Dizraeli

August is supposed to be the deep, lazy heart of the summer, but autumn’s come early and erased all notion of that. I’ve just come back from the Green Man festival in Wales, where 20 000 people moved in a world of rain and cold wind for 4 days, cheering whenever the sun showed a pimple. But it was good, nonetheless. We played an acoustic set, Small Gods without drums or DJ… UnPlugged.

It’s something I’d been wanting to try for a while, wondering what happens when the words and melodies are left to stand on their own, without a groove to carry them. As a rapper I’m used to my verses riding beats, and I like that, but as a musician I want my songs to have the ability to strike people without necessarily making them want to dance… We took to Chai Wallah’s stage with flutters in our bellies; nerves which didn’t lift for the whole set, really, me feeling like I had to compensate for the lack of drums by being Extra Hyped, and the others feeling they had to work hard to hold the timing of things together without the guidance of the metrognome. But, bugger I sideways, the crowd Loved it. The big tent was rammed with ears and eyes, all listening and watching attentively to every thing we did… It seems that you really don’t need to deliver your ideas at a high volume with bang pow dynamics for people to take notice of them. If you’ve got something worth listening to, people will listen.

(The adverts disagree, and so do the presenters of Top Gear. Perhaps they’re concealing the fact they offer nothing of any value…)

It felt like further confirmation of something that I’ve been feeling recently: people are basically safe and intelligent about things if you give them the chance to be. If you offer a child responsibility for their own decision-making, they’ll probably take it, and eventually learn to make good decisions (something that Summerhill school is strong proof of ). If you give people the knowledge and space necessary to take control of their own situation, they will. If you give people an hour of intense music and words in a way that assumes they have the intelligence to deal with it raw, they will rise to that challenge. And on the flipside of that same coin, if you fear someone, they will act in a way that justifies that fear. Assume the child will act up, they probably will. Bombard a crowd with BigBeatsN’CleverRhymesN’RaRaRa, they will spill their cider on each other, and possibly fall over.

Anyways big up to the people of Green Man for that hour of intelligence, and big up Chai Wallah once more for providing the space for it to happen.

Next weekend, Shambala, Aeon. Two weeks after that, Bestival and the end of this yearly era of constant fields, constant moving. I’m looking forward to a lie-down.

Peace

Dizraeli

A return to these pages- we’re fully back from the UnPlaned mission now, rearrived a month ago but my head’s only recently got with itself again.

For those that’ve only just linked in, UnPlaned was a loon of a mission, all the way to Cairo and back in the space of a month using only public transport, and on the way showing shows in Egypt, the West Bank, Kosovo and the Czech Republic. I was accompanied by Billy Macrae, a very gifted documentary photographer/film-maker, and together we documented everything that struck us, through film and snaps and music and words. Now we’re back, we’ve got 60 hours of film footage, a gazillion photos and as many thoughts. We’re going to condense the whole lot into a 1/2 hour documentary film, an epic photo essay and an album, all of which we want to give to the world for free when we’re done. We’ll have it all finished by the end of December, and I’ve been chatting to Beth at the Eden Project about the presenting it there, for the launch.

In the meantime, the summer’s looking big, large, massive. Dizraeli and the Small Gods will be playing a total of 11 festivals, all in. The most exciting gig of all these is the West Holts Stage (previously Jazz World, I prefer the old name really) at Glastonbury. It’s the biggest gig I ever will have done, on a stage the size of Scotland. If you’re at Glasto come cheer us on, however blear-eyed you are. We’re there at 11am on the Sunday.

In preparation, we’ve been hard at work writing brand new songs and creating a whole new energy. I originally got the band together to play material off the Engurland album, and for the first tour and the gigs after that, that’s what we did. It meant that people with an incredible creative talent were often saddled with reproducing guitar, keys, drum parts that I’d written myself. Now, though, the band members are coming with their very own ideas, their very own Yesness, and it’s blossoming into something musically beautiful.

We’ll be playing our first set in this incarnation at the Thekla, in Bristol on the 20^th of May. Come down! Here’s the Facebook event page for it:

Dizraeli and the Small Gods at the Thekla

I hope to see all the West Country massive there, and also of course at the festivals beyond that.

Big up to all of you, in the early summer sun,

Peace

Dizraeli

I’m putting all my blogs up on www.unplaned.com/diary at the moment, just in case you’re wondering where I’ve got to. The UnPlaned mission (overground to Cairo) runs from 15th March to the 14th of April, and I’ll be writing every day, and posting almost every day. Come folla us!

I realised my love for English when I moved to France. I was 21, in a new place, where every detail of my day had to be conducted in a language not my own, and I saw for the first time how much we are shaped by the words we speak. A French version of me began to form, and I found that my thoughts and feelings were funnelled in new ways. Living in twangy Southern French (the accent of Montpellier, where I stayed, is a million miles from the phlegmy gutterance of the North), I found a bounce and expressiveness in my attitude that was different from English. I gestured more when I spoke; I furrowed my brow in the Southern sun. I enjoyed it.

But there was something missing. For all its poetry and detail, the French language – for me – lacked one vital element: the word Silly. This might seem a small thing, but the word Silly is one of the most important in the English language. Strung between its two syllables is a universe of humour, playfulness, surreal possibility and rubber meanings. Birthed from the Old English root sǣliġ, meaning ‘blessed’, and growing through the muddled seely, meaning ‘innocent’, ‘poor’, ‘foolish’ and ‘fortunate’ all at once, Silly encapsulates what to me is the most appropriate response to the mess of contradictions that is reality: fling off your clothes, and mud wrestle. Playing the role of Fool in the court of the king, it can also create a space for very serious satire and social commentary. Monty Python took on fascism, the corruption of religion, the class system, bureaucracy … all the poisons of the modern world, and did so armed only with colossal silliness.

In Montpellier, I felt disarmed without Silly: I sought out replacement words, finding a few that sidled in the same direction (the phrase n’importe quoi, for example, meaning ‘it doesn’t matter what’) but none that came close.

Returning to England after my year away, I dived headfirst back into my mother tongue, relishing its words with many meanings, and its meanings with many possible words. It struck me that the non-sense of English as an entire system could be summarised as Silly, and I loved that fact: here was a language I could twist, jumble and reinvent. Because of the history of English, which began as a Germanic import and developed through colonisation, mutation, corruption and downright theft into a hybrid monster with a thousand tongues, it is – I think – uniquely flexible and playful.

Of course, I’m a native speaker: the language through which you grasp your first understandings will always be the one which gives you the most scope for expression, and English is by no means the only language capable of playfulness and multiplicity. I have heard French rappers and poets juggle their language in the most breathtaking ways. And I’m sure that, for a person coming to it from another language, English is full of gaping holes. A native Boro speaker from Northeastern India, for instance, might be astonished that we have no equivalent word for mokhrob, meaning ‘to express anger by a sideways glance’.

But poor foolish fortunate that I am, I love English, holes and all. As someone who works with words for a living, it’s a messy, colourful joy. And most of all, it’s a version of me with space for Silly.

Calloo callay!

(Boro reference borrowed from Spoken Here, by Mark Abley (Arrow Books, 2003))

[Blog written for http://www.macmillandictionary.com/]

I glance out over the snow-muffled terraces and tower blocks, as a sudden burst of sun glints off the gutter icicles. It’s brilliant, I think- car doors are frozen shut, people walk slow on the black-iced pavements, and everywhere there’s the secret delight of a shared crisis. There’s only eight days of gas supplies left, apparently, someone says, with a smile. 44% of the workforce have stayed at home, someone else says, with a raised eyebrow. It feels as if we’ve all found ourselves on a mystery ride, on a day off we didn’t know was coming, and we have a hunch it might be going somewhere exciting, or at least memorable. “The Big Freeze!”, yells The Sun; “No End In Sight!”
The Sun is an excited nine-year-old, running around with a bag of sweets and a toy machine-gun, seeing an Action-Packed Rollercoaster Thrill in every single national occurrence. It must be Intense, being The Sun. Back in the world of grown-ups, we pick our way across a new landscape, give up on our car doors, and smile.

The fridge (whose name is Terry) is gurgling in his characteristic way, a cross between a gut and a lawnmower. The gurgle becomes a rumble, which becomes an angry splutter, which exhausts itself into silence, which becomes a gurgle again. And here I am, back in the winter grip. Someone up there’s laughing at the little circles we cycle in. I’m sitting in a Brixton kitchen listening to an old UK mixtape, Mud Fam and Digitek sounding hungry in times gone by, while a traffic warden scuttles past the window, eyes darting for cars to pounce on.

Cars cars cars. It occurred to me recently that given how much time I spend ranting about action, inciting people to move and do, I do very little myself but rant about it. I mean, I live in a way I think of as conscious; I eat vegetarian, I don’t fly. But these are personal, insular choices in a way. Where’s the Big Do? With this in mind, on Saturday I’m going to take part in the Wave, a demonstration taking over the streets of London, to demonstrate to the Public Eye (and therefore the People Who Control Stuff) that we are awake, and we do give a shit, and we’re Watching the leaders who are gathering in Copenhagen in the next week to come to agreements about action on Climate Change.

Come to the Wave. If you’re thinking, “well what good does that do, walking around the streets yelling slogans, pointing fingers at stuff?”, think again. We live in a world of media power- most of what we understand, think and do is in some way mediated by TV, internet, radio, press. If we can make large, loud statements in those arenas (and a demo is a loud statement, times ten) we affect the way the world of humans understands, thinks and does. Symbolic acts matter.

If you’re curious, follow this link:

http://www.stopclimatechaos.org/the-wave

And I’ll see you in the Capital.

Shut up, Terry.

All right, all write, alright?

I’m looking out through Brixton scaffolding, with a weeklong tour at my back, and a stomachful of coffee just about holding me upright. Whoof. It was a birth and a trip, a labour and a holiday, a sweat and a giggle all rolled into one. We started with a gig at Cargo, the London club with the mighty reputation and shit sound (Bad Science once sounded terrible there too)- it was a shaky one for all of us, struggling with being unable to hear each other’s playing, and translating the newly nailed pieces to a live performance (a rehearsal room is not a gig), but we still managed to have a good time of it, and I think the crowd did too; we had some lovely feedback. Thank you to all the friends, fans and family that represented for that one- it was a treat to have you all in the audience. The next day took us back to Lewes, to Zu Studios, the magic squatspace where the album was recorded. You have literally never seen a spot look more cosy- gas fires, glowing lights, giant bees- the gig was a mead-fuelled glow to match it, ending with a reprise of the song we’d started with, but this time with the whole room singing the chorus.

After a jam session and a game of linoleum bowls (with a UK hiphop soundtrack), we stayed the night there, crashed on massive mattresses upstairs with a big wooden Yeah hanging on the wall over us, just as Mr Simmonds and I had done every night of the recording. A geezer called Clive, bedded in the same room, kept us up with stories of the monster that lives in the piano, until we laughed ourselves to sleep at the completion of the circle.

A few days off, after that, before we regrouped to journey to the West Country for the thickest leg of the tour. The Bell! Bath! A tiny pub with all the heads of the area crammed into it, and some out from Bristol too. The ‘stage’ is really an extension of the drinking area, tables cleared to make space for the band. Lee Westwood amazed with his guitaring, and then we bled into Maria, the first song of the newly arranged set. I never tire of that song, even though I’ve been performing it as a spoken word piece for years. The new music (J Levistky- composed) has breathed even more soul into it, and even a busy pub hushed to hear it. Thank you Bath for your welcome, and thank you Joe and Ruth for putting up almost all of us in your house: we stayed up late, stoned and talking, making characters out of blu tack and pissing about, finished by a fine fry up the next morning.

Next up, to Bristol. Ah, Bristol. We spent the day in an Easton basement, polishing arrangements, and travelled to Stokes Croft for the show. People from all stages of my life showed up to support, and it became such a reunion of old friends and faces that no one noticed my guitar was out of tune (especially me). I’m hoping the reviewer from the Venue didn’t notice, either. Bristol is a loud, rowdy hoot, whatever the write-up is, and we all loved it. Bomb Sainsbury’s.

After Bristol, to Cornwall. Fuck me, what rain- coming down on our cars in God-sized bucketloads, all the way to Eden. The Eden Project- a vast quarry filled with a holy marriage of science, art and nature. We played to a few hundred folk at the venue there, with the volume irritatingly low (next time, we’re bringing our own soundman), and then catapulted into the quarry, exploring the site by night with our hostess, the brilliant Beth guiding us, showing us insane contraptions, a round room housing a huge granite seed (we sang, the acoustics were spot on), and a giant bee. The zenith was the ice skating rink- there were no skates available at 1am, but there was a wheelchair: me and Mr Simmonds took it over, scooting at high pitch across the ice, pulling doughnuts all over the shop. Soon, it had escalated into all-out chaos, with all the Small Gods skidding and spinning around in some way, yelling for drunken joy and not able to stop until a friendly security bloke came to shoo us away. Every single person that works in the Eden Project is a superfriendly legend. Thanks to all of you for a warm welcome, and also for the farmhouse we took over, beatboxing and blowing bottletones until we were all laughed out, and it was time to sleep. The next day, we woke slowly and wandered around the Biodomes, gaping at how impressive it all is. If you’ve never been to the Eden Project, go now, it’s a massive wickedness. A rare positive vision of the future.

The giant bee looked rained-on and bedraggled, and we set off for the last gig – Glastonbury - with our heads buzzing. Paul ran out of petrol on the way, but we got there eventually. Glastonbury was empty and wet: the occasional teenager loped down the highstreet, looking unlikely to come to a Small Gods gig, and everyone else hid. We waited for the good folk of Glast to emerge, and eventually some did, so we played our songs for them, accompanied by a hum and a buzz, perhaps a giant bee in the monitor. We were tired from the night before, but we played well, driven by the special fuel that comes from an imminent ending, throwing our last drops of juice out into the music and then collapsing when the set was done. People liked it, they said, and they were inspired. Glastonbury scoops all the prizes in the Far Out awards: after the gig I met a woman that wrote songs in the language of the mermaids, and a bloke that thought we’d met in a past life. Perhaps, perhaps. I was ready to drop though, and not ready to play word games. Most of the Small Gods were hungering for their own beds, so we said a goodbye- let’s do this again soon – and it was just Mr Simmonds and me remaining; just how it started. We were zonked, and slept like babies at Yasmin and Ben’s place before a drive home, through the leaves of late autumn back to London.

If you can, find an excuse to go on tour, whether or not you play music. It’s a slice of lives and colour that you don’t get any other way.

Thank you to the Small Gods for all the hard work and passion you put into playing the songs, and for the lovely company over the course of the week. February? Let’s do it.

Peace,

Dizraeli.

I should follow my own advice sometimes. Breathe it in, breathe it out, loosen up. I’ve been running around like a blue-faced arsebottle, an arse-faced bluebottle for the last too long, worrying about the album, worrying about the tour, fidgeting next to Laura in bed for hours after she’s sunk to sleep. Well, now I think I can breathe.

The album’s out, and you lovely people have been flooding the feedback in in great warm waves. It seems that Folk-Hop floats. I haven’t sold 8 million copies in the first week, but I have had a respectable flow of requests come in, and I’m pleased. To those that don’t know- if you order the album now, you receive a download code by email, which enables you to own it all straight away, and also you’ll get a CD in the post, which I’ll send to you as soon as I’ve got them back from the factory at the end of the month.

The Bomb Tesco video’s out too, circulating around YouTube at its own good pace, and spreading chuckles, I think, wherever it goes. It still makes I laugh every time I see it. If you haven’t looked yet, take the time to.

And finally, the Small Gods band is well underway, and preparing for the tour: we’ve had two rehearsals now, and it’s starting to sound proper lush. Viola, accordion, double bass, harmony singing, cuts and nodyerhead hiphop beats, anyone? I think we’re in for something special. The first gig is next frigging week, which I can’t believe, but I can still breathe, and perhaps even sleep a full night…

I feel so much calmer that I’m even taking the time to add a new page to the website: I’m calling it Inspiration, but it’ll be a broad umbrella: there’ll be links to good causes there, people who are struggling for justice or intelligence; there’ll be links to artists who’re inspiring me at the moment, and who I want to share with everyone else; there might even be pictures. Let’s see.

I hope to see a lot of you peoples somewhere along the tour road, anyway, and keep the feedback coming- it’s nutritious.

Peace

Dizraeli

This is an old story really- a day that happened more than a month ago. But I have to tell you about it, because I haven’t yet.

My old friend Billy Macrae is a photographer, and has an unparalleled eye for the same small street detail that I hope I have an ear for: the stories which unfold in places where people don’t stop to see them, in tube stations and on shopping streets; supermarkets and demonstrations. Together, on a sunslanted evening in July, we (read more…)

Laties und Gentelmans

Oh, we had a lush time this evening. It was perfect: the Rebel Cell finished playing to a packed house, and I asked them all to come down to Tesco for a big old dance and to play the food. (read more…)

Alright then. After tinkering and sweating and bopping our heads, me and Mr Simmonds have emerged from the cave with two slabs of brand new music. (read more…)

Alright then! It’s at times like these when it feels like the great, rusted, backwards-rolling old tank of Western civilisation is actually cranking a few heaves forwards. There’s hope painted on people’s faces everywhere, and yes we know that power has corrupted many a saint, (read more…)

Credit crunch is raining down around our ears, crackling the airwaves and filling our bowls with news about stock exchanges and banks in trouble. Some people are tearing their newly grey hair out, desperate and suddenly unemployed after feeling like the prosperity of our cruise ship would go on forever. (read more…)

Good Morning

JD’s and lentil-men. I hope this finds you well. I’m looking out at the Brighton rain, through the ceaseless stream of traffic that is the road I live on, thinking that the scene is heavy with symbols of depression, but I’m feeling good nonetheless. (read more…)