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Once upon a time in another life I was a promoter - nothing big, just a few drum and bass and dubstep events back in 2008 - however what I quickly learnt is that when it comes to event regulation there is some serious bullshit involved. The recent cancellation of Just Jam at the Barbican has once again bought this social spectre back to the feast, regrettably pointing towards The Metropolitan Police's tendency to discriminate, especially when it comes to music genres - and their fans.
I remember when I went to put on the very first event in my short lived promotions career at an ill-fated venue in Norwich. I went to meet the owners and they passed me a form to fill out. While they insisted it was nothing serious, it made some rather bold statements that had been passed on from the local council. It requested exactly we disclose what kind of music we would be playing (drum & bass, garage, jungle, grime, hip-hop were all apparently forbidden), what our demographic was, our times and more details about the night itself. Ironically we were playing dubstep, so whatever, I signed the form gave it back and only really thought about it years later.
The main thing that stood out to me - despite no issues with police at any of our events - was how can anyone choose too assess an event based on what kind of music is played there? I get it, you have to ensure the safety of the general public, but at the same time shutting down something based on what music is played there really is a form of discrimination. While I'm not saying this is a racial thing, I am saying there is a clear assumption by the police that what kind of music you listen to will determine your behaviour. Do you take drugs? Are you violent? According to the Metropolitan police if you listened to any of the aforementioned genres it is a foregone conclusion.
D Double E was due to play with the Newham Generals
It is this conclusion that has led the police to continuously lean on the Grime genre, stifling it under the strong arm of the law and continuously disallowing its events to go ahead. Over the past few years numerous grime shows have been shut down before they even went ahead. Giggs (for example and rather ironically) can't gig, allegedly So Solid Crew were removed from the Lovebox line-up after police interference and K Koke amongst others were forbidden to play at Wireless festival.
In some ways you can see why the police might want to shut down a Grime rave, it is inherently aggressive music, but then again so is metal, so is rap, so is drum and bass. Could it be that a lot of the artists come from a poor background, could it be that they are predominantly black? While I don't want to wade into such a contentious debate, it falls to reason that if the police are going to make assumptions about music, artists and fans then we should be connecting the dots in order to see what this all really is about.
So here we arrive at Just Jam, the latest event to be quashed in a Minority Report style of erroneous foresight. The irony here though is that this event would and could never turn violent. Just Jam is a cultural celebration, not a stab-fest, taking place in the seated confines of an art gallery with a 7:30pm start and what would have been a great show of art, spoken word and grime music which, despite the establishment leaning on it, continues to be great.
I'm a middle class white boy who has been to numerous grime raves and to be honest I've never felt safer. I'm more scared of the shirt wearing dick ready to glass me with a VK at Oceana. As said by JME on Twitter we should all turn up and Just Jam oustide... Get it?
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