band and ably supporting will be DJs MR SCRUFF, JOHN MORALES and more. If for<br />

any reason this event cannot go ahead ticket holder are entitled to refund or rolling<br />

over for admittance to LDF’s Boxing Day event where the majority of the line-up<br />

will be performing.<br />

There’s an all-star bill for this comedy extravaganza taking place in Southport’s<br />

Victoria Park. All taking place under a big top marquee, TV faces including<br />

REGINALD D HUNTER, PAUL SINHA and RUSSELL KANE will be performing to<br />

Sefton crowds ready for some belly laughs after what’s been a largely unfunny<br />

year. Organisers are doing their utmost to follow Covid-safe guidelines to protect<br />

ticket holders and have thanked sponsors for ensuring this years event can go<br />

ahead against pretty strong odds. Elsewhere on the bill there is ANDY PARSONS,<br />

CARL HUTCHINSON and JO CAULFIELD for 10 days of big name comedy.<br />

PREVIEWS<br />

33


REVIEWS<br />

Linda McCartney Retrospective<br />

Walker Art Gallery – until 01/11<br />

Paul McCartney often joked that he ruined the photographic career of his first<br />

wife, Linda. OK, it wasn’t his greatest joke – that disreputable honour must surely go<br />

to The Frog Chorus – but that’s mainly because it was true. Her marriage to the Beatle<br />

certainly curtailed her time as a working music photographer.<br />

In the few years leading up to meeting her husband in 1967, she’d attracted much<br />

acclaim for her intimate, intuitive and personal images of the US rock scene. Images<br />

characterised by their candidness, off the cuff moments, icons in their glittering ascent.<br />

Dylan, Joplin, Zappa, the Stones and Aretha Franklin, to name but a few that were the<br />

subjects of her lens.<br />

She was the first woman to photograph a cover for Rolling Stone magazine, with a<br />

portrait of Eric Clapton. Musicians fascinated her. She was house photographer for Bill<br />

Graham’s legendary Fillmore East venue in New York, stalking the musicians in their private<br />

moments for a shot nobody else could get, a moment nobody else had noticed, with two<br />

Nikons strapped across her shoulders like pistols. Ready.<br />

What she might not have been ready for, certainly artistically, was the difference<br />

marrying someone at the very epicentre of the 60s cultural bubble would bring. Within a<br />

short time as their family grew, her work became more personal and she moved towards<br />

capturing the beautiful mundanity of the things she loved. Family life, nature, animals and a<br />

Beatle. She worked instinctively, revelling in passing moments and different perspectives, from<br />

a car window on the inside of the Beatle bubble, or the freedom of exposed isolation, life away<br />

from it all in the wiry mists and standing stones of their remote Scottish farm. Many of the finer<br />

moments of this LINDA McCARTNEY Retrospective come from those perspectives.<br />

The exhibition has received minor criticism in some quarters for being a little Paul-heavy, and<br />

yes, it is. Let’s face it, even Paul McCartney can be a bit Paul-heavy at times. He was her husband,<br />

though. She loved him. She left all her belongings and archives to him, and so it’s hardly surprising<br />

that he does feature so prominently. The show is curated by the thumbs-up king together with their<br />

daughters Mary and Stella. Some of the most interesting images feature them all.<br />

In My Love, from 1978, we see an anonymous, everyday London street scene taken from the<br />

back seat of a car, dated only by the London bus and the cars in view. As your gaze moves upwards<br />

through the pink-blue sky in front, in the rear-view mirror we see an eye. The unmistakable eye of<br />

the artist’s husband. He seems to glow from the mirror, lit by some unseen light source, a reflection<br />

perhaps of the setting sun. It is these moments, and her ability to play with the light through different<br />

perspectives that bring such a perfect stillness to so much of her work.<br />

An image of celebrity 60s model Twiggy strikes with the same sense of stillness. She sits alone,<br />

staring at the floor, her arm draped across herself; she’s introverted and defensive. She seems posed,<br />

almost Renaissance-looking in a green top, the light falling across her head and shoulders casting<br />

a shadow across her vacant stare. While she may seem lonely and sorry, she could just be drifting,<br />

wondering. It is such a simply observed quiet moment, and the simplicity is just beautiful.<br />

Linda McCartney enjoyed playing with colour and form, seeking new perspectives on the most mundane<br />

daily life occurrences. Her ‘sun printing’ images, or cyanotypes, are a real highlight of this collection. Using<br />

a technique developed in the 1840s in which the paper is brushed with a mineral solution, the image is<br />

then developed by natural daylight rather than in a darkroom. This is some of the most striking work in the<br />

exhibition. The process giving a textured, etched feel such as with Stella, taken in Arizona in 1994, where her<br />

daughter’s face is held in such intimate detail, the rich cyan colour enhancing the image, simultaneously stark<br />

and graceful.<br />

The photos of rock stars mingle with images of wild Scottish horses in the snow. Jimi Hendrix yawns.<br />

Lennon looks mightily pissed off during the Abbey Road sessions. Janis Joplin celebrates another empty bottle<br />

of Southern Comfort. Allen Ginsberg hypothesises at the kitchen table. Gilbert and George pose in a Victorian<br />

backyard. A man on a Portuguese train in 1968 looks back from his seat, staring intently at the photographer. He<br />

carries a fearful look, but seems attracted to the camera, or maybe to the artist. Maybe he just knows she’s married<br />

to a Beatle. These worlds were all part of Linda McCartney’s world, and they represent the dichotomy both of her<br />

subjects and every aspect of her life.<br />

The shame of this exhibition is, of course, that our world today allows us such limited access to culture, and<br />

while it is obviously no less a show because of smaller audiences, it’s nonetheless a pity that this wonderful exhibition<br />

won’t attract anywhere near the numbers of something like Tate’s Keith Haring show last summer. These images<br />

could’ve been bringing that magical sense of stillness to far more people.<br />

(Paul and Mary, Scotland 1969. © Paul McCartney)<br />

Paul Fitzgerald / @NothingvilleM<br />

“McCartney worked<br />

instinctively, revelling in<br />

passing moments and<br />

different perspectives”<br />

(Paul, Stella and James. Scotland, 1982. © Paul McCartney)<br />

34


The Magic Tree<br />

Online, FACT Liverpool<br />

The Magic Tree, nil00<br />

Commissioned by FACT as part of their online<br />

programme The Living Planet, and designed by visual<br />

artist NIL00, The Magic Tree is a digital artwork that aligns<br />

the nebulousness of online space with the specificity<br />

of memory grown from Liverpudlian soil. An image of a<br />

widely-known and revered tree in Sefton Park is the work’s<br />

starting point, and visitors to the website are encouraged<br />

to intervene in its outcome, uploading images that<br />

permanently shift the work in a different direction. Each<br />

image is analysed by an algorithm and its style is adapted<br />

to the artwork; from this first interaction, and as the work<br />

evolves, the tree itself is distorted beyond recognition yet<br />

its presence scaffolds the images to come. Its significance<br />

lies not in the outcome, but in the unpredictability of the<br />

process and, for the visitor, the work equally satisfies a<br />

desire for anonymity as it does for connection.<br />

With galleries closed but parks open during lockdown,<br />

nature became a predominant space of respite and,<br />

similarly, digital art became a more significant connective<br />

tool than ever before. On The Magic Tree’s website, nil00<br />

writes that they were compelled by the idea that the tree’s<br />

role as a meeting point, or a communicatory touchstone,<br />

goes back generations. For local people, it is enmeshed<br />

in a network of formed memories. In their description of<br />

how the tree accommodates visitors by having branches<br />

arranged like a staircase that then twist into seats at the<br />

top, nil00 considers how the tree is emblematic of the<br />

hospitality of the natural world. The work’s interactive<br />

qualities replicate this way in which nature yields to human<br />

touch, signifying the tension between the natural world’s<br />

abundance and its human-induced scarcity. As much as<br />

the tree is the foundation of the work, our engagement<br />

with it is too; it prompts us to reflect inwards on our<br />

own understanding of sustainability and conservation in<br />

the digital era. During the Covid-19 lockdown, this has<br />

acquired a certain sentimental edge, as the work feels<br />

resonant with the coexistence of our connectivity and our<br />

solitude in recent months. It also extends further back than<br />

that, working with ideas of collective as well as personal<br />

memory, to reveal nostalgia as something malleable and<br />

distortive, that functions both communally and individually.<br />

Although, as much as the work speaks to our<br />

relationship with a dwindling natural world, The Magic<br />

Tree feels in dialogue with contemporary debates around<br />

the monuments in our city. The work’s consideration of<br />

the tree as a respected, almost statuesque, form allows<br />

us to question the ideologies we are embedding into our<br />

cityscape. It is overly simplistic to think of Liverpool as a<br />

bubble of progressive thought; standing outside the Sefton<br />

Park palm house is a statue of Christopher Columbus, with<br />

an inscription labelling him as the discoverer of America<br />

and the maker of Liverpool. The legacies of colonial Britain<br />

are still heralded and given power in the form of these<br />

monuments, and Liverpool’s significant role in slavery<br />

remains ingrained in street names and buildings. It is here<br />

that the work’s significance extends from the personal<br />

to the political, and through The Magic Tree, we are<br />

encouraged to think more intricately about our relationship<br />

to the city itself.<br />

Leah Binns<br />

www.fact.co.uk/artwork/the-magic-tree<br />

The Magic Tree, nil00<br />

And Say The Animal Responded?<br />

FACT, until 13/12<br />

If there’s a word to take away from this exhibition, it’s<br />

‘biomimetic’. It means, according to FACT, “the imitation of<br />

systems used in nature”. It’s fitting, as I could think of no word<br />

closer to the common thread that runs through the work on<br />

display at And Say The Animal Responded?<br />

The artists, to integrate their animal muses into the exhibition<br />

space, seem to have first integrated themselves into the space<br />

of the animal. ARIEL GUZIK’s Nereida is a prime example of this.<br />

The object, Nereida, an instrument of sorts, is so clearly humanmade<br />

that its function (to mimic the sound vibrations of whales<br />

in an effort to communicate) is both so far-fetched and yet so<br />

obvious. An animal couldn’t have created this object, and it’s<br />

remarkable how we, using an object so alien to the animal, can<br />

capture something so close to its true being.<br />

Guzik’s instrument is not the only machine in the room.<br />

Sitting beside it is KAUI SHEN’s Oh!m1gas, a piece I could<br />

best visually describe as an intricacy of clear plastic tubes, tubs<br />

and cameras, connected to two turntables. Inside, a colony of<br />

leaf cutter ants reside, whose activities control the scratching<br />

of the records on the turntables. In a way, the piece replicates<br />

the scratching of ants, a method they use to communicate, but<br />

translates it into a medium which we can receive, giving them a<br />

form of musical expression, albeit an odd one.<br />

The exhibition utilises audio and video masterfully. In the first<br />

gallery, recordings from Nereida serve as the backdrop to three<br />

video pieces, including a short film charting an expedition of<br />

Nereida’s younger brother, Holoturian.<br />

Pan troglodytes ellioti and cousins, by AMALIA PICA and<br />

RAFAEL ORETEGA, features a family of chimpanzees. It is a<br />

short, looping clip, but it captures something dignified, almost<br />

human, in the interaction of the chimps and the camera whose<br />

sensors they have triggered.<br />

DEMELZA KOOIJ’s film, Wolves From Above, sits on the<br />

floor in the corner of the room. The camera hovers above a pack<br />

of wolves, whose curiosity and attention towards the drone<br />

capturing them from above is sporadic, broken by bursts of<br />

energy directed at each other. They are more animal, more hostile<br />

than the chimps, sitting further down the spectrum which we<br />

seem to place ourselves on top of.<br />

Upstairs is dedicated to the digital work of ALEXANDRA<br />

DAISY GINSBERG. The Substitute resurrects the extinct northern<br />

white rhino. It spawns in an enclosure on screen, boxy and<br />

pixelated, becoming more real as it understands the space it is<br />

in. It exists for only a short period of time, before it disappears<br />

once more. Machine Augeries resides in an adjacent room. The<br />

10-minute sound installation is a sad conversation between the<br />

birds increasingly estranged from our urban spaces, and a chorus<br />

of artificial ‘birds’, who threaten to make the disappearance<br />

of their natural counterparts all too easy, and perhaps even<br />

unnoticed. It’s certainly a piece that chimes with the quietness of<br />

the early weeks of lockdown.<br />

My worry was that FACT’s commissioned artists would<br />

answer the exhibition’s titular question themselves. To my<br />

enjoyment this was not the case. The exhibition is a metaexhibition<br />

of sorts, with two levels of commission: first, the<br />

mandate by FACT for the artist’s to present a piece of work, and<br />

then the artist’s ‘commissioning’ of the animals, who answer the<br />

question ‘And Say The Animal Responded?’ in their own way, via<br />

the work of these artists.<br />

Through biomimicry, the artists could provide the conditions<br />

to allow the animals to do this: in none of the pieces did I feel that<br />

the animals were spoken for, this exhibition is not a zoo, yet in all<br />

they speak for themselves, in languages closest to their own.<br />

Remy Greasley / @remygreasley<br />

Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, The Substitute (2019) / Rob Battersby)<br />

REVIEWS<br />

35


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ARTISTIC<br />

LICENCE<br />

This month’s selection of creative writing is by Sam Batley, a collection<br />

of work characterised by self-inquisition and honesty.<br />

My first experiences of poetry<br />

were in school, although I paid<br />

no attention to it. I felt pretty<br />

detached and was shit at<br />

concentrating. By year 10/11 I was quite cocky,<br />

disruptive; a bit of a dickhead, basically. Poetry<br />

and writing never felt like something that was<br />

meant for me – something that only happened<br />

in that class. Inside books. It was snobbish and<br />

posh. Nothing landed. It was difficult to read,<br />

and never seemed to make sense. None of it<br />

was relatable. I grew up in a pit village in the<br />

middle of Barnsley and Doncaster, it wasn’t a<br />

place inclusive of creative expression. I was a<br />

product of my surroundings and the toxicity<br />

of the masculine norm that surrounded me.<br />

Poetry wasn’t on the agenda.<br />

The positive of my schooling was Mrs<br />

Beevers, my English teacher in year 11.<br />

She spoke to me about music an art and, in<br />

hindsight, tried to make feel comfortable with<br />

who I was, not what I was pretending to be.<br />

She could see through the mask. She put me<br />

on to A Certain Romance by Arctic Monkeys<br />

who had only just come about. Sheffield was<br />

close and their voices were like mine at the<br />

time. I fuckin’ loved it. She said that it were<br />

poetry with music. An I suppose seed was<br />

planted. It didn’t have to be what I thought it<br />

was.<br />

Though the seed was planted at 16 it<br />

didn’t germinate ’til I was 23/24. My sister<br />

Hannah was and is an amazing poet, an had<br />

started sharing the stuff she had written with<br />

me. It felt different, I could feel what she were<br />

saying, and it landed in a completely different<br />

way. Our Hannah said it always helped her to<br />

get it out of her head and on to the page and<br />

that I should have a go.<br />

At this point I was in a real dark place.<br />

My addiction was all over me, oblivious to<br />

why I felt like I did. I’d worked myself into a<br />

particularly bad spot and needed to get out<br />

of what was surrounding me. Hannah took<br />

me in for a while. One day before she went to<br />

work she gave us a pad. So a had a go. I don’t<br />

really know where it came from. It was like<br />

a mad release, all this anger and frustration<br />

come flowing out. When she got back a read it<br />

her, and cried for first time in years. I’d not felt<br />

anything like it. So I carried on doing it.<br />

Since coming to Liverpool for recovery<br />

last year, I’d had a massive gap in writing,<br />

punctuated by sporadic bursts of coke-fuelled<br />

shite. Previous to the admittance I was fucked,<br />

my writing served its purpose for where I was<br />

at, but was full was of blame, anger, frustration<br />

and second-hand self-hatred. I couldn’t look at<br />

myself. It was all pointing out. No one gave a<br />

fuck as much as me, but I wasn’t willing to do<br />

fuck all about it.<br />

Today I feel at ease with me, a care much<br />

less about what I think and what folk think.<br />

No one’s arsed, really. Most of the angst has<br />

dissipated through the internal work I’ve done<br />

this year. Living in Damien John Kelly House, a<br />

recovery living centre in Wavertree, has given<br />

me an immense opportunity to reflect on why<br />

all that angst was there in first place. To hone<br />

in on who I am, drop the masks and say what I<br />

want to say.<br />

We’re all a bit fucked whether ya like it or<br />

not. So have a go, have fun with writing. We’ve<br />

all got tales to tell – they won’t tell themselves.<br />

Words & Photography:<br />

Sam Batley / @sambatley<br />

NUMBER 15<br />

Green lighter fluid and indigestion,<br />

Too much sprayed weed,<br />

Brings about lethargy.<br />

Headaches for the walk home,<br />

Eat all you can in the twilight.<br />

Piss while you walk.<br />

No one cares for the apathetic beside the pathetic.<br />

Pull out the mattress from behind the 3 seater,<br />

Set it down by the fire.<br />

Wake up and put it back again.<br />

Set it down,<br />

Wake up,<br />

Put it back again.<br />

Set it down,<br />

Wake up,<br />

Put it back again.<br />

Set it down,<br />

Wake up,<br />

Put.<br />

It.<br />

Back.<br />

A-gain.<br />

Weird arrangement,<br />

Too fearful to move on.<br />

Don’t wana stay in.<br />

Don’t wana go out.<br />

The tea tastes fucking shite,<br />

You know I don’t have sugar.<br />

Three beds too small for 4 heads,<br />

Adolescent pangs often turn red,<br />

In the unfinished kitchen.<br />

It’s shit init…<br />

Ye it is…<br />

Time’s a mystery how it drags like it does,<br />

And speed up when it doesn’t.<br />

Too much time on young hands.<br />

Too much.<br />

The football’s lost its leather.<br />

The milk bottle’s fed the cat.<br />

The neighbour’s not best pleased.<br />

Fuck off back ya Dads.<br />

CONVALESCENCE<br />

Roast dinner for the chess champion in the burgundy corner.<br />

No eggs for me, I’ve had enough.<br />

Dog talk in the window sill.<br />

Chicken wing decorated pavement.<br />

Blasphemy,<br />

Horrendous.<br />

Were all phone bag heads.<br />

Blue thumbed click bait.<br />

The adverts lie all the time,<br />

It’s not your fault you feel insecure.<br />

Wrist watch time piece,<br />

Unaffordable in the pipe dream.<br />

2 minutes full power,<br />

Stir.<br />

1 minute full power,<br />

Serve.<br />

Cheap.<br />

Gaviscon.<br />

Acid Bastard.<br />

Licked lips,<br />

Coldsaw complex,<br />

Artex complexion.<br />

Long sighted twat.<br />

Shut the blinds or else they’ll see,<br />

How bad it really is.<br />

Bare walls, bare chested.<br />

Leave it all or take the fall,<br />

Wet eyes in crushed velvet.<br />

DUNGA<br />

It sunk in like a frog down the throat of realisation.<br />

Can’t be me.<br />

it is.<br />

You seemed so much better last week,<br />

Things change.<br />

I woke up with my head still in bed,<br />

An at end of day it were gone.<br />

Whose coming pity party?<br />

Me and I.<br />

Orchestrate the pieces into place,<br />

Manipulating hands unseen.<br />

Pleasantries of a forgotten tongue.<br />

Lap the finger and thumb.<br />

Puppet master pulling the lines up, up, up.<br />

Dangling in the tangle,<br />

I’m not autonomous,<br />

I’m not in control of the proper setting,<br />

Behind the console of beaded eyes.<br />

Smoke drifts in then out.<br />

Breathing lungs,<br />

Diaphragm split,<br />

Bloody nosed.<br />

Who me, who’s me?<br />

You’ve as much as him in the distant rear view,<br />

All back slouched,<br />

Glass eyed.<br />

Purgatory’s waiting room,<br />

White plastic chair table arrangement.<br />

Mannequin-esque.<br />

Magnolia,<br />

Motionless.<br />

Carpets tired from countless feet,<br />

Sat in front of ownerless bodies.<br />

Black chuddy circles,<br />

Rotten eggs from the paper mix,<br />

Pull the lost colour together.<br />

Who’s he? He’s you too.<br />

Blind to my own deficiencies.<br />

A malign witch.<br />

Beg off Peter to pay Paul.<br />

Hands in pockets,<br />

Absolutely fuck all.<br />

Living in the bit no one else sees.<br />

38


SAY<br />

THE FINAL<br />

Ahead of International Pronouns Day, Emma Stewart from LCR Pride Foundation outlines the importance of<br />

using the correct pronouns – a simple act key to self-determination and validation.<br />

Has anyone ever got your name even just a little<br />

bit wrong? Maybe your name is Stephen with<br />

a ‘ph’ and someone emails you and calls you<br />

Steven with a ‘v’? Or you’re mistakenly called<br />

Anna by someone who misheard your name, Hannah,<br />

in conversation. So, you correct them, and they correct<br />

themselves and apologise – life goes on. No one asks why<br />

it’s so important to you that someone says your name<br />

right. But you know the people going around calling you<br />

Anna, especially within your hearing, makes you feel a<br />

little bit uncomfortable because that name isn’t your name.<br />

Now apply the same logic to pronouns. It doesn’t<br />

sound hard does it? But why are pronouns so important?<br />

Let’s continue the example above. Every day you<br />

must interact with someone who insists on calling you<br />

the wrong name. They say, “But you look like an Anna to<br />

me, and I don’t really like to use the name Hannah, so I’m<br />

going to continue to call you Anna.”<br />

Every day you’re erased a little by that one person<br />

who does not respect the way you choose to identify<br />

yourself. Only pronouns hold so much more about a<br />

person’s identity within them. You can inadvertently out<br />

someone, erase part of their history or make them feel<br />

uncomfortable, unheard. That is the power of a single<br />

word when we are talking about pronouns.<br />

Before I go any further, I guess I should introduce<br />

myself properly. My name is Emma, I identify as nonbinary<br />

and my pronouns are they/ them.<br />

My ‘story’ does not have a definite beginning. I didn’t<br />

wake up one day and realise the people calling me ‘she’<br />

made my skin feel too tight around my identity. I just knew<br />

that it didn’t fit any more. Like a T-shirt with a hole or a<br />

worn pair of shoes, ‘she’ was not fit for purpose. So, at the<br />

ripe old age of 33 (and a half) I found myself coming out<br />

again.<br />

The first time I came out of the closet it was to let my<br />

family, friends and the world at large know I was a lesbian,<br />

a part of me I had kept hidden for a long time. This time it<br />

was to let people in my world see a new part of me, a part<br />

I was just learning about as well.<br />

I’ll be honest, I was terrified.<br />

Changing my pronouns publicly came with a lot of<br />

internal and external challenges for me. If I’m non-binary,<br />

can I still be a lesbian? Will I have to explain that to<br />

people? What will my wife say? What about my family?<br />

Does it really matter what people call me? Am I just<br />

making a big fuss about nothing?<br />

For me, it was pretty anticlimactic. I live in a privileged<br />

place in society and have surrounded myself with<br />

friends and family who are willing to learn new ways of<br />

describing the world around them to make sure I have a<br />

place in it. But it really is not that easy for so many people.<br />

Official governmental data on non-binary and<br />

trans people’s lives in the UK is a disheartening read.<br />

Non-binary and trans people come out at the bottom<br />

in almost every category including life satisfaction,<br />

safety, educational experience and health, according to<br />

the national LGBT survey summary report. It’s worth<br />

mentioning as well that these statistics are from 2017 and since<br />

then the reported levels of crime against trans and non-binary<br />

people has risen by an estimated 81 per cent. People from<br />

this community are also more likely to be kicked out of their<br />

childhood homes, experience transphobia, violence and abuse. If<br />

you throw race into the mix these statistics get infinitely worse.<br />

And these are just the reported cases, the people we can count.<br />

The coronavirus pandemic has seen people forced back into<br />

the closet, into dangerous situations and places where their<br />

identity is being further erased every day. But, Emma, what has<br />

this got to do with pronouns? Surely calling someone the wrong<br />

word has nothing to do with that? Except it does. Follow me<br />

once more into the hypothetical land where someone refuses to<br />

call you the right name.<br />

Now, imagine it is not one person, but every person in<br />

your life. You’ve asked them to change, to correct themselves,<br />

but they stay firmly and vocally resolute that you might ‘feel’<br />

like a Hannah, but you look like an Anna and your body is<br />

that of an Anna. This is where this world falls apart. Because<br />

this isn’t about a first name any more. It’s about a word that<br />

creates a space in the world for people. It’s about respect, about<br />

boundaries and about acknowledging that in this changing world<br />

we have some solidarity and pride. It is about self-determination<br />

and validation. Using the pronouns someone asks you to can be<br />

“Using the<br />

pronouns<br />

someone asks<br />

you to can be<br />

life-changing”<br />

life-changing, for them and for you.<br />

In this world, the one I live in, I spend my life<br />

correcting people, because it is important for me to use<br />

my privilege to normalise my difference. And some days<br />

you meet people who refuse, who tell me that there<br />

are men, and there are women and that is all there is.<br />

On days like that it is difficult, but I will always have<br />

the argument, because if I do not then it could fall to<br />

my trans and non-binary siblings with less privilege to<br />

wield. On the good days, which can outnumber the bad,<br />

I meet someone and tell them my<br />

pronoun is ‘they’, and this person<br />

doesn’t look at me like I’m strange,<br />

or insist that ‘they is a plural and<br />

not a singular’, or ask why. They<br />

just say, “OK. Sounds good. Thanks<br />

for telling me. If I mess up, feel free<br />

to correct me.” The weight of all<br />

those people misgendering and<br />

mis-pronouning me is eased in that<br />

moment. It will come back; it never<br />

really disappears.<br />

There is work being done to<br />

normalise pronouns and avoid<br />

this misgendering. In 2019,<br />

activist Imogen Christie (she/her), of Liverpool Trans<br />

Day of Visibility (TDoV), organised a campaign for<br />

International Pronouns Day, which takes place this year<br />

on Wednesday 21st <strong>October</strong>. Around 20 organisations<br />

across the city region, including Merseyside Police,<br />

LCR Pride Foundation and the Museum of Liverpool,<br />

participated in working groups and utilised slides and<br />

badges in their workplaces to allow people to clearly and<br />

openly communicate their preferred pronouns. A film by<br />

Thinking Film, commissioned to mark the day, received<br />

70,000 hits in the first 24 hours it was published. All of<br />

these small steps help trans and non-binary people to<br />

feel safer and seen as people, supporting their right to<br />

identify as they wish.<br />

There are also some structural changes being made<br />

to the way data is collected about gender by national<br />

agencies. The Census, which is due to be conducted for<br />

the whole of the UK in 2021, will for the first time have<br />

open-ended questions regarding sex and gender.<br />

But every person I correct and who uses the right<br />

pronoun, every person that learns that gender isn’t sex,<br />

doesn’t rely on the flesh on your chest or between your<br />

legs, every person that learns about pronouns and their<br />

power is another person that makes space in the world<br />

for us and another person who will stand in solidarity. !<br />

Respecting and normalising pronouns in five easy<br />

steps:<br />

1. Introduce yourself by your name and pronoun to<br />

normalise the use of pronouns<br />

2. If you’re not sure of someone’s pronouns, ask them<br />

3. If you accidentally misgender someone, apologise and<br />

continue using their correct pronoun<br />

4. Don’t use gendered language when speaking to<br />

groups, replace “ladies and gentlemen” with “everyone”, for<br />

example<br />

5. Put your pronouns on your email signature, social media<br />

profiles and business cards<br />

Words: Emma Stewart<br />

Illustration: Sophie Green / sophie-green.com<br />

lcrpride.co.uk/pronounsday<br />

Emma Stewart is Finance and Administration Director for LCR<br />

Pride Foundation and Administrator for Social Value UK.<br />

THE FINAL SAY<br />

39


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