Episode 1: Solidarity

Transcript | Podcast, July 2020

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Podcast by Kerstin Meißner and Sarah Farina aka Transmission
Host: Erkan Affan
Guests: Yuko Asanuma, Lakuti, Jay Jay Revlon

Transcript

[Music]

Kerstin Meißner
Have you ever considered raving as an act of resistance? If so, how might you envision social justice unfolding on the dance floor? In our podcast series we will relate these questions to club culture's response to current events and how this wave of momentum can be used to elevate new ways of raving and experiencing club music. Curated and brought to you by Transmission aka Sarah Farina and Kerstin Meißner. Please join us exploring the politics of the dance floor featuring a diverse range of figures from nightlife's global ecosystem. Please feel invited to share your ideas after each episode. You can get in touch by email or social media. Together we are trying to deconstruct in order to rebuild and we are doing that in appreciation of one of our favorite spaces: the dance floor.

Erkan Affan
Hello, hello hello! Welcome everyone to this discussion as part of the Politics on the Dance Floor series organized by Transmission. This week’s episode is going to be focusing on „solidarity.“ I am your host, my name is Erkan Affan. I’m a London born and raised curator and activist currently living in Berlin. I co-founded a collective here called „Queer Arab Barty“ focusing on curating social and political spaces for West Asian and north african queer and trans arabs. I also work as a writer and I have an academic background exploring the accessibility of LGBT spaces for queer and trans identifying migrants and refugees, specifically having done my research in Berlin. Anyway, enough about me let me introduce you to my amazing guests, so we're gonna start first with Yuko. Yuko if you'd like to introduce yourself.

Yuko Asanuma
Yes, hello my name is Yuko Asanuma and I was born in Japan. I lived in many different cities in Japan and then I moved to Australia. I lived there for about seven years, went back to Japan and moved to Berlin about 10 years ago. Most of my adulthood I've been involved in music scene or industry in some way. I've started writing about music, I made like a small fanzines when I was a student. Then I became a music journalist. I worked a lot as a interview interpreter between japanese and english, then after I moved to Berlin I got into booking business because there were a lot of DJs in Berlin who wanted to play in Japan, so I booked a lot of mostly techno DJs from here playing in Japan. And recently I've been trying to book more japanese artists to play in Europe. So I work as a booking agent slash artist management. A lot of the times as well except right now with Covid-19 I have a lot of free time [laughter].

Erkan Affan
Nice, thank you! And Lakuti, our next guest?

Lakuti
Hi, my name is Lerato and I was born and raised in Johannesburg, relocated to London in 97. I'm in Berlin for eight years now and I wear many different hats as Yuko. My academic background is law but that was not my choice really. I'm an owner of an independent booking agency called „Uzuri bookings“ and artist management and been doing that since 2008 and I also founded „Uzuri Recordings“ which we've been running since 2007. I DJ under the moniker Lakuti as I said and I also curate and run events in London and sometimes in Berlin and have curated nights in Spain and Portugal, South Africa. I've been doing that, running nights since I was 19.

Erkan Affan
Nice, amazing. And our next guest Jay Jay joining us on live link right now.

Jay Jay Revlon
Hi! Live linking in. I’m Jay Jay [laughter]. Listen to everybody else, I'm like what do I do now? I do a lot [gasps], I wear many hats. I kind of seem to be like a figurehead for the ballroom scene in the UK. I've been in ballroom about five-ish years. I'm a part of the „House of Revlon“. I'm a DJ, I'm a dancer, I've taught a lot in Berlin. I've deejayed a lot in Berlin as well and hosted events and stuff. I'm not posting it as in like I put on but someone else is asking to host on the mic. I do a lot of mic, work I've worked with people like Honey Dijon, Levis, do stuff like this. But I'm heavily involved in more essentially like community and community based person with my club nights I do in the UK and stuff like this and I’ve danced a very long time. So I'm really I'm very ready to talk about dancing.

Erkan Affan
So of course then I guess we can all kind of see the personal connections that we have to the dance floor in very different ways but kind of within the same context. So I want to ask a question to you all: what do you think has resonated about the dance floor with you lately? Because of course now it's almost become a bit of a concept, I can't even remember the last time I saw a dance floor. Like my kitchen is my dance floor at the moment [laughter], so what has resonated about the dance floor with you?

Jay Jay Revlon
I think the dance floor has changed from me being like „oh my god I want to go to a club and be with everyone and dance and be happy and whatever“ to DJ mainly to Zoom. I don’t getting any money for this but Zoom has been like a lifesaver essentially for myself in terms of connecting with other people on a dance floor basis. I'm dancing from my living room but I feel like I'm with like hundreds of people. It's actually quite weird, I had my birthday and locked down I just turned 28 in April. And it was so crazy that the next day I had like such a hangover because I felt like I was on a night out and I woke up and I literally felt like I was on the night out with everyone. I don't know we were all dancing together, we were like switching between screens. It felt like a party. I think that's kind of what's changed for me is that I'm not too sure how much I can go back to the club aesthetic except for being a DJ playing on the, I don't know, safer end of Covid. I feel like the decks is a safer end. I feel like I can I don't know about being in that space on that spectrum of being like a „punter“ as they say in the UK. By being a DJ I'd be like „I'm so ready to play in clubs but I'm not so ready to dance“.

Erkan Affan
I can imagine that and what about with you two what about Yuko, Lakuti? Anything to add to that?

Lakuti
I mean for me personally it's been a period of reflection and I've kind of taken myself out of because I've been doing a lot of touring prior to our lockdown here in Berlin. I just came back from Australia and India and then had to run to Paris then we were in lockdown. So it's been a period to rejuvenate myself because I feel like I need strength to face on what we have to deal with in the world right now and I've used a lot of the time to kind of also look into my own collection. Because I mean I'm not 20 so I have a a big record collection and sometimes you not having time does not allow for you to really dig deeper into that and I'm trying to go deep high into my collection again and that's been fun. And I have been asked to do a lot of these kind of a Zoom or Twitch things but at the moment within my reflection I do not feel able to be standing and putting myself in front of people. I'm kind of actually finding myself more and more distant and I guess that's my way of funding my own safe space within the madness we’re in. But I've been enjoying I've done a couple of podcasts, I have a stream coming up this weekend for New York pride and that's been fun to do because I've rediscovered a lot of stuff that I haven't played for a long time. So finding strength in that but otherwise it's it's a moment of reflection.

Yuko Asanuma
I have a similar feeling to Lerato’s. I’ve been spending my weekend in clubs for the past, I don't know over 20 years [laughter] most of my weekends in clubs. The last few years I've been a little bit quiet because I don't know I guess I was quite busy and to be honest I was getting a little bit bored of going to the same clubs, listening to and dancing to similar music and after the lockdown strangely, I don't have that much craving for the the physical dance floor and especially I have no cravings for DJ live streaming. Everyone enjoys DJ performances in different ways, so I'm not like trying to criticize anyone but when I look at myself I just don't enjoy watching DJs on screen at home on my own or even with a couple of friends. And that made me realize how important the physical space is and how doom or video streaming doesn’t replace the experience.

Erkan Affan
I get that, I think for me personally when the clubs were open and I used to go out I would never ever focus on the music in the space that I would go to, I would focus on the people who were there and obviously most of the time the people who are there are the ones who are attracted to the music. And I don't know like, I wouldn't even really spend that much time on the actual dance floor. I would be in the smoking areas or I would just be at the bar talking to people. And now with the lockdown and listening to DJ sets on livestream, I've actually started to appreciate the music so much more because you know I'm not a DJ, so coming to that environment and having that, it's been really good to have that. So I think leading on from that it would be really interesting to see what the songs we've chosen to have in this discussion and what that means for all of us. So Yuko we're going to start with your song, if you want to give us a little explanation as to what it means for you.

Yuko Asanuma
This is just one of many favorite songs because I've been really overwhelmed by what's going on in the United States lately the past couple weeks and I have a lot of so-called Black music records. I look at my record shelves and most of the records I have are made by Black artists and this is one of them and after experiencing and seeing all these protests and what the protests exposed to the world I've really started to listen to these songs differently and it's one of those songs and it's called „The Bottle“ by Gil -Scott Heron.

[Music]
Artist: Gil Scott-Heron
Song: The Bottle

Lyrics:
See that Black boy over there, runnin' scared
His ol' man's in a bottle.
He done quit his 9 to 5 he drink full time
So now he's livin' in the bottle.
See that Black boy over there, runnin' scared
His ol' man got a problem and it's a bad one
Pawned off damn near everything, his ol'
Woman's weddin' ring for a bottle.
And don't you think it's a crime
When time after time, people in the bottle.

See that sista, sho wuz fine before she
Started drinkin' wine
From the bottle.

Said her ol' man committed a crime
And he's doin' time,
So now she's in the bottle.
She's out there on the avenue, all by herself
Sho' needs help from the bottle.
Preacherman tried to help her out,
She cussed him out and hit him in the head with a bottle.
And don't you think it's a crime
When time after time, people in the bottle.

See that gent in the wrinkled suit
He done damn near blown his cool
To the bottle
He wuz a doctor helpin' young girls along
If they wuzn't too far gone to have problems.
But defenders of the dollar eagle
Said "What you doin', Doc, it ain't legal,"
And now he's in the bottle.
Now we watch him everyday tryin' to
Chase the pigeons away
From the bottle.
And don't you think it's a crime
When time after time, people in the bottle.

Erkan Affan
So moving on we're going to start talking about the topic of solidarity, right? We're going to get into it because that's why we're all here. So let's start with how we'd want to define solidarity. When you hear the term solidarity, what definition comes to mind for you and on top of that what do you think it means to you personally to think about solidarity? So think about the question objectively at first, like what solidarity is seen to be and then think about how maybe you would apply solidarity into your life and the dance floor and your experiences with the dance floor.

Lakuti
For me solidarity is having a sense of awareness and empathy and a psychological sense of unity between different groups or classes. It refers to society coming together in a meaningful way that is equalizing this for everybody rather than elevating one or the other.

Erkan Affan
And do you see that with your experiences on the dance floor? Do you see solidarity enacted like that throughout your career?

Lakuti
I think in many ways we've lost that sense of solidarity because we've focused a lot on consuming rather than reflecting and having the understanding of where things come from, why they are there, how do they become what they are. We've kind of lost a sense of direction in where we're going I strongly feel and going out is just become one dimensional instead of layered. We go out to consume rather than we go out to contribute and to feel at one with others.

Erkan Affan
I think that's a really good point about consumption of a contribution because it just shows like a lack of collective awareness that people have and the fact that they want to prioritize themselves as an individual rather than as part of something larger. And Jay Jay what do you think about that?

Jay Jay Revlon
Out of my head I literally cannot stop thinking about performative allyship. I don't know why but for some reason every time I hear someone say like „I'm with you, oh we're here, we're in this together, oh“ that it's always from like for me some a performative situation. I'm always about build what you can't see, so for me the ballroom scene in the beginning in the UK for example was very white and you know, it is what it is. It came to the UK as like a dance style, it didn't come to us as a community. But for me I didn't like it so I kind of just did my own thing of what was the history of New York and implement that in the UK. And for me that kind of brought people together where solidarity's seen and there was a shooting in Orlando, I think it was four years now ago at „Pulse“. And this is the second thing that comes to mind, is that when that happened I was in Sheffield on a bus back from a gig that I did to showcase this new ballroom documentary by a guy called Twiggy Garcon called „Kiki“, had to get that in there. And when I was coming back I started seeing like the numbers of the deaths go up and up and up and up and literally the next day I had to teach. I was teaching for a gym at the time and I was teaching and it was fun and whatever but they're was this burning thing in my heart and I was like something's gone wrong I don't feel okay. So I went to Soho and I got called a couple voguers, I called a lot of people I was like „hey let's go do this“, I was like „let's go to Soho and let's vogue in the name of these people“. It's something that is done in the culture for a very long time and to be honest from that it was a big blow-up. It went on „Time Out“, it got over a million views. All these articles and writing things and the main word that they kept using is „solidarity“, like how we use dance in the street going back to the streets in ballroom and dancing the streets of Soho reclaiming in solitude with each other LGBT, bringing everyone together. So these are like the two things, I feel like separation I feel like it's performative, which is irritating and people feel like they're being they're in solitude with like us. Like I'm talking POC people, Black people by just you know, posting black square and stuff like this. But there's other people out there that doing the work and are talking up and I don't know, I feel like there's not much solidarity for people who do the work and aren't in the background by the ones that scream a lot a little bit. I don’t know… I'm conflicted by it because it brought my community that I have today but at the same time I think nowadays I'm more irritated because I feel like solidarity is a word that's used as a performative ally perspective.

Lakuti
Just to add to what you're saying because I think a lot of people do not realize the power in words. I find that words have become reduced to nothingness at some point and there are words that are en vogue for that particular era and then they thrown out but I'm like do you realize the power in this word that you are using so carelessly without any thought. And another thing that I wanted to bring to the fall is that a lot of people don't realize that actually solidarity means that you are committing yourself to doing the work. There is work involved, it's not just saying a word and things magically change. You have to commit to doing the work.

Erkan Affan
For sure and I think that solidarity is an inherently an uncomfortable experience. To be in solidarity with someone is to feel the discomfort of being aware of your proximity to the privileges or the lack of privileges or however you place yourself. And I think that these things such as the black square for the hashtag Black Lives Matter movement, is very transactional. Because it allows for a person to not feel uncomfortable anymore because at the end of the day throughout everything that's been going on and with the protests that have sparked again and continued in North America, I as a non-black person of Color have felt so uncomfortable and felt so conscious of my positionality and so conscious of how my community as a West Asian for example, can perpetuate that anti-blackness and I know that just saying that I'm in solidarity and talking about being a Person of Color it's not enough. Because that's just allowing for me to sleep better rather than actually thinking about those power dynamics that I could change within my communities. And I think one of the ways in which I've tried to focus on that is with language because especially for the turkish-speaking community in Berlin, which is a big community where I'm based, a lot of people don't have access to that information because they don't keep up with the german or the english media and so solidarity maybe comes in the form of making things accessible, making language accessible, understanding those power dynamics. So Jay Jay, you said that you wanted to say something about the black square thing.

Jay Jay Revlon
The black square was supposed to be for people who worked in the music industry could take that day off to just back themselves out of all of that. And essentially that came from like obviously intention and that was done. But the whole thing about being in solitude that made that black square become this whole bigger situation that it wasn't originally intended to be and it's crazy because then what happens is music labels will pick up on it and then actually say „oh actually“ what they could do is say „oh actually everyone gets a day off that day“ and that kind of takes away the power of what was supposed to happen.

Erkan Affan
Yuko what do you think about that?

Yuko Asanuma
I don't know if I adding anything extra to what you guys have already said. My understanding of the word changed quite a lot in the past, say three weeks. Originally I understood the word solidarity means to relate yourself to other people's issues, what issues that seem to be other people's and make it your issue. To relate yourself to the issue, so that you internalize the issue as something of your own and which is not wrong but then in the past few weeks as Jay Jay mentioned about the performative allyship, which is the term that I didn't know before. And when I found the term I was like „yes, this is the term that I knew what it was but didn't know how to explain and to understand that term“ and then going back to the word solidarity I realized that solidarity requires participation. You have to do something and it's not just something that you show as a Facebook post or Instagram post. It can't be just a black square, you have to acknowledge the issue and you have to internalize it and then what do you do about it?

Lakuti
Going back quickly to this black square scenario: when it came out, immediately I saw it as being a problem and I think it's very typical of the music industry to not address what it perpetuates on the daily but rather again to do kind of performative kind of things that are not based on anything really. And I think for too long as an industry we've have been refusing to address a lot of things and for me this black square just heightend all those things that I have been feeling within the industry. And this idea of utopia which my generation coming into electronic music and dance music, I think we naively thought that we could forget about the differences and just embrace the fact that we could be in these spaces together and have freedom for two hours, three hours. But I think given what we're going through and have been going through without addressing for a long time, we also need to re-think about the idea of utopia because it doesn't exist. Period. And it will never exist and we need to start dealing with reality.

Erkan Affan
Do you want to tell us a little bit about the song that you chose as well before we start listening to it?

Lakuti
Yes, it’s a song by KAJAMA who is a brilliant South African young artist. And I've been reconnecting with my country in the last seven years because as I said I left because I needed to find myself and leave the country and its legacy behind. And in the last seven years I've been going back every year connecting with different crews, putting on nights myself. This song is kind of home, it kind of gives me the feeling of home which is a feeling that I'm missing right now and those questions of belonging and home are very present for me right now. And that's the reason why I chose this song because I feel a deep connection with a new generation in South Africa right now and I wanted to support them by also putting out the music out there to the whole world hopefully people pick up on it.

[Music]
Artist: KAJAMA
Song: Ashes To Ashes

Erkan Affan
So that was „Ashes To Ashes“ by KAJAMA. Next we're going to go to talking more deeply about the dance floor as a solidarity space and I want to start thinking about the politics of the space and the role it plays. Because I remember a couple of weeks ago I was having one of my seasonal Facebook arguments with someone and they basically said that we should keep all politics out of the dance floor, there's nothing political about the dance floor at all, the people should just go there, hashtag good vibes only and I was just like I wanted to reach through the phone and but obviously I didn't and I couldn't [laughter]. I want to explore that a bit more, tell me what you think the role of politics is on the dance floor?

Lakuti
Politics play a big role on the dance floor, I mean capital, access, money determines who gets to shape what goes on at the dance floor and who gets to enjoy what goes on on the dance floor, so it is political.

Erkan Affan
I think politics has a big role in the sense that for a lot of us we feel empowered when we're on the dance floor. I’ve spoken to this about with so many friends as a gender non-conforming person being on the dance floor allows me to feel comfortable in my gender identity. It's kind of one of those places where my dysphoria kind of just goes into the back of my head because I'm there, I'm feeling cunty, I feel fabulous, I look good, I'm with all of my friends, I'm listening to good music and and we're occupying space and we're in this space, which we know the history is rooted in LGBT history and Black history and brown history.

Lakuti
And we fought for these spaces!

Erkan Affan
Exactly and we fought for these spaces and I think that's really important within the context of what you do Jay Jay, because obviously like you said before ballroom has a big legacy and if you could tell us a bit more about how political you think that legacy is, that would be great!

Jay Jay Revlon
The legacy’s been political from the jump really, if we go back to the underground drag scene there's so many documentaries you can obviously watch, right? If you talk about underground drag scene from that kind of like „Crystal LaBeija“ like „I know I'm beautiful“ to that situation to ballroom forming out of that it has really a lot to do with politics, it's a lot to do with homophobia, racism all of that stuff that obviously works into politics about the UK taking away people like stop self-gendering and stuff like this. Ballroom plays a big part because ballroom is all about how you fit into those into that space. So like „realness“ for one category people might see „oh my god he looks so strange“ he said, but that whole category „realness“ is like a stance. In ballroom there's „executive realness“ and what „Paris Is Burning“ doesn't show you is people actually worked on Wall Street in America when they walked „executive realness“ they'll bring out the company credit card, they’ll bring out the company phone book, they're in there they're like „I am in this, I'm here, I stand in the city“ and people as you see in like video surface. Ballroom does have a lot of political I don't know movement I would say… I'm not breaking it down in my university dance way which is like to fight back at society, to fight to have a space, to fight for your rights to fight for Black trans people everywhere. Even politics within ballroom which in the history it doesn't see people who are gender non-conforming, like that’s a thing that non-binary people in ballroom is like §oh what do we do“ is what people say, there's constant arguments about it. And I have people who are gender non-conforming from my house who are like trans masculine XYZ and even within that the politics that happened within ballroom there's political conversations, there's conversations at the round table about people's gender within ballroom, how does that work. I just feel like it works boring kind of works how I don't know… the government works essentially and there's always like one person that feels this and like a hundred people will come back and say „no that's not okay“ and it rolls over in ballroom in the US they have „House Lives Matter“ which looks at the health and safety of people within the community. Ballroom kind of works like a country in itself, it kind of works as a small country in itself. It's not that small but a small country that works within the world because ballroom is now everywhere. It exists in every single country, I don't think there's a country where it doesn't exist. In all honesty I don't think there. The political side of it comes within. I think the best video to show is like there's a line of police officers you can find it but there's a lot of police officers and there's a … I think she's dragged or she's a trans woman I'm not sure but she fucking carries! She used her movement to not attack but say something to the police like „you're shooting us“ then she picked up a gun and she shot everyone and then she dipped! I'm actually emotional [pauses for a second] but that's kind of saying like „look at all of you standing here! You're killing us!“ Full stop. The dip is a full stop in most conversations in ballrom. I’ve watched that video so many times and it speaks ridiculous volumes! It doesn't look like when people say in ballroom you're always having a conversation when you move. This, I heard every word! Through a video! And ballroom like this, is the bits, it's those bits, it's taking back like Soho. Tt's taking back spaces, it’s going to straight spaces and taking that and making that queer making that your own. I think there's a lot of political movement within it not only just health and benefits of the people that are serving the community or in the community but has a lot to do with the conversation we also have. So ballroom is kind of like its little own country throughout the world that has its own political views and loads of stuff.

Erkan Affan
I think the country point is amazing because I think it is this space which creates space. I think having that place making is so important because we always find ourselves in another person's house, we never find ourselves kind of within our own house within our own environment surrounded by our own furniture. It's almost like we're always renting, we're never owning and I think that's what's so great about ballroom is that you might be for example in a theater but the theater isn't important it's the people who are in that. who are creating a space within that theater right and -

Jay Jay Revlon
and people see that and then they become more political. People who have stepped their toe in ballroom, a place where it's super accepted are now talking out. Are now talking against the government for many reasons.

Erkan Affan
I think the place making thing is really important within journalism as well because we need to make sure that we take up space not just physically but also discursively within the conversations that we have and how we what attention we draw through the words that we write and the interviews that we speak. So Yuko, how do you feel that music journalism for example has played that role in also creating or representing the political context of a dance floor?

Yuko Asanuma
I don't know if I can answer that question from my position but maybe it's a generational thing but as I mentioned I've been around for a bit longer than you guys. I'm a music nerd, I kind of ended up going to parties because I like the music. So it's it's quite different, it's like the opposite of your experience. So it didn't matter so much who's in there but I wanted to hear this DJ or I wanted to hear this type of music. But even as a music nerd, if you really want to know about it you would want to learn the context of where the music comes from and I feel like I did spend quite a lot of time learning where this culture came from. I feel like there were a lot of resources available as well there were music magazines that everyone was reading and that provided kind of basic history of the club culture for example. And so I feel like my generation of ravers, if they still rave they at least know the basic knowledge of where the culture is from. But when I see on social media or younger kind of party goers, they're so detached from where it's from and I think anyone who goes to parties or nightclubs or music festivals can agree that they feel more freedom when they're in that space and but they don't know why and they don't even try to know why and if you're coming to these things and if you're taking part in these spaces, the bottom line is that you need to know that this freedom was created by someone else people fight for this freedom. And if you think you don't need to talk politics on the dance floor you're just ignoring, you just denying that fact and you're just only proving that you're privileged to even acknowledge the struggles of people in the past who created this freedom for you. I mean I didn't talk much about journalism but I think there's a lot of responsibility in music platforms publications I think they need to continue to provide this basic education accessible to even to casual party goers in the way they can understand and in a form that's somehow accessible to them.

Erkan Affan
Do you think that there are platforms or contexts in which that happens or do you feel like that’s yet something that is to be seen?

Yuko Asanuma
I personally don't have a go-to platform for those kind of things but in in the past few weeks I find social media actually very educating to me. For example even examples of like big music institutions or cultural institutions posting solidarity comment and seeing it being criticized by so many people and reading the criticisms. It's like a real time lesson and if you pay attention there are a lot of things you can learn from.

Lakuti
I just wanted to touch back on creating spaces because I used to do parties in London for 11 years and we started off in a traditional club which was already set up. But I soon found out that, that was not my space because somebody was already defining the space and also the security that were there. And we decided to do parties that were not legal at that time and because I felt that I needed a blank canvas and I can then layer that canvas. And I could be able to talk to security to say to them „this is this kind of party, we have queer people, we have this kind of people, we have Black people and these are my terms for you being here“ and I think these things are really important especially in this current juncture that clubs need to re-communicate these things to everybody that's within that space, that if we say we want to change it needs to infiltrate in every sphere of the space itself here.

Erkan Affan
I think going back to the illegal raves you were talking about so this leads really well to the next question that I want to ask you guys which is… so backstory when I was in my teens in London and I didn't have an ID to get into the clubs until I was like 17 and I found an ID and went to Fabric for the first time apart from all those like under 18 raves which I started with. I would go to loads of squat parties and three parties in in Hackney Wick especially so there's this particular pub, I don't know if you know it's like right next to where Hackney Wick station is now and it was like a disused former pub. I can't remember the name of it and Hackney Wick was a space where you'd always go and find a free party. And for me for example I know that that was a space which I wouldn't feel policed in because they wouldn't have to worry about licensing and all of that stuff. Now 10 years down the line in my mid-20s I go to that same neighborhood and all of those spaces are privatized buildings with carefully curated crafted parties, with bouncers and booked DJs and whatever. So obviously it's just become intensely gentrified and I've watched that basically just happened in front of me my whole life. So I want to ask you guys this question then which is: how have you experienced gentrification within your communities of nightlife and more importantly as well how do you think we can protect from this and specifically how can we protect from hegemonic consumption which is how can we fight against the capitalization or the exploitation or the commercialization or all the of our community how can we fight against that?

Jay Jay Revlon
With more and more spaces shutting down it's so much harder to find a space that is for you by you. It's so hard because there's also again like what you're saying about security guards, you used to say like „this is the party, these are the people, you are a visitor, you're here to protect us, you're not here to be against us“ and this is exactly what I say before every single ball, before every single party, I speak to security I, introduce myself, I do everything to make sure they know I am the HBIC. If you don't know so everybody needs to look at Tiffany Pollard. I am the HBIC, you are here to help my party go smoothly and there's no beef because back in the day when you used to look at beef and security they used to just throw people out or spit it and that's it. Nowadays there's a whole like back room, back door situation that I had too much of. I don't know, it’s just become so much more harder to secure a space in true gentrification because also another annoying thing is that everyone feels like they can come.

Erkan Affan
I have a question to you though about this whole security guard thing because I have been at spaces where you've had to police the crowd as if you're a security guard yourself. I remember we were at a Kiki function last summer actually in Berlin and it was the „sex siren“ category and it's just like commonly known that at „sex siren“ you don't have your phones out you don't record that.

Jay Jay Revlon
Context: „sex siren“ category is about selling sex, it's selling your body as it is. It’s being comfortable in who you are and how you look, it's about supporting and glorifying and clapping you on and it's just about being like super sexy and knowing that you're sexy and it's a new thing where people don't want it to be filmed. To be honest in the US you can set „sex siren“ you will see and I'll be very honest, you'll see dicks, you'll see titties’s, you'll see everything exposed. They don't care and those videos have been up for years, only ow they're getting taken down for nudity and all this other policing around Youtube. This whole attitude of it not being filmed, I understand because people's parents might not want to see that. With the amazingness of the internet and instagram things can go viral and you don't want your parents to see that. So now they film it. So this particular event that I was in Berlin for, I was already tired because I had like a cruise for five days so I did intense filming and I came and I was ready to be in Berlin, see all my girls be like in the fun. But people don't understand when someone said don't do something, just don't do it, it's not hard! Do not film. You decide to film so then if I throw the microphone what are you gonna say? It's exactly what I said, if I throw my microphone at you, what are you going to say? Anyone you've seen film, slap them in their head! Because these places were supposed to be a safe space, it cannot happen! It's the same with l there's a party called Harpies that happens in the UK. It's like the first LGBT strip club, I was able to play there and I had a great time but I found myself policing the shit out of this party because someone was performing and the boy had his phone out. I just had to take the ice out of my drink and throw it at his head because it's so packed secrurity is like „oh I can't get there la la la….“. I miss the times when there was literally no phones and I had a Nokia-3310 because even in balls people film and they want a hashtag and stuff and you know what I do not profit on it but I use it to my ability, I’ll make a hashtag for my ball, I look for the content after. Do you know why? Because I don't film them, I honestly refuse to film my balls, I refuse for it to be like a 50 million people looking at this on Youtube and stuff like this. I don't know about gentrification, you have to be very careful about how you protect your space. I think I personally know who comes through the door, my mom's on the door and she's the person you greet. You're in my home essentially no matter what the space looks like and you have to respect my rules and that is just the end. I've stopped using venues because of security, I will refuse people's entry, I won't give you your money back but I will tell you to leave because you have disrespected the space. I do not mind having these conversations, I think everyone just has to just not be so nice about what they want because sometimes you just have to say it bluntly and people will listen instead of making it really nice and I think that for me is where gentrification comes into, it's where people don't want to listen. I had a woman outside my party for context: is that outside Dalston Superstore, is the only LGBT venue in east London and it caters only for LGBT and they are actually at the door „are you LGBT?“ and this one went in the queue because she couldn't get in because she knew no one in there she was like „I've lived here for like five years and I should be able to come in like what do you mean just because I'm a straight white woman?!“ and then they sorted it and were like „no it's because like this is LGBT, we have to keep it LGBT“ and she went up the cue to tell her everyone not to go in. That shows you gentrification at it it's finest.

Erkan Affan
It’s feeling like you can control that space, right? It's feeling like you're the one who has the right to say who is allowed to get in and out of that space. I want to ask you two, Yuko and Lakuti, how have you experienced this within a non-London context, so think about it in all the spaces that you played internationally. How have you seen that gentrification in the spaces you visited in cities that aren't maybe as heavily commercialized like London or like Berlin but even in other places.

Lakuti
Looking back at South Africa for example we had a fertile loving landscape back in the early 90s, that kind of disappeared in the latter part of the 90s in a way and it became difficult for free spaces to be available to people. And downtown was where all the best clubs were and downtown became abundant because after 94 a lot of rich white people were scared to be in the center of town and they ran away. So that became kind of like a ghost town so clubs were moving into the richer suburbs of the city in shopping malls, which makes zero sense and even up to now we haven't fully recovered from how that clubbing landscape moved from the center where it was accessible for Black people to be there to the richer northern suburbs of the city and we haven't recovered from how things developed up to now.

Erkan Affan
Right and Yuko as a booker especially when you bring artists from Germany to Japan, how do you see that narrative of gentrification travel overseas for example?

Yuko Asanuma
Well before I get into that I position myself when it comes to the argument of gentrification because I moved to Berlin 10 years ago because of course Berlin was exciting. There were a lot of great parties good music but primarily because it was cheap, it was so much cheaper to live in Berlin than to live in Tokyo so I'm aware that I'm responsible for the gentrification that's going in Berlin which I feel like accelerating. I didn't really recognize it for the first few years but after some years you suddenly realize „oh what happened to that building that was here before“. You see so many changes and you see that things that made Berlin interesting were gone and all of them becoming I don't know, new boring buildings and shopping malls and I'd never be on the side to blame gentrification because I'm aware that I'm contributing in it. And especially as a booking agent, I've only been working extensively as a booking agent only the past two years but I realized when you're booking gigs for DJs and if the DJ plays two gigs every weekend and you're constantly talking to different promoters, you can't really pay attention to what kind of parties there are. I mean some people are more, especially when they're very passionate promoters they would write like a long proposal email explaining what they do and how they don't do it for profit and etc. but it's very difficult as a booking agent or as an artist to decide which gig to play. Especially when you become more successful, it's very difficult to pay attention to all the details and the ideals of these promoters and the fact that this industry has become so much bigger and structured is accelerating the drive of gentrification in the business in general.

Erkan Affan
Interesting and I think how for example have we been facing with how gentrification is this huge pandemic globally but now it's not the only pandemic which we have, right? Because we have Coronavirus and this is something that has drastically affected communities collectively, individually, societally in every single context. So I want to ask about how vulnerable our scene is to this virus as well and what has this pandemic specifically highlighted for us? What for example can and should we learn and how can we change things for the better? So quite a loaded question of course but you know…where to start?

Lakuti
Well, I mean what for me has been very clear for a long time and this pandemic has just accelerated that kind of situation, is that we have been building upon something with zero foundations. And we've lost our way, we've lost the meaning of what we do because we've prioritized commercialization over community over building a culture over legacy and now it's a time that we need to do a lot of reflection and to see whether we want to go this way in terms of feeding the community. And look I'm not saying that people should not earn money with their craft, I'm not subscribing to that thought at all but there are ethical ways of earning money and right now where we lost our way within the recording industry and clubbing at large, is that we prioritized only making money and everything else was thrown to the back burner so where do we go from here? It's up to everybody.

Erkan Affan
Jay Jay you were nodding in agreement, what do you think?

Jay Jay Revlon
Two things that's coming into my head is like: we’re gonna be the last to open, our culture in terms of nights, venues, festivals… we’re going to be the last and the last might not be like I know if people are starting to plan like I'm getting emails saying „hey we've reworked our schedule with the new Covid rules, are you able to come do this?“ and I'm kind of like I'm saying yes to everything but I'm like we're going to be the last to open. If anyone wants to cancel anything, they’ll cancel festivals and all this stuff first. I think that's where we have to also see the value in technology, like the technology that we have like I'm in agreeance. I can't really watch someone do a live stream of a performance, I found it very weird even when I deejayed Boiler Room that people are watching me online. I find it weird because I teach classes online and that's literally only happened out of Covid. I'm not really into the teaching online about physical energies and stuff like this but technology, it plays a big part. Like moving what we can do in the club space to online is like…. I think there's a sense of saving our community. I was going to play so many festivals, have my own brunch party for pride and all of this was like financially amazing for me but as soon as it all got taken away, I was like „fuck but we got the internet why can't we just not do the same thing and move it online?“, even though I feel like online is weird. And I think those are two things is that we're gonna have to start using technology to make our shit happen because the fact that we don't have the physical spaces due to the pandemic and gonna be the last to open. They're opening pubs before they open actual venues, that's beyond me. But that's how I personally feel, is that we have this accessibility of the internet and the technology we have. That could be really good but also we do think a lot in agreeance like making money and that's also on venues as well because venus make us make the bar plus whatever or make us pay high fees for venues for certain days and stuff like this. I think that all comes into play and we just have to see how we can utilize what we have but not also taken away from what we're already doing.

Erkan Affan
I saw you disagreeing with a bit of that Lakuti.

Lakuti
For me I find it difficult because in kind of a looking at online as an alternative in that sense because for me clubbing means something completely different. It means the idea of touch which we can't do now obviously. I'm looking at how many streams we have right now and not having a filter. I mean it's literally millions of people streaming, how are people taking all this too much information in. There is way too much information I feel and I'm not sure that we can process so much information. Right now we need to go to back to basics. Less is more, reflection, time, space, less. I don't know, those are my feelings. I just feel like the internet opens up too much and with no filter what are we really learning, what are we doing?

Erkan Affan
What do you think about this Yuko?

Yuko Asanuma
I generally agree with Lerato because as I said before I much appreciate the physical space and it's hard for me to enjoy DJ live streaming but at the same time I do get requests for my artists to do free mixes or „can such and such artists do a mix for our cancelled festival“ and of course we want to support each other. But you guys need to realize that the artist has also lost the source of income and they can’t keep providing unpaid work. So the internet has great advantage and I see it as a good way to keep in touch with your community but it's difficult to I don't like the word but monetize from what you do online, so I don't have an answer for it but we definitely need a way to compensate the artists and the workers in the industry.

Erkan Affan
Okay, so I think we're going to go into our third song which is my song, not as in I didn't make this song, I wish I'd made the song honestly but it's by SHYGIRL who's a artist from London and it's produced by Sega Bodega and it's called „UCKERS“.

[Music]
Artist: SHYGIRL
Song: UCKERS

Lyrics:
I don't give a fuck about you
But I really keep on fucking

Till I fuck all of you
No kissing no hugging
When I push up on all you
I really just be
For the sake of fucking n***

Did I forget to mention
That I’m coming for you n***
No place to run
But you won't
You feel that? That's me bitches!
In the back
In the front
Even when you’re fast asleep
I be running on your mind
But to me
You're just a beat

I don't give a fuck about you
But I really keep on fucking
Till I fuck all of you
Aye aye
I don't give a fuck about you
But I really keep on fucking
Till I fuck all of you n***
Aye aye
Did I forget to say
That you don't get to fuck for free?
You can fuck with other bitches
But you still run back to me
I got that soul destroying pussy
I'm collecting, triple fee
I want your mind and your body
When and where is up to me

Ok

We out here
On these streets
Steady creeping
In the a.m
Call on me
Be my play thing
I don't mind if your shy
But these n*** they be cravin'
Imm’a have to train them
Let me explain real quick
He said no face
But I finna catch a case
To fuck this dick
Did I stutter
Guess I’m used to dealin' with a real n***
Who about to slang it down
Tell me now
Are you the one
To turn me out

I don’t give a fuck about you
But I really keep on fucking
Till I fuck all of you
Aye aye
I don't give a fuck about you
But I really keep on fucking
Till I fuck all of you n***
Aye aye
Did I forget to say
That you don't get to fuck for free?
You can fuck with other bitches
But you still run back to me
I got that soul destroying pussy
I'm collecting triple fee
I want your mind and your body
When and where is up to me

Erkan Affan
The reason I chose this song is just to do a shout out to PDA which is an amazing night that happened in London. I was even talking about this earlier just about how it was a really nice positive space filled with Black and brown queer people. So I just wanted to spotlight artists from there. So the next final wrap-up conversation that we're going to have is going to be focusing on the future planning and our wishes. So I want to start by asking you all how do you think people can show solidarity and be part of protecting and supporting underground culture?

Jay Jay Revlon
For me I personally feel like that whole thing is like regardless it's going to be guest mix or this or that XYZ, people should be paid for their time and paid for what they're doing. I think a big thing for me that I advocate is like it's not all about making money and I feel like you should always be happy and money will come even though if you turn the job down, money will come in another place. if you know in your heart you don't feel comfortable. But I think a big thing for me is noticing what the pandemic has brought is a lot of people asking a lot for free or for much less because they think you're at home and it's just online. „You just need to take a couple hours of your time, just for us, for this tiny fee or nothing“ and for me even from when I was super accessible in London to not being so accessible now because I obviously live in Barcelona that was a big thing for me that I couldn't understand, that just because I'm there or just because I'm home or just because it's Covid I shouldn’t be doing something free. I'll be grateful for opportunities because Covid is here and we don't know when the next coin is going to come. I think a big thing for me is that people get paid for their time regardless especially because everyone has bills to pay and being very hundred with the situation. Is something non-profit or are you making profit from this, I just know I've gone through life knowing people will say something to my face and then there'll be loopholes somewhere. I’ve done stuff with brands and they've used my image for to sell products and they never said that to me and you have to go back and forth with them and be like „I'm gonna say and all this…“. It shouldn't ever get to that, I think moving forward that shows a lot like just being honest, clear, pay people for their time… I think that makes everyone live in harmony.

Erkan Affan
I think that's a good point in terms of like the commercial aspect of things but I also think this discussion is important to have within community. Because I remember having this conversation with someone where they were saying they wanted to do their birthday party at the third party we held for Queer Arab Barty which was in February. And in fact we had like a couple of press outlets based in Europe who wanted to bring a camera and come and record at our party and they thought because we're a POC run collective that we would be so gratuitous and so happy to have a camera crew come to our party. And I was thinking in my head we're a party for people from a diaspora which doesn't necessarily have the comfort of being visible or wanting to be visible because we don't control that narrative of visibility right? And you think that we're just going to have you come to the party because it means visibility or credibility. But that also made me think about queer safaris, right? I feel so many times that we're like a safari or like a theme park for people to come and explore and see what our spaces are and what we do. So how do we prevent that? How do we stop people from coming into our space and taking from it and seeing us like we're just an exhibition in like on a pedestal for them? And then going home while we have to cover the cost of the club and cover the cost of the security in the party. What do you think?

Lakuti
I feel in a lot of ways, I mean which is a phenomena that I often see now is I guess it's a younger generation that have embraced kind of branding and brands in a way that we didn't do and therefore I think that's a conversation that needs to happen within that generation to see what they are actually giving up by signing on to relying on a brand to kind of showcase who you are. Because I mean I would say there's value to being independent and I think we really need to start to stress how important it is to own your own narrative because when you sign up with brands you actually are giving away your content, you no longer own your content. Is this what we want?

Erkan Affan
What do you think about this Yuko?

Yuko Asanuma
It's a very difficult question that I always ask myself too. I've worked with brands and I’ve worked with branded projects many times in the past and it's partly because these brands do have a lot of resources, a lot of financial abilities that all us independent workers don't have and will never have. And on one hand I've kind of tried to contribute in these projects because I wanted to help them redistribute the resources to the underground community but at the same time you are giving away something even for a good price, you're allowing them to put price tag on what you do.

Lakuti
It’s not a good price. I feel at the end of the day you losing a lot from this and I can never deny because a lot of People of Color, Black ids have had to rely on these brands to get any exposure and to get paid. And I will never take that away from people but there's a bigger picture and that picture worries me because for me I think there's a bigger price to pay and we need to teach younger people that we need to own our staff. You know we are in a loop as Black people because we do not own our things and we having to always renegotiate to be put at the table and we just need to start. It's time that we own stuff because I think we can do a lot more for our communities if we own their own stuff.

Jay Jay Revlon
And it's true, I mean in two sentences it's like own yourself is very key and owning - okay let's say brands because it's true what you're saying like parties nowadays are build of the brand and your ethos and your mission statements and stuff like this but during this like some brands do aligne and sometimes it does work. The Boiler Room I did didn't feel so much like a Boiler Room because of … it was with not the online bit but in the party, it was with a drag queen called Lagoon Femshayma Prestige Pak and they did this whole thing with Boiler Room for carnival with Prestige Pak and I got to DJ and it was really amazing and I met new DJs. It was really great and there was like an inverse of Burberry but it wasn't like plastered everywhere. It felt very much like carnival had all these other brands put money into it but it didn't feel like that and I feel like that was one of the, probably the first times working someone asked me to play or be involved in something that I didn't feel a lot of brand presence. And I think that's something that I don't mind aligned with brands as long as you know the money is right as well as you don't take up too much space and you understand there's power in owning your stuff because there's power in like when you have conversations like this, either within your own community or it being commercialized, you have the power because you own it, you have the power to say yes and no to stuff. And most times in my experience I've worked with brands and said „no that cannot happen, no you cannot come to a ball and film, no you can't talk to my mom I'm so sorry, no you're not going to be filming people in the back dressing up or whatever you want to call it or getting ready“ and some will say „yes“ and some would say „well we can't work with you then“ and so be it is my opinion on that. But it's true owning your stuff and allowing it to aligne are such two things that you guys have said. This has been amazing.

Erkan Affan
Finishing off with you Lakuti before we move to the next question.

Lakuti
I mean I'm just interjecting when you said you felt good and it didn't feel like but I mean I think that’s… it's not the key point here focus for me also a lot of the people that actually are behind these brands is something that we need to scrutinize because so many times we invest in people that work against our own interests. It's really become so dangerous and so scary to see the impact of these people within our own communities and we really need to be vigilant in actually scrutinizing what we're signing up to. And what is that parent company that owns that particular brand doing behind closed doors, it’s a really complex situation but we need to be really aware vigilant and decide where we want to go with all of this.

Erkan Affan
Perfect, I think that's really astute point. So just to wrap up the conversation, the final question I want to ask is: what is the kind of change that you wish for if you had a call for action, how would your ideal dance floor look and how would we achieve this?

Lakuti
I think the time right now is for education, education, education, education, education and that education needs to happen within those structures that we support like clubs. Because I think to educate oneself centers you and it also helps you to move forward in a progressive way and as we've noticed with what is happening around us with the whole issue of racism, I have been very shocked to hear people saying that they have not even read about these issues that are over 400 to some years old. And so for me I think it is extremely important right now that we educate ourselves whether it be book clubs or whatever but that education needs to happen and really quickly. How do I want to see the dance floor look like? I want people like me behind the decks and in front dancing and I want venue owners to actually again, do the work in ensuring that they reach out and make - it's not a matter of if, they need to do the work and do the call out to say „hey those people that we've neglected for so long we are committing ourselves and we're opening our door and saying you are welcome“. That step needs to come from those that have denied people those spaces for so long.

Erkan Affan
I agree. I would like for gentrification to be a topic that is addressed more and I would like for us to degentrify our own minds because I think that gentrification just isn't about the co-option of space, it's not just about the co-option of venues or the corruption of housings. It's about the corruption of thoughts, it's about the corruption of ideas and so many in our generation believe that we have to have our ideas be commercialized or we have to have our ideas be platformed in certain spaces or in certain contexts for them to be seen as valid. But the thing is change and empowerment they're never going to be nice fine collaborations or conversations that happen with invoices being sent. They're going to be messy uncomfortable sticky situations filled with so much conflict. And so for me that change which I wish for is for us to actually be familiar with that conflict and to be familiar with feeling insecure and be familiar with feeling uncomfortable. Because once we can start to feel uncomfortable and be okay with feeling uncomfortable then we can really start to change stuff.

Lakuti
As I said, going back to what I said but the duty of doing all this work of the change should not only fall on us. We are exhausted we are tired, we've been fighting for so long, it's time that other people step in.

Jay Jay Revlon
I think it's true what you're saying, I agree like open conversation open, honest conversation even check your girlfriend at a time about some stuff. I kind of have a whole kind of like open door conversation with like my house is. If someone put something in the group chat which is like „I'm going to do this to support Black Lives Matter for example“ and people don't agree with it, I feel like open conversation is the best. Because everyone should have a say and I feel like also promoters, DJs, everyone that works music - we don't talk enough, we’re very much like we might be in the same lineup but we're not going to talk about fees and I feel a lot like we don't talk to each other enough and have these conversations. I mean we definitely have to have these conversations. What my floor looks like, I think the only thing for me is conversation. I like having discussions like this I like having discussions get heated that make me uncomfortable that I might say something and people disagree and they say from their side. I get it or I might not get it, I like that and I want more of that to happen within the industry as a whole. Also I'm tired of also talking at the same time. Seat at the table like whatever venue this is, it needs to have people who understand the party or the event that we want to do to help us and what will it look like? For me how it's looked like so far is how I can continue. I want my floor to look as not mixed as possible of people… I always have a mixture of people but I want a common respect for the floor. A common respect for my house. As I said I've always seen my parties and my balls and everything I've done as my home. If I would put a ball in my house, I would put a party in my house. Respect it like you would at someone's house party and all their walls are white, respect it with the same energy and that's kind of what I want to see more within night life. I feel it needs more of a wholesome respective space more now than ever I think.

Yuko Asanuma
In general I think I wish everyone who's taking part in this scene to be a little bit more careful with your choice when you're going to a party, when you're going to an event just know who you're paying and what you are supporting by attending because it's great to have conversations between us like promoters and booking agents etc. But at the end of the day it's the audience’s money that runs everything and I feel like through the Corona pandemic also with the whole Black Lives Matter movement I realized that a lot of the things that a lot of the problems that we're seeing is that the music not just music but culture and art has been so detached from where it originally was. It just became a business, it just became a commodity and it just became something to be consumed and if you have the money you can just buy it and enjoy it and you don't have to you know, you just throw it away when you get bored of it. But to sustain this culture or art it's not the right way to … you’re not really supporting it by just consuming in general. I think people need to have a stronger sense of participation and just be a little bit more careful thoughtful of your each action and it's not just about diversity in the scene but also with like climate change. Just take a moment and think of what you're purchasing.

Lakuti
But also just going beyond just a dance floor in order for us to see the change that we which actually will benefit us a great deal and will revive what has become a dying job scene we need to see women taking on the role of a club booker or programmer. We need to see a lot more change structurally and not just on the surface. Yes it's we want more Black DJs or Asian DJs playing but we also want a lot more diversity within decision making and this is what is lacking right now. And also why is it that clubs are so conservative? Are we not meant to be in the creative fields? Why are we only listening to a certain kind of music and not the others when there's a whole world out there making creative and exciting things? Why is it that we are stuck in this one dimension, why is it that we're not watching movies about the culture and where these things are coming from, why is a club space so static? And it has been for a very long time.

Yuko Asanuma
I actually add something I recently wrote an article a feature for RA and about alternative ways of doing things in music and I wrote about this band in Tokyo who put on free festival, like an admission free event so anyone is welcome and they collect donations. And last year they did free admission and free food. So they provided free meals for people who came to the festival and there are maybe two or three thousand people and they basically said there's something wrong with this industry and we're gonna try a different way and see if it works and if there are enough people to support what we do. And it turned out there were and they didn't lose money, I mean of course it was a lot of work for them to put this on but there were farmers who who supplied food and restaurant people who cook the food and all these volunteers and donations supported their vision of their event which was mind-blowing to me. I never thought about that, like I never I mean of course there are free events but I never thought it's really possible to put on a completely free festival and serve free food?!

Erkan Affan
That's amazing but on the flip side of that I feel like it's really uncomfortable to have to create these spaces and provide the stuff for free off our own backs when there's so much money ebbing and flowing around us in the cities and the spaces that we're doing it in. We should be having access to that money, it’s like I remember seeing this article which was about how this like nine ten-year-old girl crowdfunded her her dad's cancer treatment in the US and it was this cute story about how she had crowdfunded and I'm there like am I the only one who thinks that this is insane that there isn't free healthcare and this person had to literally get money from her community to support her father? When really it's the medical industrial complex which should be paying for it in the first place. So I get that's amazing just like the idea of block parties. Block parties are amazing to bring communities together, honestly if there were more, if there was more capacity for there to be block parties in a city like London for example then gentrification wouldn't happen so easily as well. If Nottingham carnival could happen more regularly for example or more unrestrictively then gentrification would be tackled in a way but in a way I wouldn't say it's a solution but…

Jay Jay Revlon
I feel like there's a lot. I think in my area - I grew up in Peckham in London and there is a lot of block party per se like a lot of the community get-together and make food and if there's an event they're people will cook and stuff like this. It can be done with 200 people I'm gagging because that's a lot and I really want to know what the food really looked like, like what was it kind of thing I'm hungry [laughter] That would have sold me to come to the festival and I think it does exist. I think it does need to exist more for more communities to build but also you're completely right like „run me my coin!“.

Lakuti
I mean look at the UK. The taxpayer has been paying until 2015 the slave owners for compensating them for not owning slaves anymore, the madness!

Jay Jay Revlon
It's mad but they roll out money for other stuff but then we have to like „oh let's raise money for the NHS“ I'm sorry, I’m sorry what?!

Erkan Affan
I think that that's a perfect place to wrap it up is by all of us just saying like „run me my money, that's it. Period. Give me the coins! Run it, sprint it!“. So we're going to be wrapping it up. It's been so amazing to have you all here, we're actually going to have Jay Jay’s song as the outro „Miss Corona Cunt“. Does she want to give us a little explanation as to what this is?

Jay Jay Revlon
? and I’ve avoided swearing this whole thing!

Erkan Affan [laughter]

Jay Jay Revlon
So this is like the first thing I produced,I haven't done music for a while but I've been learning for like the last three months with a teacher in the UK from HUB16. I have to shout out them because they're amazing - Samantha Nelson. And this was like the first thing that kind of made me with corona, just made me sit down and make something and be happy with it. And I think it's just a song that was like ridiculous. I think I heard the remixes and was just like „I need to make something like this“. So it's just something I just made and I’m super proud of.

Erkan Affan
Amazing! Looking forward to hearing it!

Jay Jay Revlon
It’s a bit loud … it’s not mixed out.

[Music]
Artist: Cardi B
Song: Miss Corona Cunt (JayJay Revlon Vogue Edit)