big up the Originals raving cru

A while ago Spiro alerted me to this great mix of amapiano from a few year back, this outdoor festival in London called The Originals. He pointed out that while the music didn't have any real connection to the Nuum, the peripherals - the MC-ing - were soaked in the London vibe. And it's true - there are points where the MC chants "oi oi!" just like his ancestors would at the Labrynth in '92. 

There's one at 36 mins 55 or so, where the MC asks the crowd "who's a true raver?" and then leads a call-and-response of "oggy oggy oggy, oi oi oi".

Listening again, I noticed another nuumological flicker - it occurs at 31.15 or thereabouts, the MC goes into this chant that sounds like "E come E come alive E come alive" (it might actually be "you come alive you come alive you come alive")

"E come E come alive E come alive" is a nigh-on thirty-year-old catchphrase from this Xenophobia tune "Rushing The House" that was big in '92. I associate it with Spiral Tribe, on account of the Spiral-connected MC Scallywag being on the record. But it was produced by Grant Nelson aka Wishdokta aka the G in N'n'G aka Bump & Flex aka dozens of aliases up and down the length of the nuum from ardkore to 2step.

It recurs again in the Supa D amapiano mix at about 37.15 reworded as "you come alive, I come alive, you come alive, I come alive". Just before, the MC talks about how he feeds off  the buzz from the audience and then gives it back to them. The chant "you come alive, I come alive, you come alive, I come alive" crystalizes the feedback-loop between crowd and MC+DJ beautifully.

It's noticeable also that most of the MC-ing is Jamaican flavored in slang and accent - "big up", "pon" etc. And in this next Originals set, lots of "my selector" "wanna reload?", etc 

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Also at 37.57 or so, there's a shout-out to the four quadrants of the city - "North London, South London, West London, East London", flashing back to the opening interpellation in Gant's "Soundbwoy Burial (187 Lockdown Dancehall Mix)"

Echoes of jungle and UKG, in 2023-  a quarter-century later. And the whole thing representing yet another of those only-in-London recombinations of the Caribbean, the Black American, and now the African. 

Looking up the Originals festival online, I see the slogan: It's A London Thing.

Nuumology and Nameology

For quite a while now, my thinking about the Nuum is that it doesn't really exist anymore, at least as a generative culture-engine....  The new formations stopped coming a while back. Probably the last full-blown paradigm was Funky (although there's some who would say Deep Tech). Many factors here, but the main one would be the eroding away of the infrastructure that supported the heyday succession of sounds - pirate radio, vinyl, record shops. Nowadays music propagates itself immaterially, through internet and social media channels, and the audio is ever more wedded to the video (making it pop, in potential at least, rather than underground). 

What remains of the Nuum is: 

1/ musicians who came up through earlier phases and are still actively making music informed by that phase and/or drawing on other heyday phases.

2/ Nuum as a site of nostalgia and memorialisation (producers making jungle-replica tracks, auntological ardkore etc.... Back to 92 or Back to 2003 events.... this blog, even!) 

3/ half-life traces of Nuum rhythmic patterns or other sonic hallmarks (some argue you can detect these echoes in 2010s-onwards London street sounds like UK drill)

Having been thinking along these lines for approaching a decade now, how surprising it was to see this  sign from the window of a bus in London last month!

What struck me was how utterly Nuumy most of these names are:

Supa D, Coldsteps, Loyal Squad, Dezy B, Wigman, Spidey G.... 

These could easily be UK Garage era names from 25 years ago. 

I looked it up online and the lineup for this Notting Hill Carnival after-party appears to be largely Afrobeats. 

Which would be one place where the "road" audience went in the 2010s.... another would be drill... . 

I don't hear Nuum-traces in Afrobeats particularly, on a sonic or rhythmic level...  

Yet clearly, in terms of  "vibe", there is a continuity, a persistence....  

Assumed names of artists; track titles;  the names of clubs and raves and record labels.... On the face of it, these would seem to be peripheral elements...  yet for me they feel essential and archetypal 

I smiled with recognition, seeing that sign. 

Despite all the infrastructural shifts, the influx of new sonic influences, the sheer passage of time... something is perpetuating itself....