Integral people to the scene

LLS: “What do you think is missing from the Bristol music scene now? Because no ones really come out of Bristol since you, Portishead.”

R: “I wouldn’t say that’s necessarily true. A lot of people have come out of Bristol. Like Maya Jama. These people are integral to the Bristol music scene. Like Banksy for crying out loud.”

“My thing is, there are a lot of artists who have come out of Bristol. Just because they don’t have one million followers. Like Redlight, Ardman, Portishead. There are people behind the scenes doing music. Fame is overrated, but being successful, and meeting your goals, that’s what you want.”

The Wild Bunch

I asked Roni what it was like going to parties with the Wild Bunch, the Wild Bunch was a predecessor of Massive Attack, with members Robert Del Naja and Tricky apart of the group. They would host parties at clubs and abandoned warehouses around Bristol(2).

“I used to go to the Wild Bunch parties when there was 7 or 8 of us there. Parties down on lower Cheltenham Road. It wasn’t just the Wild Bunch doing stuff, it was the City Rockers, UD4, 2 Bad, FBI, they were massive. All these different crews.”

R: “Do you know what a blues is?”

LLS: “Blues music?”

R: “Nooo. So a blues, or a shebeen as they called it was a 24 hour underground illegal bar, with a sound system in it. There’s one round the corner that’s now closed down, it’s called Ajax, and that used to be nuts.”

Ajax, also known as the Shady Grove cafe, was run by Gilbert Watson or ‘Community Man'(3). Since the 70s it served as a drinking den for the African Caribbean community in St Pauls to socialise, drink and dance together(4).

Watson also helped run the famous Bamboo Club, owners being Lalel and Tony Bullimore, which once hosted Ben E King and Bob Marley(5).

“They used to charge £1 for a cigarette, £3 for a bag of weed, in a Brown Paper Bag.”

Roni grew up with Jamaican Immigrant parents, a part of the Windrush community. I asked him what his favourite Jamaican food spots in Bristol are.

“I’ve been to over 100 Jamaican food spots in Bristol, there was a spot called the ‘Black and White cafe’, it’s closed down now, but that was the place to go. Search up St. Pauls riots, Black and White cafe.”

“Black and White cafe had the best food.”

Black and White Cafe

The Black and White Café was opened in 1971, by the Wilks family. Situated in St.Pauls, The Caribbean food cafe had a reputation as a drug den and was raided more times by the police than any other premises in the country.

The Bristol Post interviewed Ras Judah, who had a different perspective on the matter.

“People who were the actual victims during those times understand why we call it an uprising,” says Judah.

“He means the young men nobody would employ. The generations let down by empty government promises. The men, he says, who were unfairly targeted by police on a daily basis. They had had enough.”

On April 2nd 1980, A police raid on the café was a catalyst for the infamous St Pauls riot. Although viewed as a centre for drug dealing and violent turf wars, it was somewhere for Afro-Caribbean communities to gather, as they had been shut out by the rest of society. The café closed in 2004 under legal action as a result of new anti-social behaviour legislation and was later demolished(7).

Reference list

1. Redlight featuring 2009 X-Factor contestant Nicole Jackson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AqbLGHqsTg
2. The Wild Bunch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wild_Bunch_(sound_system)
3. Ajax, St. Pauls https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-53517763
4. Drinking den https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_underground_scene
5. The Bamboo Club https://epigram.org.uk/the-bamboo-club-the-iconic-st-pauls-venue-we-mustnt-forget/
6. Ras Judah, Bristol Post https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/local-news/st-pauls-1980-ras-judah-3990811
7. Black and White cafe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_and_White_Caf%C3%A9