Here we go! Not only are we back into regular posting, but it’s back to fortnightly Monday mornings. We are basically superheroes!
This one was always going to happen, mainly because the chance to chat to Jamz Supernova (aka Jamilla Waters) is always a tonic. I’ve run into her a few times at festivals, I did a bit of biog writing for her partner Sam Interface and his Jus Now soca-rave project, my friend Jabru recently built their studio, just last year I interviewed her specifically about her Future Bounce project – and every time we’ve crossed paths, she’s been generous, interesting, informative and super fun. And that’s exactly what she’s like in her work, too.
Through the labels, in clubs and on radio, Jamz is an exemplar of the kind of curator (yes I said the word, but she is) who serves as a guide through the information glut of the digital age. She can take in experimental electronica, in-your-face club / bass music, vernacular sounds from all over the planet, jazz, soul, R&B, hip hop and more under her aegis, but never feel like she’s eclectic for the sake of it: her selections sound right because she’s mapped out a space where they make sense together.
Hearing her followed by Gilles Peterson on BBC 6Music on a Saturday is one of the greatest adverts for old-school linear radio that exists today: the similarities and contrasts between them, the amount of knowledge on display, the intergenerational partnership – between them they do that exact thing we’re always trying to do here of mapping out the territory, but above all else they give you five hours of immense pleasure, of music that makes you feel like humans aren’t such shabby creatures after all.
On top of all her other activities, Jamz has just launched the first season of a podcast Between the Lines where she goes in depth with musicians about a single track. This hyperfocus is the perfect counterpoint to the radical diversity of her playing and programming, and a sterling reminder that breadth and depth aren’t exclusive when it comes to knowledge and understanding. And it is a natural showcase for her as a conversationalist, which as you’ll see there very much is. Jamz is spectacularly affirmatory: her answers always tend to be of the “Yes, and…” variety. Like I say, a tonic. See for yourself!
OK one question I always ask people is: can you remember the first time you heard music that you felt that you could join in with or that was part of something bigger, that you could be part of?
But you know what, I find that question hard, because I feel like I've never known a life that hasn't revolved around music. But I always remember, I must have been in reception, or nursery, and I remember the girls that were older were in the playground, and they were singing and making up this dance for this song. And then I went home. And then I heard the same song. And I was really annoyed, because I couldn't join in, they wouldn't let me join in because I didn't know the song. And so I was just sort of watching them, I had FOMO of like, not knowing the song. And I remember running home. And then when I got home, my mom used to have an alarm radio. And the radio was just on all the time. And the song was playing. And I was like, “Yes, this is the song! Yes, I've found it!” and I could have only been about four or five years old. But that feeling like, “Aha! Now I know it!”
Do you know what the song was?
Yeah, it was Blackstreet – “Don't Leave Me”. That one.1
Amazing, so you were digging from day one.
Yeah, and I had that feeling of being overwhelmed by not knowing the song, I feel like it was a physical jealousy and rage that I felt. But yeah, I was buying tapes from five as well. Going WH Smiths and getting... it might have been the Spice Girls, or I’d mention the Space Jam soundtrack I had as well. My parents met… I found out recently they met at a Latin night when they were 17 in Birmingham. So I feel like even though they got pregnant and had kids quite early, and they couldn't necessarily partake in the next wave of rave culture, they made the parties at home instead.
So, did you grow up around people actually engaging with music, partying to it?
More so like, kitchen dances. Yeah, more kitchen dances, Saturday night, music's loud, that's kind of what I grew up listening to. Not necessarily having people “over” in that way, but more often their own entertainment.
And you grew up in South London.
Yes, my parents were in the Midlands. They moved down to London when I was two. And my mom went to drama school. And then we grew up in like, always south, so like, Catford, New Cross, Sydenham, Anerley. Lots of different places in south east. But one thing that I have always sort of referenced about south east is the sound system culture that you just hear everywhere. Whether it's in the school playground, whether it's the cars driving past, whether it's your neighbour having a barbecue. You hear the diversity through the music that's played in the air. I could never live anywhere else that's not as diverse as what it feels like where I live.
Yeah, for all people talk about gentrification, Rye Lane still has that so much. Every single shop and food store is blasting music.
Even under the bridge, there used to be in Peckham... Because the first raves that we could go to were when we were 14, they were like dancehall raves, because they just let you in, and at the time I didn't really like dancehall, but it was because I couldn't dance. (laughs) That was the reason. But I loved the feeling of the bass, and I liked the idea of how a DJ created the night. But I remember we went out in Peckham, underneath the bridge there was like a club in one little door, you'd go upstairs and it's carpeted and stuff but it was like a proper little shebeen. There was one down by Millwall as well, down by Bermondsey way. But there was a few, there was a club called Le Fez opposite Goldsmith's, which is now a Sainsbury's. I learned what a multi genre night looked like going from Dancehall to UK funky to soca. They'd always end on classic r&b tracks and soul tracks at the end. So that was my first experience of seeing how a night was carried.
Yeah, actually I remember it was a real education when garage came along as a mainstream thing and the first couple of garage nights I went to, they weren't really actually garage nights. It was just a lot of r&b and bashment and everything all in the mix, and really skilled DJs as well. Then seeing Heartless Crew and things like that, you know? It's an older party culture.
Yeah. And they would have seen it from their parents, going back to how my parents would play music at home, it was very much in that spirit. So even when we did have family functions, everyone wanted to play their music. So we're going from like Bob Marley to The Carpenters to Sinead O'Connor, then into some Gregory Isaacs, you're going all around. And then I wanted to put something I listened to on, my uncle wants to play some d'n'b…
Were your family from a Caribbean background then?
Yeah, so my mom is Jamaican and Irish. And then my dad, I didn't grow up with my dad, I didn't live with my dad, but my dad's Cuban and Jamaican.
That's a healthy mix of party cultures and musical cultures there! I've been looking into how much the Cuban influence on Jamaican music was from day one, Rocksteady and everything. It was as soon as I started listening to the drum fills in ska, and I suddenly realised they were just like old Cuban ballroom pre-revolutionary records. And then you find out that Rico Rodriguez and all these famous Jamaican musicians were Cuban or part Cuban.
There was a lot of mixing in between before the fear of communism and America's influence on Jamaica, there was a lot of crossing between. And I think when I found that out it was like, “Yeah, it makes so much sense.” They're three hours away from each other. Why wouldn't you?
It's no wonder that Dancehall then went back to more Latin countries, because it's got that Latin syncopation in it, in those kick drums. And likewise, the Irish connection, like, the Irish Jamaican connection isn't just Guinness.
Haha yep, It goes so far back. It goes back to slavery of course [winces], but also all the way through, even how we grew up in the UK, you know, “No blacks, no dogs, no Irish.”
And Country and Western! Sinead O'Connor was such a deep reggae head as well.
Yeah. And even my dad, he bought that tape, I remember him having, you know, that Sinead O’Connor tape. And my nan met my granddad on my mom's side. So she, an Irish woman, loved reggae. She met him at a blues party in Handsworth.
Excellent. So, Alexis Petridis… when we first came up with the idea for the blog that became the book that then became the blog again, I was describing what we were trying to do, and he said: “So it's occult social history”. “Occult” not as in wizardry or whatever, but occult in its literal meaning of “hidden”. The stuff that's under the surface - and as soon as you start talking about where musical influences come from, you get these little hidden connections that make us all what we are.
It's like our DNA, but also, you don't know it when it's there sometimes. You don't see it when it's in front of you, it's only in hindsight that you're like, “Oh, okay, that makes sense now” or “I understand that now.”
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